Christopher Buckley asked:


Home Theater is a recent concept and is fast becoming an affordable way for everyone to enjoy the experience of the theatre – the big screen and surround sound – right in the comfort of their own home.

There are several choices for displays when designing your own home theater. Most usually, consumers will opt for a large CRT (box shaped) television, usually in widescreen format but sometimes in the old 4:3 format, else they will opt for the newer and thinner plasma screens available. However, it is worth considering home theater video projectors as they can come closer to offering the true theater experience compared to traditional televisions.

A home theater video projector can enhance this experience and is probably the most affordable solution that gives rise to the largest screen possible in the residential environment.

Whereas video projectors used to be expensive and of poor quality compared to the traditional alternative, the television, these days the technology has dropped considerable in price and is within reach of most home theater enthusiasts. Furthermore, the quality, brightness and sharpness of the image are vastly improved.

There are currently three main different types of home theater video projector – CRT, LCD and DLP.

CRT (cathode ray tube) video projectors are what you really get in a true theatre – they are the machines with red, blue and green lights. The advantages of such devices are a long lifetime and a proven, tried and tested technology that has stood the test of time for well over half a century. They also provide high image quality and sharpness. Unfortuantely, they are usually quite large, bulky and heavy. As well as this, they tend not to be as bright as their more recent digial counterparts.

LCD (liquid crystal display) video projectors use lcd wafers (like your digital watch) to either block out light completely, pass it completely, or somewhere in between. When you consider that this can be done for all three primary colours (red, green and blue) you can see that a large variation can be created and hence a projected image. Such LCD projectors are very lightweight and bright, and tend to be affordable due to the widespread use of lcd technology. Unfortunately, they suffer from a poor contrast range and bulbs need replacing very often. Bulbs are not cheap and can cost several hundred dollars depending on your model of projector – this running cost is a consideration that you should make when selecting your projector.

DLP (digital light processing) are the newest type of home theater projector. They operate in a similar fashion to lcd projectors, except that instead of lcd wafers, they use silicon chips called digital micromirror devices, or DMDs. The result is again a lightweight device as with LCD, but also brighter display and a better contrast range that its LCD brother. However, again, running costs i.e. bulb replacements, are very high.



Filed under Technology
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Home Theater Projector – They Aren’t Built The Same

Mike Singh asked:


Televisions are changing rapidly all the time, with consumers having a wide assortment of choices for “outside the box” viewing. But once we enter a darkened room, with a wide screen and high quality movie theater, we become part of the cinema atmosphere or “inside the box” once we go to the theater downtown. When it comes to a home theater projector, we need to carefully think and consider our options.

A video projector is like a slide or film projector, because they project an image onto a screen. If we are setting up a projector in our basement, for example, we would need to carefully think about things like the ceiling height, the screen level, and the seating positions. While we need to consider all of these elements, we should take the time to work with a skilled professional to help us in selecting the right projector for our specific needs.

If we do not really know a lot about this area of entertainment, it would be hard for us to do it on our own, especially if we do not have the necessary information available. We need to do our homework efficiently when it comes to purchasing a projector.

Quality is one of the most fundamentally important aspects of installing a home theater in our home more than anything else. Each element that we put into the home theater entertainment room needs to be part of the “visual aspect of the cinema”. It needs to be purchased with the highest level of quality in mind so that it will be able to give you your money’s worth in picture and sound quality, completely imitating every visual part of the actual cinema downtown.

The project that you select for your home theater should be the best suited for your specific needs, cost the right amount for your theater budget and it should provide you with the overall best quality picture for your money.

A home theater creates one of the best rooms in the home for entertainment or relaxation. It will be welcoming to the family and friends for an atmosphere that is different, a place to completely get away from things. There should not be a good amount of money installing a home theater system only to find that you have selected a poor quality projector for it, so be careful and shop around.

Sometimes we can purchase these with the home theater system as a group package. Other times it pays to select the projector based on its specific qualifications for your needs. In any case, a projector is an important element to carefully consider.



Filed under Electronics