DLP home cinema purchace advice

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am fed up of kids in cinema’s talking, answering their ringing phones, running around, setting fire to the hair of the people in front, peeing off the balcony etc.

BUT I like animation and have to see these ‘kids’ films on a big screen…

I’ve looked on Home Cinema websites, but they’re all selling stuff and I want real views, I think this is what I want:

2000 lumens, XGA (1024x768) or widescreen native, 2000 hour lamp-life. DLP.

But I’ve never met anyone with one.

  1. How many lumens do I need to be able to see a film in a white walled room at dusk (as if a 40 watt bulb was on) - silver/grey screen.

  2. DLP seems the way to go, which devices suffer from ‘rainbow’ effect the most, which don’t.

  3. I will hook it up to my PC to play DVD’s etc, what problems will I encounter.

  4. The room is about 12 feet long, what picture size can I expect.

Recommend me a projector!

2

Sorry, I can’t speak from experience as I’m still stuck with a 27" standard CRT display, but you can find a wealth of information at the AVS Forum about projectors, plasma displays, Hi-Def, Home Theatre PCs, etc. The people there are extremely knowledgeable, but don’t forget to read the FAQs first! Hope this helps.

3

  1. 2000 works for me (Infocus LP530)

  2. Rainbow is very personal, some see it some don’t, some learn to NOT see it. Higher end pj’s can help with faster color wheel rotation.

The old adage of ‘Audiophiles listen to distortion not music’ could be rewritten for HT as ‘Videophiles watch defects, not movies.’ YMMV.

  1. Other than getting hooked on bigscreen web surfing, I have encountered no problems…

  2. I’m using 84" (4x3) diagonal in that sized room.

4

Seems to be something you want to see in person. But

I was looking at epinions.com & ran into this item:
EPSON ELPLP14 Replacement Projector Lamp - A replacement lamp for use with the Epson PowerLite 505, 703, & 715 Multimedia Projectors -
& its $399.88 for just for the lamp…

Maybe you’d like a:
Gateway is selling the Gateway 42" Plasma TV for $2999. VGA, DVI In, RS-232, VGA Out NTSC RF Antenna, Composite Video, Component Video(2), S-Video, Audio In(6), Audio Out, Subwoofer
$2999.00

Instead?

5

I wrestled with lamp price a bit - after all, a 2000 hour lamp costs as much as an ok TV at Costco.

… but 2000 hours is a lot of TV - hard to do in a year - more like two, so less than a buck a day seemed ok (cheaper than that nicotine habit I used to have).

6

Go for the projector, for sure. I’ve got an NEC LT-150. In a completely dark room, its 800 lumens is plenty. One of the popular home theater projectors, the Plus Piano, only has 400. 2000 lumens is a lot.

How big a picture you get in your 12 foot room depends on the throw ratio of the projector. My LT-150 is about 12’ back from the screen, and my screen is 96" wide. But something like an Epson LP-350 would have to be a few feet farther back to throw the same size screen, I think. A zoom lens is handy. If you’re not permanentaly mounting the projector in the optimum location, I’d recommend a projector with a zoom lens.

The big drawback of the front projector is that you really do need a dark room. Even with 2000 lumens your contrast ratio will suffer if you’ve got teh equivalent of a 40 watt bulb going in the room.

7

Thank’s for the great link, I’ve been reading that forum since 7:30 and OMG - there are so many things to consider.

Yesterday I saw demos of the Optoma EZpro 750 DLP and the Panasonic PTAE100 and am totally sold on DLP, though the rainbow effect people talk about was noticable.

8

I’m looking at the NEC LT240 now.

Many comments say ye and it has horizontal keystone correction, 1600 lumens 1024x768 DLP and good throw ratio (100" pic from 12ft) It’s drawback is the 1500 hours of lamp, but its low-power mode can make that 2000, also I can plug in PC, VCR and DVD all at once so only need to switch inputs (essential if the SO is going to use it)…