Been searching around for a projector at or below $700 to enjoy my Steam collection of games on and to stream movies/series. I was wondering if anyone has any advice or experience with projectors and can help me hone in on one, preferably on Amazon (Prime). Most of my short research has revealed that ultimately, with a sufficient amount of lumens (~2000), contrast is king of image quality. However, I typically game with resolution of 1920x1080, and I am hoping to be able to find something that will be able to deliver that amount of quality within my budget. If you require any additional information, let me know and I'll get back to the thread as soon as I'm able. Thanks.
I have this one: http://www.amazon.com/Acer-H6510BD-Theater-Projector-White/dp/B00B97ZKIA If I was buying now for under $750 I would go with the Optoma HD141X: http://www.amazon.com/Optoma-HD141X-Theater-Projector-Enabled/dp/B00MK39P92/ref=dp_ob_title_ce It works well, contrast is good, brightness is very good for its price, lamp life is really good too. I have used it with an 80" screen (how it is set up now) all the way to a 170" screen size. It is brighter and better contrast than my old projector, and my old one I used as large as a 222" screen, so this one should do that large too. Basically no limitations there. However, it is the first projector I have owned that has a built in vertical offset of the image. The mirrors inside project the image quite high up. The projector is meant to be on a table or something and project onto a wall. This cannot be changed, so if you have it on a stand sitting about 6ft high then you must build a mount that puts the projector at a sharp downward angle to get the image where you want. My other complaint is about motion sickness. For some reason, many games I play I feel nauseous after an hour or so of playing. I never felt this way on my old projector that was LCD based, and this one is DLP based. That may have something to do with it, or maybe it has high input lag, or maybe the games have framerate issues that when combined with other aspects of the projector are making me feel this way. None of my friends get that way though so not everyone would be affected like that.
I was looking at the downgrade of the Acer you linked which was $430. Talked to the wife and she agreed that it'd be better in the long run to get the second one you linked. It's not in-stock until the 24th so i'll leave it as my #1 until then. Thanks for the suggestion Eni. If anyone else has any other suggestions feel free to post. I'll also take those into consideration as well.
I originally had an actual projector screen I used (16 feet wide x 9 feet tall (aka, 222")). It helps because the white projector screen material usually has a 1.2 brightness gain to it, so it allows you to get additional lumens on the image for daytime viewing. At that time my projector only had 1200 lumens so I needed everything I could get, especially with the projector situated so far back. I then used that same projector in a smaller setup when I moved on a projector screen too. I went to an 80" screen on the second setup because of placement constraints. the closer setup and screen produced a very bright and sharp image, about 3x brighter than the original setup that had the projector set so far away for a large image size. With it closer and on an 80" screen I was able to watch with lights on in the room and in the middle of the afternoon with no problem. I then moved again and didnt bother building a new giant screen, and projected straight onto the wall. It works plenty fine, though of course isnt quite perfectly uniform and not as bright, but still good enough. I then upgraded to that Acer projector and still project onto a plain wall and it works great. The setup is very bright now and even without the use of a proper screen I can watch with lights on and at any time of day, though of course it looks best with the lights off and at night because everything is so dark. But I just wanted to let you know that with either of those projectors I linked, you will have no problem with daytime viewing, though the Optoma will of course work even better for this because of it's 3000 lumen rating. If you do go with a screen you can pick up the material for cheap on Ebay and then build a frame out of wood yourself. That is what I did originally because 16' x 9' projector screens cost thousands of Dollars and I made my own for $160. If you want better contrast ratio then you can use a grey projector screen. The grey screens boost contrast ratio usually by about 10%, but will lower brightness by about 10% as well. With 3000 lumens you can probably go this route and be plenty fine. Or go with a white screen for even more brightness. I need to update my sig. I just moved a couple weeks ago and am now back at a 100" screen size. That is about the size you get when the projector is only 10' away. You can have some wiggle room on image size by adjusting the lenses, usually a 20% adjustment range in size.
Great information. I really appreciate the advice. I'm sure others will also benefit from the information at some point especially with the grey projector screens. Thanks again.
You might want to have a read of these articles as well: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-500-projector/ http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-1000-projector/
I was actually going to recommend the W1070 projector because I knew it was good and it was one I wanted. But after looking at the market again that Optoma seems a bit better overall. It probably wasnt in those reviews because it is newer. It actually is pretty much replacing that Optoma HD25 they are also recommending as a very close runner up.