Projector help

[csimons12]

Hey guys, I'm looking at possibly buying a projector and getting a little confused.

Best start off by letting you know I don't have much money, so all those spec obsessed people I'm sorry!

I'm trying to find the cheapest projector that will be good enough to play DVD's without being noticably bad and set up a cheap home cinema in my spare room.

As I only plan on playing DVD's am I right in thinking a resolution of 800x600 is fine? No need to go any higher?

Also I guess I'm looking for a decent number of Lumens and contrast, so...

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/sto...6&category_oid=

it's very cheap but has 2200 lumens and 2001:1 contrast which all look quite promising?

What else is likley to affect how it looks?

Any other suggestions?

[Bacus]

Have a look in the second hand section of the AV forum, there are a few projectors in there for sale and you can get a very good make for little money. Regards Bacus

[UKBOY]

Quick reply :-

Bear in mind that 800 x 600 resolution is a 4:3 aspect ratio rather than 16:9 so assuming that you want to display dvds in as near to their correct shape, you wont be doing this by using a projector that displays an image much more akin to your old pre-widescreen tv shape.

You may want to have a look at a few websites to help you out with a projector that will output 16:9 resolution as most films released on dvd these days would be widescreen rather than the old 4:3 "pan and scan" shape that we used to suffer with most old vhs tapes.

[simuk84]

I would suggest looking at projectors that have a natural resolution of 480p (848x480). I know that sounds quite low but its natural widescreen (16:9) and standard definition, so its perfect for DVDs. I recently picked up an Infocus Screenplay 4805 second hand for £180. I can tell you that I'm extremely impressed with it - even though it only outputs at 480p, HD material looks brilliant on it.