Hey all... new to the site.

Looking for a piece of advice. I am trying to set up a rear-projection window display for my business. We will be projecting onto some form of theatrical scrim with an area of no bigger than 1.25 square meters. My biggest concerns i brightness. What should I be looking for in terms of lumens? This is only going to run through the summer, and usually only for a couple hours a night, so lamp life is not a big concern. Any advice you guys can offer is immensely appreciated.

[gazbarber]

As bright as you can really, your looking at installation projectors over home cinema ones, but if you see a store with projector on a window like you want have a look at the model their using. Although the size is small maximising any brightness, if its a front the shop window the 'ambient light' i.e. the sun will cut most home cinemas projectors efforts to look quite pathetic.

Unfortunately, because of our budget restraints, an installation projector is not an option. Considering that this ad will mostly be running when we are closed - nights, really - are there any business/home theater projectors that would do the job? Another consideration I forgot - this same projector is going to be used for meetings and the like, so decent portability is necessary...

A lot of restrictions... tell me about it... is there anything out there that will make this halfway decent-looking?

[gazbarber]

If its at night then that pretty much changes everything. Although you have to deal with street light and other signage something like a pansonic ax200 which has 2000 Lumens will do, those are <£800 or look at some of the cheaper business projectors, if your showing mainly graphics and not video these would do fine. The optoma hd65 has 1600 Lumens and can be had for super cheap, but as its DLP you risk giving potential customers RBE. Then again most pubs i've noticed recently use mitsubishi DLP's and they aren't really throwing many rainbows, certainly packed with customers on a match day. Big bright image too although i think these are 4000+ Lumens models, but as you only need a small screen illuminated this shouldn't be anywhere near necessery.

Places like ebuyer have quite a few business projector models with greater than 2000 Lumens , and although not great fedelity wise for video they should do fine for a there target job of displaying graphics and charts ect... just things like skin colours wouldn't really look right and video may have artifacts from poor electronics for de-interlacing and scaling. These are normaly loud, but if its only on when the shops closed its harly a problem. The advantage is that they are very cheap usualy.