Home Cinema Projectors Buying Guide

There are a number of important factors to take into consideration when choosing a home cinema projector, these are to do with light, image quality and usability.

Projector Brightness - This is measure in ANSI lumens, the more natural (or ambient) light in your room the greater the ANSI lumens recquired. A room that is properly isolated from ambient light doesn't need as much brightness and will only need 700 lumens or better, at the other end of the scale rooms with a lot of natural light recquire at least 2500 lumens.

Projector Resolution - The greater the resolution, the greater the pixel density and the greater the pixel density the greater the image quality will be. So look for maximum resolution, most will be 1024x768, but if you can afford the 1280x720 or greater then go for that, they'll do justice to High Definition pictures as well as offering a generally much better viewing experience. Also the larger the viewing screen the more important it is that the resolution is high.

Projector Lamp Life - If you're only using the projector for special occasions or to watch the odd movie the lamp is going to last quite a few years, more regular use and it's going to need replacing, so you'll want to take the cost of lamp replacement into consideration. Lamp life is usually about 2000 to 4000 hours (this is until it starts to dim - you can keep using it for longer than this but the brightness will diminish) but you can get projectors with a longer lamp life - as much as 10000 hours.

Projector Usability - Most projectors are pretty easy to use these days, but you might want to see if it has a remote control for convenience plus lens shift and wider zoom ranges because it will make it easier to install.

Projector Positioning - On a table or ceiling mounted? The advantange of a ceiling mounted projector is that you only have to do the set up once and it's out of the way, if however you want to take the projector elsewhere or store it away after use you can plonk it on a table, downisde of this is you have to spend time adjusting the distance to get the optimal viewing experience and reconnect everything each time you want to watch something.

Projector Technology - Home cinema projectors are mainly LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) or DLP (Digital Light Processing), less common is LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon). There are advantages and disadantages to all of them, many of them being less of an issue as new products come out - all of these technologies are being improved at a very rapid pace.

DLP Projectors - The pixels are closer together and so the image should be smoother, especially significant when projecting an image on to a large screen. Inferior DLP projectors may have a "halo effect" , caused by light it makes the outline of the projection seem to have a grey border, not an issue with quality projectors however. The consensus is that DLP is better for home cinema projection because of the screen quality, but it's important to note that the high end LCD Projectors are excellent and the technology is improving all the time.

LCD Projectors - The main advantage over DLP is that it produces more saturated colours, this enhances the brightness and produces more vivid colouring, DLP can achieve this too it just needs a brighter lamp. DLP produces a much smoother image generally than LCD where there can be a "chicken wire" effect, this is mainly on inferior or old LCD projectors however, good new models have a much better contrast ratios.

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Sony Home Cinema Projectors, Panasonic Home Cinema Projectors, BenQ Home Cinema Projectors, Toshiba Home Cinema Projectors, InFocus Home Cinema Projectors.