I am looking into purchasing my first projector. I am mainly going to us it for Movies and some X-BOX. I do not even have cable so that will not even be a issue. I am looking at spending a around $1500. I am looking so far mainly at BenQ PE5120. I am not very educated in this field and was looking for some extra advice. As of now I leaning towards cieling mounting in that makes any difference and projecting on to a a drop down screen. Any advice would be helpful? Should I consider a different unit? Sugar_ATM
Sup, Heres the deal if you wanna buy a projector, first of all, projectors are really cool pieces of hardware considering the capabilities other shit they can perform. Now depending on how often you will use it, will determine how long the bulb will last, and yes the bulb is consumable meaning you have to purchase another one for arounf 150-500 (depending on the model). You also have to look at how many lumens the projector is ( {0-1200}lower is better for a more cinematic experience, {1250 and higher}and higher is better for a heavily lit rooms or presentations or larger rooms) and what type of projector it is. For example, many of the projectors are mainly for business presentations, in general, which will only have monitor-out inputs and possibly one s-video input and one video in-put( yellow wire), whereas, the "multimedia or home theatre" projectors have every possible input/output selections. Also many projectors come with speakers, either mono or stereo or none. To watch movies and play xbox i would recommend a multimedia or home theatre projector with a speaker or two built in ( if you dont have home theatre) with atleast 1300-1200 lumens or lower.
Suger_ATM, What ATIROCKS said is true, and let me add some of my 2 cents to it. For the amount that you want to spend and what you want to do with it, BenQ is a very respectable projection company. Toshiba and Dell also make some good projectors in that price range. In addition to Lumens you also need to know about the Contrast ratio. Larger the contrast ratio the greater the ability of a projector to show subtle color details and tolerate extraneous room light. The BenQ model you are looking into is a very good starter projector since it is HDTV compatible, 2000:1 contrast ratio, 2000 hour lamp life, 16:9 aspect ratio, 1100 ANSI Lumens and best of all, it is DLP technology. The only problem I have with BenQs are usually the low native resolutions (854 X 480) and the cost of the lamp replacements ($400+). Also look into the Infocus Screenplay 4805, which is about the same price range and gives you a Six segment wheel rotation at 4X speed as apposed to five segment at 2x. Which just means a how fast the frames resolve and quality. Both are nice projectors with one having a slight advantage over another. The BenQ has been rated to be better for gaming, and the Infocus rated a bit better for Movies, but not much. I hope this information helps you and doesnt confuse you more, lol. Lone
