Home Theater Projection

Any Purchaser's Help Guide To Home Theatre Projectors

The popularity rating of projectors has seen tremendous increase in the recent past owing to their varied uses and enormous advancement in technology. While home theater projectors are used by television viewers and movie buffs, multimedia projectors are utilized to interact with audience in a better way during office meetings and presentations.

Diverse uses

Whether you are looking to put up a projector in your living room for an enjoyable home theatre experience or take it with you to a conference, a projector can serve plenty of purposes.

Watch movies and television programs: A home theatre projector can be conveniently connected to a DVD player or set top box to watch movies or your favorite television programs on a gigantic screen. It will really make the pictures come alive and leave you craving for more.

At meetings and conferences: A multimedia projector is just what you need to better interact with your audience in a meeting. The actual media projector can be connected to the laptop computer and accustomed to display pictures, lectures or even PowerPoint presentations on the large screen for a large number of e.

Multimedia projectors are smaller in size compared to a home theatre projector, which makes it easy to transfer these from one place to the other.

Projection Technologies

Most of the commonly available projectors are based on either the LCD (liquid crystal display) or DLP (digital light processing) technologies.

LCD projectors: Liquid crystal technologies based or even Liquid crystal display projectors have small LCD sections, that create vibrant and sharp pictures. LCD projectors are ideal for giving presentations in low light conditions.

DLP projectors: The DLP projectors weight a lot less than the LCD projectors as they use a single chip. The smooth video and high contrast ratio offered by DLP projectors make these perfect for use in a home theatre projector system.

Other home theatre specifications

Projector resolution: The number of pixels produced by a projector is known as its resolution. The resolution is expressed in two numbers i.e. 800X600 or 1024X768, where the first number is the horizontal pixel count while the second number connotes vertical pixels. A higher pixel count means sharper picture.

Projector lumens: The brightness, which is measured in American National Standards Institute or ANSI lumens, indicates how bright the projected images will be in a room filled with light. The more the lumen count, the brighter will be the images and the better you would be able to see it in a well lit room.

Projector contrast ratio: The projector contrast ratio indicates the difference between the darkest and brightest areas of the picture. A projector with a higher contrast ration will produce better shadow detail.

Projector weight: The projector weight, which generally ranges between 7 and 20 pounds, assumes all the more significance if the projector is being used outside home. Go for a lighter device if you intend to move your projector in one place to an additional often.

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Should I make my own front projector screen, buy a cheap one or paint one on the wall?

I am in need of a fixed projector screen for my deticated home theatre. I am building my theatre and i am trying to keep it as low cost as I can while still making it nice and functional. I am in need of a projector screen and I really do not want to spend 2,000 or even 500 dollars for a screen. I have read that you can make your own using photo paper and a black frame for about a $100. I also know that I can paint one on the wall using goo kits for a couple of hunderd dollars as well. My other thought was to buy an inexpensive pull down screen and cut it from the mechanism and fram it.

What is the best option here and what is going to give me the best bang for the buck? Any other suggestions for making a good home theatre projection screen for a low price?

The first answer is a good approach. I also recommend the AVS DIY Screen forum. However, I chose to paint my own screen The two approaches (blackout cloth and paint) have different advantages and disadvantages ... which I'll address at the end of this response.

I wanted as large as possible a a 4:3 screen (that is the native format of my projector) so I can show 4:3 images height while also showing 16:9 (or other widescreen images) full width (vs 4:3 as a subset of 16:9, and therefore much smaller).

I have a dedicated home theatre so I was able to use an existing wall for the screen.

In brief, I figured out the maximum width of screen I wanted based on my seating distance (You want the screen to cover a 36-40 degree angle left to right). In my case this was 96" wide. So for a 4:3 screen I needed a 72" height (more than possible with 54" blackout cloth). I made sure the drywall was smooth and then painted a 98" x 74" rectangle with three coats of a 3:1 mix of Behr Siverscreen and White Opal Pearlescent paint (wet sanding between coats).

I then fine tuned the projector to centre the image on the slightly oversize painted "screen" and masked the surface to a 96" by 72" size by painting the surrounding wall a medium blue-grey (the colour of the room).

I did not bother with black masking because:
- I project a wide range of image sizes and aspect ratios, so no single masking size works, and I was not interested/willing to build a motorized masking system
- I have not found a black border to be necessary.

So ... I made a fixed screen in several hours over a couple of days for about $50 in paint.

How does it perform? I'm very satisfied. Movies and HDTV look great. I even taped samples of commercial screen material on the surface and compared, and frankly could see no difference. As far as I'm concerned I have a screen equivalent to at least a $500 commercial screen, for 1/10 the price.

Ok, to the advantages and disadvantages of the blackout cloth and paint approaches:
- blackout cloth is limited in width and you can't vary the screen colour.
- paint can be any size and adjusted for specific conditions (e.g. I wanted a light grey screen rather than white).
- The paint approach doesn't require carpentry skills, but does require some familiarity with drywall and painting skills.
- The blackout cloth approach yields a portable, or at least movable, screen, while paint is fixed in place.
- Arguably paint is cheaper.

See the links below for some pictures / screen shots and the AVS DIY Screen forum.

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