Jamz3k

at the mo i'm putting together a home cinema system, got the sound sorted out but now i need something with a good picture. now my main question is, will a projector be of any use in a 8ft long room (its a wee boxroom), or should i save a little bit more and buy a plasma or lcd screen?

davegtt

depends on budget, you can get a projector and screen for about £900 now, quality wont be as good as a £3k system (obviously) but it depends on your requirements cause a plasma wont be much better/worse for a grand.... gotta go for projector just for size lol

Jamz3k

the project i am thinking of purchasing from a friend imo looks excellent, its either philips or panasonic cant remember to be honest and its only 400quid! plus he's got a spare screen as its 4ft and aparently too small for his room lol.

otherwise, for twice the price i can pick up a 30" LG plasma which even running s-video looks excellent and has DVI connectivity so im a bit uncertain.

eClaire

Our projector is about 8 foot from the screen and it is a fabby picture.

We have a Toshiba ET1 (http://audiovisual.kelkoo.co.uk/b/a/...50/127201.html)

C h a z

Before you make your decission make sure you can black out the room if you intend to use a pj. If you can't black out the room then your blacks will only be a dark grey i.e. the contrast of your image will be cr4p.

ricardo

An 8 foot long room doesn't leave much space. Let's assume have the screen flat against one wall, and you sit on (say) a settee with its back against the other wall. The front edge of the settee will then be around 5 feet from the screen.

The projector could be on a low table in front of you, so to leave some legroom it will end up being around 4 feet from the screen, so the picture will also be fairly small. (The actual size depends on the pj, some have a fairly short throw, so give a bigger picture at short range, others are intended for a longer throw).

Alternatively, the pj could be mounted on the ceiling upside down, this would allow it to have about a 6 foot throw, and the projected picture would be higher on the wall. Again the actual projected size depends on the pj.

You need to check the picture size for the distances you'll be using, for that model of pj. One general piece of advice is for the viewing distance to be no closer than 1.5 times the picture diagonal - otherwise you'll start to see the pixels too much. That suggests a 4 foot screen is about right if you can get everything into that room.

Using a fairly small projected picture will give much greater brightness compared to a big picture, so may help with the blacking out issues. If possible, borrow it and see what sort of distances and positions you can achieve.

We've got one projecting from a ceiling mount onto a screen, the quality is excellent for DVD and pretty good for TV off a digibox.