Page 1 of please advise - projectors ?

I have a budget of £1500 for my home cinema.Do I go for windscreen or projector ? WiIl get enough quality on a projector system for the money & if so which make/model ? :/

Well, for that sort of money you`ll get yourself a cracker of a projector. I`ve been using a Panasonic AE100 for over a year now, and it`s great. It has been superceded by the AE200 and 300 - I noticed that the AE200 is available for under £900. Either make yourself a screen for about £40, or spend £300 on a bought one, plus get a nice DVD player than can do prog scan for PAL (I believe some can be hacked, but even without that, you`ll still get great images), and you`re away.

Have you got any sort of surround system already? Remember that a projector doesn`t have speakers (well, any worth listening to), so you`ll need that sorted as well. Also remember that slobbing in front of a PJ to watch Eastenders is not too much fun (Phil Mitchell 4` high - not a pretty sight) - a TV is really necessary as well. Also, you need some sort of light control for projector use, otherwise the colours are very washed out.

Regulars will yawn at this, but take a look at some images of my setup for a bit of inspiration.

The ThemeScene H30 looks interesting at £1400.

All the best,

The 42%er.

This item was edited on Tuesday, 25th November 2003, 17:35

Not sure how happy the mods will be at pushing other forums but for more information on projectors then you will know what to do with try these: avforums.com which is a UK forum and www.avsforums.com which is the American version.

Both are very friendly and the next generation of projectors are just beginning to show up. The above mentioed Panasonic and the very exciting sounding Sanyo-Z2. A DVI dvd player is apparently much better then a progressive scan dvd player but best of all is a pc. But these are the places to begin mate.

DVI DVD player? Wooo - shows I`ve been out of touch. I`m running a PC to supply my PJ, but it`s certainly not quite as user friendly as a DVD player, however much tweaking is done.

Agreed but then anyone that is going to buy a projector to show a movie is more than likely the type of person that is prepared to go just that little bit further (say a few hundred miles) to get the best picture that they can :D

HDMI is the way forward for connecting DVD to plasma and projector. It`s a sort of DVI for the home market.

All the best,

The 42%er.

Quote:
Agreed but then anyone that is going to buy a projector to show a movie is more than likely the type of person that is prepared to go just that little bit further (say a few hundred miles) to get the best picture that they can

Well, that was my aim, certainly - and these new fangled DVD players with fancy-pants connections weren`t around, either. I also went for a PC because I use it to do the audio decoding, and feed the signals to various power amps.

BUT - I do have a family, and it`s been a struggle teaching them how to fire everything up - partially my fault becuase of the audio setup. I guess I`m a bit down on the PC route as mine has recently given me a lot of gip with getting a pixel perfect resolution back in place (grr - WinXP). All is now well, though. :) And you do get lots of options for TV cards etc....