Suitable projector for college theatre

[booth1976]

Hi everyone. I work for a college in which we have quite a nice large theatre. Every year we host a week long film festival where we have guest speakers and show films. At the moment it's a standard def projector ceiling mounted, fed by a DVD player/laptop, etc.

I really need to find a suitable HD projector that will be great for film watching and will be fed by a Blu Ray player along with the older sources we have. It will also as a secondary use, be showing powerpoint presentations at staff meetings.

The projector will be again ceiling mounted and approx 30 feet away from the screen. The screen is the theatre curtain.

Any help with this would be much appreciated.

 

[hornydragon]

I would sugget you contact some pro AV hire companies locally that do hiring of Kit, You may need to hire a decent fast fold screen PJ and Sound system unless you have a multichannel decoder and mixing desk already.

(unless of course you have a 40k budget!)

 

[booth1976]

We already have a full mixing desk and sound system it's just the projection that needs upgrading

 

[hornydragon]

What sor tof budget do you have? £12k+ outlay for 1 week a year seems alot! Hire rates are going to be alot less and PJ left unused will gather dust and cost money to maintain

 

[booth1976]

Many thanks for all the responses. Unfortunately we don't have 12k budget for this. With the way things are, budgets being tightened, I've been given around 2k to spend, yes I know it's not much but I'm sure there's something out there.

I'm now looking at the Optoma EP1080. It seems it's the best compromise that I can find, bright - people are saying it's decent for watching movies and sharp enough for things like powerpoint presentations. Contrast ratio is a little lacking but perhaps that's our compromise. Apparently it's got a 3x movie mode that spins the colour wheel faster to reduce the 'rainbow effect'. I've got a DLP projector myself (Optoma H30) so I'm aware of the rainbow effect, just wondering how this effect is in comparison to mine as mine's completely acceptable.

The theatre projector isn't just used for the film festival, there are many presentations in there too, and it's available to hire for outside companies. Some of the theatre that is performed has video imagery playing at the same time, etc.

 

[hornydragon]

Thats why i suggested hiring a V.good unit for film festival and keeping current unit for just the Data normal projection. Buying anyhting for under £2k for such a large venue and use for data is going to be a massive compromise (its not going to do either very well) I would also probably not spec single DLP for public Film displays.

 

[booth1976]

The problem with hiring is that we also have film events running all the way through they year. There's no way we could swing it so that we could hire every time. I suppose for these events we could just use what we already have.

It seems there the vast difference between business and HC projectors and then to step beyond this to have a larger sized projector, the jump is over £10 grand more

I've had some correspondence with a dealer who has said that you don't want to go more than 20ft back with the AE3000, and that would give an image size of approx 120inches (diagonal). There's an option that we could set the projector further forward, but that image size seems a little small.

 

[Joe Fernand]

Hello booth1976

What is the current projector and how happy with its performance have folk been?

What is your ideal image size and projection throw distance?

Finding something that excels at Movies and is also good with Data is nigh on impossible.

Joe

 

[hornydragon]

I've had some correspondence with a dealer who has said that you don't want to go more than 20ft back with the AE3000, and that would give an image size of approx 120inches (diagonal). There's an option that we could set the projector further forward, but that image size seems a little small.

the closer the PJ is to the screen the brighter the image will be ideally you want a big image from short throw high brightness PJ. I would suggest keepeing the current PJ for Data and minimising the data use of the Video unit.

If ideal throw is 30' 10m then thats too long for most HC units even SIM which are long throw. Does the hteatre have a stage? I would consider rear pro set up with a screen at the front of the stage and PJ behind.