A guide to get the best deal on a home projector.
If you have been frowning at escalating costs for your weekend visit to a cinema hall, a home theatre projector may be the answer to your problem. These have come a long way in recent years. They look better than ever, have eliminated many glitches, and are affordable. The best part: There’s no need to fret about wires that challenged your technical expertise.
What should you consider?
Buying a home theatre video projector is not something to be taken lightly. They can be an expensive investment and even daunting when a salesperson asks you to decide between liquid crystal display (LCD) and digital light processing (DLP) projectors.
While LCD projectors have improved colour saturation, brightness and display, the DLP version shows less pixelation on the screen, and is compact and portable. If you plan to move your projector often, this should determine if you need a portable DLP or an LCD projector. A new technology called LCOS, or liquid crystal on silicon, has also been unveiled in a few projectors. This provides much higher resolutions. But, it is also much more expensive and the life of the lamp (the most critical component of a projector) can be limited, making it an expensive replacement.
Next, decide the room where you want to install the home-theatre projector system, as this is a complicated machine, requiring a well-ventilated area to function optimally. Experts suggest a room temperature of 25 degrees celsius is ideal.
If you already have audio or video equipment, like a home PC or DVD player, most projectors are capable of taking inputs from these (including games console or even a set-top box). Projectors are also optimised to be used with an existing home cinema set-up: all you need is appropriate wires to connect equipments.
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How to buy?
There are many models to choose from, each with unique benefits and downsides, and each proclaiming itself to be the “right” one. Epson, BenQ, ViewSonic, Sony, Vivitech, Panasonic, Sanyo and Mitsubishi have several projectors for the average household.
With 2,600 lumens of brightness, BenQ W600 has the power to be used in almost any projection environment. It is great for home entertainment such as video games and television. At Rs 37,000 (at leading multi-branded retailers), it is solid value. In fact, resolution and brightness should be the key concerns while buying a projector. For brightness, you will need to determine how many lumens your projector should be. This can range from hundreds to multiple thousands. Determining a good lumen count is challenging and something you should ask a professional, because each case is different. However, brighter is usually better.
If you are new to home cinema or projectors in general, when we talk about 16:9 or 4:3 projectors or projection screen formats, we are talking about the rectangular shape of the image or screen, or what’s more commonly known as its aspect ratio. Simply put, this means the picture is four units wide for every three units of height. The native aspect ratio of home cinema projectors is 16:9.
Epson MovieMate 60, which has an integrated DVD player, can accommodate USB memory sticks, iPods, music CDs, game consoles and computers. It sports a 16:9 format, well suited for most video sources. Most small speakers built into projectors sound tinny or buzzy at moderate to high volume settings. The 10-watt speakers in the MovieMate 60 are surprisingly solid, and for most situations, provide more than enough sound to eliminate the need for external amplification.
What would you pay?
Home projectors start at about Rs 20,000 (basic ones) and can go up to Rs 1.5 lakh. Sanyo’s PLV-Z700 is a great pick for home users if you have Rs 75,000 to spare. Picture quality and colour accuracy is undeniably good. Image detail is excellent, with very good reproduction of scenes, with subtly shaded light-to-dark areas. Advanced lens shifting in Z700 allows you to move the image throw of the lens up, down or right/left for maximum flexibility when positioning this projector in your room. Estimated projector lamp life, claims Sanyo, is about 3,000 hours.
The life of projector lamps is between 1,000 and 4,000 hours. They will dim with time and eventually burn out. It means you can watch an average of 500 movies before you need to replace it. The projector lamps typically cost between Rs 7,000 and Rs 45,000. Therefore, it is recommended to know how much the lamp costs (for the brand of projector) before making the purchase.
Home theatre projectors should be sold with the bulb. If a vendor tells you the bulb is sold separately, then head out and look for other stores.
