[starfire]

Well I've been lurking here for several months reading away.

Within my budget I'm really leaning towards the BenQ at £650 as the best bang for buck.

As its going to be very hard to get a demo for this unit I will probably have to buy it blind which is a lot of cash to risk, and my only concern is being affected by the dreaded rainbows.

Can anyone advise, I can easily see the rainbows here , is that at all likely to mean I will suffer similar on the BenQ (with a 3 X colour wheel)? Is that demo effectively a 1 X wheel?

If it comes down to it I could stretch to an Optoma H30 but the extra £400 ish would need to give big benefits to justify the difference, and I will probably only be running the projector say 4hrs a week for mainly DVD / HTPC input.

Thanks for any input,

Starfire.

[AMc]

The demo show how the rainbows appear if you are affected. It's not an indication if you will or won't see them with a DLP projector.
If I were you I would make sure you see a DLP projector in the flesh before you decide to go down that route.
I used a presentation projector from work and while I could see rainbows it wasn't headache inducing etc. so I felt confident to buy a DLP projector blind (see sig).
I do see rainbows if I try hard enough, but unless Im looking for them it doesn't impair my enjoyment at all. The PJ you're looking at looks like great value for money but demo a DLP even if it's not the DLP you want.

[Liam @ Prog AV]

You will get exactly what you pay for with both models. The BenQ is a bold, bright DLP for a great price. The Optoma uses the same DLP chipset but gives a more detailed, smoother picture through better processing, is noticabley queiter and is more accurate with colours. Think of the BenQ as providing the basics, and the Optoma adding the better facilities for Home Cinema use.

Andy - how you getting on with the Bogart?? Lovely machine.

[AMc]

Hi Liam, The Bogart is turning out really well I'm incredibly impressed with the big screen in the front room. My calculations were exactly on the money, with the smallest possible image from zoom and the largest practical screen size the image just fits at 180cm wide! As it turns out the 'super zoom' mode that scales the image digitally could have made a smaller image with only a very small loss of quality.

I've built a frame screen that stands in front of the TV and the PJ is mounted on the opposite wall on a speaker stand. I bought 2 sets of 20m audio leads (75Ohm allegedly) because I couldn't find long enough RGBs leads that I could afford - at one point it would have made more sense to buy a 2nd DVD player to go next to the PJ and a long digital coax lead to run back to the amp!

At the moment I'm using component out from my Tosh and I have a separate S-Video lead from my PS2. I have a Quintro on the way so I can feed all the sources via RGBs from SCART including the Tivo and output to either the TV or the PJ without cable swapping.

Thanks for your help and advice.

AMc

[Liam @ Prog AV]

75ohm audio leads sounds bit iffy, but if you're pleased with the result than all the better! Glad you just got into the 180cm, after all the hassles I would've loved to see the look on your face when you first powered it up to see if it fits!!!!

[AMc]

http://custom1.farnell.com/cpc/produ...5Fid=AV0435066
There were the leads - they're made by http://www.techlink.uk.com/ and I've seen them elsewhere for £60 each! They're well made and very thick - I'm sure I could get better but having blown my budget completely there wasn't another £150 for wiring and this looked like a good option esp. as I needed a minimum of 15m to get around the lounge without ripping up the floorboards.
Long term I'll be getting a proper portable screen as well but for now I'm delighted with the set up!

[starfire]

Originally Posted by AMc

The demo show how the rainbows appear if you are affected. It's not an indication if you will or won't see them with a DLP projector.
If I were you I would make sure you see a DLP projector in the flesh before you decide to go down that route..

OK, thats good to know.

I will try and see a DLP in action but that will probably have to be a demo of a 4805 or H30 with a 4 X wheeel.

Thanks for your response