I thought that I would quickly post before tonight's podcast!
I realise that people have different views on this topic, which is fine. I'll begin by saying that (I don't go out much!) the best 1080p experience that I've had was about seven years ago, at the home of a doctor who's too busy nowadays to be on here much. His username was big boss. I visited his house and although he had a Panasonic 50VT50 (I think!) television, I remember being most impressed by his projecter system. I can't remember exactly what projector he had, but his projector screen was, I think, a silver React Draper 2.1. And, as I say, that remains the best 1080p picture that I have ever seen. I don't have much experience of 4K screens, whether projector or television, so I'm not in a position to say how my Sony 75ZD9 television (which I remain hugely pleased with) compares with a 4K projector. I should also say that I've seen a lot of quite indifferent, or badly adjusted,
I think that the biggest factor in determining whether to go for a big television or a projector screen is whether or not one has a dedicated cinema room, with blacked-out windows. It's not so much about the
size of the room, only whether it is dedicated to home cinema or not. For instance, my parlour measures about 18 feet by 14 feet, which I believe is about the same size as Mr Withers's home cinema. But his setup is dedicated to home cinema, but my parlour is not, it has to function to some extent as a normal room and so although I can draw the curtains, I simply can't install blackout windows.. I live in a two-bedroom tenement flat, so it's just not possible to create a dedicated room!
I'm quite prepared to accept what
@Phil Hinton said during the podcast, reinforced by
@LiquidAssFrance in several posts, notably #32, that the best picture is given by a good projector onto a good projector screen, in a blacked-out room. And a further advantage of a projector is that it enables installing three identical speakers at the optimum height for the front left, centre and right channels, with at least the centre speaker behind an acoustically-transparent screen. And at any given size, a good projector / screen combination is cheaper than the same-size televison, if one indeed exists at the very big sizes. With a television, the centre channel must perforce be below or above the televison, though I personally get around the problem by using two centre channel speakers, one just below and the other just above the screen, and connected in series, not in parallel. They create the illusion of the sound emerging from the middle of the television screen!
But televisions offer much better HDR, and are also better for everyday viewing. So on balance, I'm with
@Pecker in post #23 and with
@rigman in post #34. And, for me, heaven is a top-range 85" LCD television. But for anyone choosing a projector, that's all good!
) but, like much of the blaxploitation era, had the stellar musical backing of some fantastic scores by great artists.
