OT: Home Projectors

[buddybikes]

Our daughter's house is ideal for home projector as they have loft area above living room (and this is what they asked for Christmas). Occasional use product, for special occasions, doubt theyd watch every night. Don't want to spend a major bundle, something that works great, long bulb life, and hopefully 4k.

Suggestions? Do I stick to major brand or is the lower priced Chinese stuff ok

thx

[Tickdoc]

Bought a little Samsung for our back patio so we can watch football and movies in the porch. Super easy to setup and link to your phone and the picture is self adjusting to any flat surface.

These were about $800.00, and I got this one on sale from best buy for about $550.00

May not be what you are looking for but It has a really nice picture (and this is just in a stucco wall). Would be even better on a screen and serves out outdoor entertainment purposes just fine.

You can surely spend more and get a 4K, but I would highly recommend the Samsung brand for its self adjusting and ease of linking.

You can see it in the upper right, it is tiny, smaller than a coffee can.






https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung...B&gclsrc=aw.ds

[awdwon]

The lower end stuff on Amazon is just Ok. I bought a cheap 1080 projector on Amazon for $300 a few years ago and it did the trick for as often as I used it but I recently bought a used Epson 5030 from Canuckaudiomart for about $600 and the difference is night and day. I wanted to upgrade my home theatre room and it was definitely a big improvement. Most of the projectors keep a running tally of bulb hours and if you can get a used one that’s a few years old with relatively low bulb hours I’d say go for that.

[yinzerniner]

Originally Posted by steveandbarb1

Our daughter's house is ideal for home projector as they have loft area above living room (and this is what they asked for Christmas). Occasional use product, for special occasions, doubt theyd watch every night. Don't want to spend a major bundle, something that works great, long bulb life, and hopefully 4k.

Suggestions? Do I stick to major brand or is the lower priced Chinese stuff ok

thx

Thing is for "special occasions" i'd recommend the brightest projector with highest contrast possible for the least amount of money bulb life be damned. If their only using it sparingly and with groups of people the active time will be low but the ambient light level will be high.

Also do you really need 4K? There's still very little material in 4K that can take advantage of the extra resolution, and depending on viewing distance and screen size it might be impossible to tell the difference. If you're viewing at 10' or less at a image size of 100" or more then 4K makes sense, but if you're at a larger distance or smaller image it doesn't.

If you're OK with 1080p and shorter (ie around 10,000 hours lamp life) you'll probably save $300-400, but if you want longer lamp life and 4K something like this below should work:
https://www.amazon.com/ViewSonic-Pro...86&sr=1-2&th=1

Also invest in either a proper screen or DIY/Paint your own high-contrast area for the image to project onto. The difference is very noticeable vs just projecting on a blank wall.

[Ken Robb]

What do bulbs cost?

[Wunder]

Originally Posted by Ken Robb

What do bulbs cost?

The replacement bulb for my Pansonic PT-AE8000 cost $400. Projector itself was $2500 in 2013 and I still use it regularly. First bulb lasted ~6 years. I would agree with the comment above about wanting maximum brightness. I haven't looked too closely recently but true 4k projectors were actually pretty rare, most of the ones a couple years back were 1080p native and used pixel shifting similar to old school analog interlacing to double the resolution.

For a cheap projector that is only used sparingly you'll likely never replace the bulb (just replace the whole thing with something newer when it goes).

For the record I'd also say that even on a 140" screen (2.40:1 format) and a view distance of 10-12' I don't find 1080p to be an issue and think my projector has much better picture than my 65" 4k TV.