[frosty1979]

Hi, I have just been given permission, from the Wife, to have the loft converted into a games/cinema room. Now very tempted to go down the route of a projector but know very little about them. It will mainly be used for PS3/Xbox but I will watch the odd film and the footy on there as well. I am looking to spend about £800-£1000 (or as little as possible) on the projector and want to know if this is enough to get a good one, or should I stick with an LCD TV? Also how much difference does a projector screen make to using a white wall?

Any recommendations on a suitable projector and a place to buy from would be a great help.

[imjay]

Should you stick with a tv? Depends on if you want a true Cinema experience or just television - No television on the market today can provide a Cinema in the Home visual experience! (no matter what sales weasels or vendors try to tell you!!)

Minimum for a PJ should be HD quality which, in our experience in our home, is a native 720p resolution with 16:9 aspect ratio and digital input (HDMI).

At your budget you should be able to find several fine lcd or dlp PJ HD 720p models to choose from.

Room characteristics required for a projector are different than for a television to achieve best visual results.

Some light is acceptable while viewing but ONLY VERY LITTLE LIGHT - ALL light affects image quality - more light equals more image degradation - sunlight on a screen equals a nuclear degradation - Commercial Cinemas with their projection systems are dark for a very good reason.

You can minimize the effect of room light with room characteristics that support projection by not reflecting and re-reflecting light. White walls and ceiling are not as good as darker toned walls and ceiling and it's VERY important that they be non-reflective - flat or matte paint instead of glossy.

We first bought a white screen and then found a gray was better - a white screen can be worst culprit of light reflection back into the room and our gray reflects almost no light PLUS it makes those horizontal top and bottom "black bars" that ALL projector images have due to scaling of widescreen movies almost invisible.

Finally, regurlar dvd movies have just 480 lines of resolution and while that works great on a tv when you try to stretch just 480 lines to a 120 inch diagonal image it can look awful. A dvd player with Up Scaling and digital HDMI output made all of our hundreds of movies look great and to our personal eyeballs very near HD or Commercial Cinema quality saving us tons of cash by not feeling compelled to upgrade to BluRay.

Could be a good idea to keep the tv for those times when you want the lights on for casual tv type viewing.

There is no visual experience available for a home today like projection - go out and get one asap!!!!!
goodluck