Return of the King + Projector

[Draft Dodger]

= heaven.

We've had our projector for a couple of months, but so far had just used it to watch a few hockey games. Last night we watched ROTK on it, and DAMN was it nifty.

[Joe Canadian]

What kind of projector have you got? We've been looking into buying one for awhile, and links or advice?

[Draft Dodger]

an Infocus X1 (which I think has been replaced by the X2). about $1000.

it's a pretty basic, low-end projector that fit the bill for us.

[cthomer5000]

so what does your screen size effectively work out to? and I assume the image quality is solid?

[stevew]

My wife will bring one home from work occassionally, and it is awesome to watch movies on. I dunno, though, about owning one at home as Im not sure how long the life expectancy is supposed to be with regular usage. I hear some of the replacement parts, the bulb especially, are very expensive.

[3ric]

Most bulbs should be good for 3000 or 4000 hours of viewing, so when you consider it, $200 or $300 for a replacement bulb isn't that expensive.

[Draft Dodger]

Most bulbs should be good for 3000 or 4000 hours of viewing, so when you consider it, $200 or $300 for a replacement bulb isn't that expensive.

right. and we basically are using it for the occasional movie or hockey game. It'll take a while to burn through it the way we use it.

Cthomer - we actually don't have the screen yet. putting it just on a bare red wall, which looked surprisingly decent (just a bit on the red side). We wanted to wait until our furniture came in (Tuesday, after a nearly 3 month wait) and get the location of the projector finalized before ordering the screen. the size of the screen depends greatly on how far back the projector is.

there's a good vendor here http://www.avscience.com/
I called and talked to someone there (Jason, who specializes in that) who is helping us pick out the right screen (size, quality, etc).

[Draft Dodger]

dola, image quality is "good". I wouldn't say amazing, but, for the size of the picture, it definitely "wowed" us.
I do expect that to improve when we finally get a screen.

[cthomer5000]

the size of the screen depends greatly on how far back the projector is.
Understood, but that was why I aksed. What size/distance have you been watching it at now - and how is the image quality?

[Draft Dodger]

Understood, but that was why I aksed. What size/distance have you been watching it at now - and how is the image quality?

it's a 20 foot room, and the projector is at the very back. I'm just eyballing the wall, but I'd say it's about a 6x8 image - which is probably a bit TOO big (we sit about 15' from the wall). The screen is probably going to be a foot or two in (mounted from ceiling), so that should make it a bit smaller.

image quality is "good". I'm definitely not an audio/videophile though - people with a higher quality expectation may not agree with me.