Micah said:
Dude - why not just go down to the UL listing numbers if you wanna get that deep. Standardized components is the name of the game in almost any industry. If you really want something high end, you'll be looking a pricetag on cabling alone that is going to eclipse my projector. When my income significantly passes 6 figures I'll be looking at higher end equipment, but until then - I'll buy borderline bargain hardware. The fact is, that for $1000 you can have a screen that will blow you away versus anything else you can get in that price range. With the added positive that it is portable. I'm bringing my HDTV digital cable box and my projector to a friends house for the superbowl party. The closest I could have come to this would be with a 27"-30" LCD TV which would still be a much bigger pain in the ass to transport.
I'm not suggesting someone has to buy a buisness level project for $6K. I was only backing up my statement about many infocus/proximas being clones. not unlike other manufcaturers. Don't read more into it then what I first said. i was pointing out it was possible so Newf could find an alternative source if needed.
As for cabling, It is still being debated heavily as garbage and an end result of marketing over engineering. After all, if home av was at all concerned with cabling for quality over what they can charge, all home audio would be using balanced connections. This is not unlike capacitors in the car audio descusion.
Home audio is definitly behind the professional world when it comes to cabling purely by our need to integrate high quality computer images that can be run over cables several hundred feet long. As a result, most of my industry has all but ingored S-video at this point for its lack of preceivable diffence and severe limitations in cable length. Not exactly problems in home audio however.
As for portability, yes a projector itself can be very portable. Hell if you were up here we could have one with the 4000 lum proj I have at the office.
However, its the screen that can creat the portability issue. Especialy if you using something like a recessed electric screen that requires installation. If you are onloy moving the proj and not the screen then you are loosing alot of the image rightness and detail the projector is capable of. So, I wouldn;t say is truely comparible to a high quality LCD or plasma for only the aspect of portability as it s more portable but with the sacrifce of image quality and clarity.
For my own use, I would stay with a high quality LCD screen or something similar. Simply because I don't and won't likely have a room large enough to justify the added image size of a projector. The rough math is that a viewer should be no closer then 2 times the height of the screen. With an 84 inch image that is roughly 8.3 feet for a 4:3 image. Ofcourse with a 16:9 ratio, you can go with larger screens diagonaly as they take advatage more of our er horizontal vision (we see much more horizontaly then verticly). Regardless, for my living room and for most of those that I know of, that is WAY to large of an image. Additionaly, throwing light through other light to create an image is about the worst way to make a vivid anddefined image. So unless that added size is need for a large room, I see little value in it.
Once you start creeping up on large plasmas especialy, you will certainly get into the relm where projectors become a much more cost effective solution for the same size image, however, the brightness and contrast will never be as good unless comparing against a real POS plasma or a bright projector in a low light environment. Pull up the curtins or turn on the lights most people haveon when watching tv and the plasme, LCD, or even good old CRT monitor will be better. Considering I like to be in rooms with alot of ambiant light (Im not a big fan of darkness for watching TV) For a me a projector would be a total waste.
I know, just random thoughts and not exactly on topic just my own comments and observations. Also for $1000 I'd get a sony 32" tube TV.
