BrightEyesDavid
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- Dec 29, 2011
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Hi all,
I and my girlfriend are looking to treat ourselves to the start of a new home cinema setup on a budget by getting a projector and electric or pull-down screen. I'd appreciate any pointers and recommendations of models of both you could give.
After doing some reading and looking up of prices, I'm looking to keep the cost of projector and screen to about £2k.
Main intended uses
Our priorities
Regarding LCD/DLP, I'm generally sensitive to timing-related visual artefacts (but haven't demo'ed any projectors yet so not sure if I see rainbows), but I'd appreciate a nice, natural, solid image without undue chicken wire, too.
Environment
Although I'm a Brit, my girlfriend is German and we're living in Germany, so our living room windows/doors, which let in a lot of light as they are full-height and take up about five metres in length (most of the wall), have those external shutters that are common over here. This means we can easily make the room very dark at any time.
The wallpaper is light-coloured woodchip.
The distance from projector lens to screen ("throw"?) will be about 4m.
I believe the ideal size for the projection would be around 4m in width (this is most of the length of the wall opposite the projector that is available). I believe not all projectors are able to achieve this with a 4m throw distance; if the projection is a bit less that's fine, too.
Two specific questions I have are:
I and my girlfriend are looking to treat ourselves to the start of a new home cinema setup on a budget by getting a projector and electric or pull-down screen. I'd appreciate any pointers and recommendations of models of both you could give.
After doing some reading and looking up of prices, I'm looking to keep the cost of projector and screen to about £2k.
Main intended uses
- Films
- TV programmes
- Games
Our priorities
- Full HD/1080p, good definition if possible given budget
- Image quality in general, including nice, dark blacks given budget
- Image size (big as is practial given budget and room dimensions)
Regarding LCD/DLP, I'm generally sensitive to timing-related visual artefacts (but haven't demo'ed any projectors yet so not sure if I see rainbows), but I'd appreciate a nice, natural, solid image without undue chicken wire, too.
Environment
Although I'm a Brit, my girlfriend is German and we're living in Germany, so our living room windows/doors, which let in a lot of light as they are full-height and take up about five metres in length (most of the wall), have those external shutters that are common over here. This means we can easily make the room very dark at any time.
The wallpaper is light-coloured woodchip.
The distance from projector lens to screen ("throw"?) will be about 4m.
I believe the ideal size for the projection would be around 4m in width (this is most of the length of the wall opposite the projector that is available). I believe not all projectors are able to achieve this with a 4m throw distance; if the projection is a bit less that's fine, too.
Two specific questions I have are:
- I've seen lots of references to calibration. What's required to do this? I'm not a colour profiling expert, but I used to work in a pre-press studio so have done some colour adjustment, etc.
- I watched an AV Forums video about a reference home cinema setup that mentioned industry standards and how they can benefit home cinema enthusiasts. Where should I go to learn about these, and are they of use to people like us who are looking at the budget end?