Projector for museum on a budget.

[cicada78]

My friend is the manager of a Helicopter Museum. They have a viewing room where they will be playing a loop of 8 hours worth of helicopterdocumentaries on a dvd. The room will be completely dark and the punters can come in and out as they like throughout the day. The screen is going to be pretty big and the projector is to be ceiling mounted 20ft away. It will be fed with a dvd payer - I will recommend a cheap and cheerful player with hdmi output.
They will not need HD. The disc will most likey be in 4:3.

I am thinking a Pana PTX200 will do the job as it is bright and handles SD well.

Or the Optoma HD65 looks very good value!

However, the budget must include the bracket, HDMI lead and player. So I imagine they will have to extend it slightly.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

Cheers!

 

[T0M]

Not really able to reccomend a PJ but...

Factor in the cost of replacement lamps for any projector you consider, your usage will be quite high and you will need to buy at least one lamp per year, maybe two.

Some lamps can cost over £300 with most falling between £100 and £300.

 

[x liddy x]

I am looking into get an Optoma HD65 my self. The replacement lamps for this projector are about £125. I think you get about 3000 hours if on economy mode which i think decreases the birghtness. Lets assume they run the projector for 8 hours a day you would expect to get roughly 1 year out of the lamp (3000/8 = 375). So the maintenance cost would be about £125 a year which may drop slightly in coming years. As for HDMI leads look on Ebay and Amazon, all HDMI cables are the same as they work on a digital signal. A £3 HDMI cable will perform aswell as a £50 HDMI cable.

Also, what is the budget?
Hope this helps a bit.

 

[cicada78]

Thanks for your imput guys.

Budget is £850 ish.

 

[x liddy x]

Thanks for your imput guys.

Budget is £850 ish.

http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/sto...null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=187050&category_oid=
Optoma HD65 projector. Use the codes 5PROJECTOR and AW10. This will bring the price down to £435.


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HDMI-to-HDMI-...ryZ32837QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Hdmi cable from ebay. £8 inc delivery

http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/sto...d&tm=undefined&sku=483844&category_oid=-28609
Locik DVD player with HDMI Upscaling. £35 inc delivery.

Grand Total of £478

You will have enough left over for a cracking sound system or a better disk player, maybe a Blu-ray player

Shop around a bit to find the best prices suited to you.
Also, do you have a screen?

Regards Conor.

 

[stainless-steel]

Hi cicada78,

I'm not sure an LCD based projector like the panasonic is your best bet if it is going to be on for 8 hours a day. I believe that their panels and polarising filters are quite suceptable to heat damage from extended use. We use a lot of LCD projectors at work, they're on for most of the working day, very few of them seem to last more than a year or two before the panels start to go.

DLP projectors are often touted as being better suited to continuos use - although I don't have any personal experience of using them long term.

 

[jacko5]

My friend is the manager of a Helicopter Museum. They have a viewing room where they will be playing a loop of 8 hours worth of helicopterdocumentaries on a dvd. The room will be completely dark and the punters can come in and out as they like throughout the day. The screen is going to be pretty big and the projector is to be ceiling mounted 20ft away. It will be fed with a dvd payer - I will recommend a cheap and cheerful player with hdmi output.
They will not need HD. The disc will most likey be in 4:3.

I am thinking a Pana PTX200 will do the job as it is bright and handles SD well.

Or the Optoma HD65 looks very good value!

However, the budget must include the bracket, HDMI lead and player. So I imagine they will have to extend it slightly.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

Cheers!

For that sort of application DLP is definitely the way to go, but I am not sure whether the HD65 is robust enough to to be used for 8hour sessions on a regular basis. It is after all a budget home theatre projector.

 

[cicada78]

Ive been looking at Ebuyer. There are alot of high lumens budget 4:3 DLPs from Infocus and Optoma. They should do the job using an RGB input.

 

[AV Nik]

My friend is the manager of a Helicopter Museum. They have a viewing room where they will be playing a loop of 8 hours worth of helicopterdocumentaries on a dvd. The room will be completely dark and the punters can come in and out as they like throughout the day. The screen is going to be pretty big and the projector is to be ceiling mounted 20ft away. It will be fed with a dvd payer - I will recommend a cheap and cheerful player with hdmi output.
They will not need HD. The disc will most likey be in 4:3.

I am thinking a Pana PTX200 will do the job as it is bright and handles SD well.

Or the Optoma HD65 looks very good value!

However, the budget must include the bracket, HDMI lead and player. So I imagine they will have to extend it slightly.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

Cheers!

Home Cinema projectors are not what I would use as they are made for domestic use. I've installed many projectors to museums etc and can honestly say that the domestic pj's all fail prematurely in commercial environments.

Something like the Optoma EP780 would be perfect. Panasonic have their 'Daylight' View' technology which really does work in daylight and I would recommend something like the Panasonic PT-LB60NTEA which can be networked and controlled from elsewhere.
Somthing cheaper? Maybe look at the Optoma EP7155 @ 2500 Lumens or maybe the Panasonic PT-LB51EA.
Hope this helps.

 

[cicada78]

It will be completely dark in the viewing room. Thanks for the advise. i will check both of those out!