Leading Brands For Home Theater Projectors

There are many different brands of home theater projectors, and some are more popular than others. However, most name brands will have what you are looking for to make a great home projector experience. The home theater projectors that are not as popular as others will probably offer the same benefits a more popular brand might, but at a less expensive price. Leading Brands: Mitsubishi, Toshiba and Sanyo projectors.

Toshiba Home Theater Projectors

If you're new to projectors and are on a budget, consider the TDP-MT200 for a well rounded product offering valuable features, but not too many to make you overwhelmed. This Toshiba projector is easy to use as well. If you have a little more money to spend you may want to go for the TDP-MT500 because of the added features, although it is meant for advanced users. If you're a home theater guru and money is of no concern, you're going to want the TDP-MT800 for maximum features and performance. It doesn't get any better than this.

Plasma Screens: Plasma Size Limitations

If you are looking for a dramatically large movie screen for your home theatre, you need to look beyond plasma screens. Look to home theater projectors. LCD and DLP projectors are capable of turning your home theatre room into a true cinema-like environment. Plasma screens today are topping out at a little over 60 inches diagonal.
With a home theatre projector, you can project twice that large and more! If you have a large enough room that you can put your LCD or DLP projector further back, you can project an image as large as your living room wall!

Home Theatre Cable Tips: Component Cables

Component cables look similar to RCA or Composite cables, however the signal improvement with component cables is substantial. Home Theater component cables divide the image from the system into three separate colors for the best possible picture, where as composite cables are the yellow (video) and red, white (audio) connections that come standard with game systems these days. Component video improves the picture quality by not only separating the color from the black-and-white portions of the picture but by further splitting the color information into two color-difference signals. When the home theater projector signal is split up in this way, you get an unfiltered, uninterrupted image, with better resolution and greatly improved color saturation. This is why component video is the predominant method of hookup from HDTV set-top decoders to HDTVs.

Home Theatre Projector Screens: Screen Gain

Screen gain is how much light the screen will reflect back to the viewer. Home theater screens with higher screen gain will actually give the appearance of a brighter image.

For example: a High Power Screen with a 2.3 gain will take an 800 lumen projector and make it appear as if it is actually 1,840 lumens. Sounds perfect, right? Don´t get too excited yet.

It is important to know that when you increase the gain of the screen, you also decrease the viewing angle. This means that the more you cross a 45 degree angle, the darker the image will get. Depending on how your home theater projector and home theater seating area is arranged, you could get a brilliant video image or lackluster one.

There are some screens on the market that actually have a screen gain less than 1.0. A screen that has a gain of less than 1.0 is called a High Contrast Fabric screen. These screens are great for darkening up the contrast ratio (or black levels) to give a more cinematic effect.

Home Theatre Projector Cable Tips: DVI Cables

Today you are capable of the purest video using Digital Video Interface (DVI) cables. However, DVI home theater cables are still in development and there is no universal standard for the DVI cable. Under ideal circumstances, the DVI home theater cable creates a ‘digital to digital' connection between video or data source and the home theater projector. There are, however, only limited situations when this ideal circumstance occurs.
The general rule with DVI cables is that 5m (16ft) is the maximum length for trouble-free operation. Some have been able to use inexpensive cables for slightly longer runs, but they are the exception -- not the rule.

HDCP over DVI is a recent development in the world of consumer electronics. The new HDCP content protection standard has expanded the use of DVI in high definition DVD players and HDTV set top boxes.
Want to find out which cable is best for your home theater projector?

Plasma Screens: Cost more than home theater projectors

Plasma screens are a fantastic technology both for video projectors and data. It allows very bright true images and takes up very little space since it hangs from your wall.

So what are the drawbacks? There are actually a few drawbacks to this technology that might make you want to consider a home theater projector over a plasma screen. First, they are incredibly expensive. A 60" diagonal plasma will run over $8,000.00 and can weigh over 100 lbs. This means you must have a special plasma mount hung on a reinforced beam for it to not come crashing down on your floor and turning into the most expensive paperweight ever made.

Want to compare plasma screens to home theater projectors? Home theater projectors are becoming increasingly affordable. Ranging in price from less than a thousand dollars to $6000 for a phenomenal home theater projector, you'll still have enough money to buy a premium sound system with the money you save over buying a plasma screen.

Big Screen TVs: Save space with a home theater projector

Large screen TV´s are a great step into the world of bigger home theater, but like all things they have a few drawbacks. Pricing hasn´t changed much on big screen TVs in the last few years, though formats have. Now there are flat screen TV´s that are in both Widescreen format as well as standard TV style 4:3. With each new technology that surfaces, big screen TVs are trying to become more like home theater projectors.

The major downfall to large screen TVs is the sheer magnitude of the set itself. This makes rearranging a room difficult and moving a huge chore. But what if your home theater consisted of a much larger screen, and a much smaller box? That's the beauty of home theater projectors. Front projection home theaters are the size of a laptop computer, but can project a movie the size of your living room wall. Find out why a home theater projector should be the cornerstone of your home theater.

Home Theatre Projector Screens: Screen Styles

Other things to consider once you have chosen a fabric are styles of screens. You can get a permanent wall mounted screen, a manual pull down screen, or electric screen or even a portable screen that would allow you to have a mobile home theatre (which is great way to keep friends from moving in to your house permanently!). Here is a look at what screens will work with which fabrics:

In order to use a high contrast screen fabric or some of the fabrics that increase gain, you have to have a permanently mounted screen or tab-tensioned electric. The reason for this is these materials are very spongy and need to be pulled taught in every direction to be most effective.

For those of you who are looking to utilize a living room for a home theatre and therefore do not want a screen open on the wall all the time should look at manual and electric screens.

The next step in a retractable screen is the electric. Electric screens hard wire into your home and work on a three position wall switch (up, down, and stop). Tab tensioned electric screens allow a perfectly flat image by having the screen pulled taught, both vertically and horizontally.

Big Screen TVs: Not True Home Theatre

When you think of home theater, what comes to mind? Sitting on a big comfortable couch with a bowl full of popcorn the size of you head (that didn´t cost $9.00 at a concession stand) and watching a movie the size of your entire wall.

Home Theater means BIG images, BIG sound and a HUGE experience. Some people will say that a 50" big screen TV and a good sound system will give the true home theater experience. Truthfully, these people have never watched a movie 8´ tall by 10´ wide, with earth shaking sound.

A home theater projector is your answer to true home theater. Once you watch your first movie projected
from a front projection home theater, your big screen TV will find a new home in the in-law suite. Check out why every home theater should have a home theater projector as its main component. Your friends and neighbors will thank you.

Introductory Prices For Home Theater Projectors

How much should you pay for a home theater projector? You should be able to find a home projector with acceptable SVGA or more-acceptable XGA resolution for under $2,000. Any of the projectors you find at this price point will offer all the features needed to make your den into your own private screening room.

Home Theatre Projector Cable Tips: BNC Cables

Producing the sharpest video possible takes more than a good home theatre projector and a quality, progressive scan DVD player. The link between the two devices is also critical. The cables you choose for your home theatre can mean the difference between a spectacular image and a lackluster one.

The BNC cable is one cable that home theatre enthusiasts often rely on. It is simply a more secure RCA cable. This home theatre cable is the same as the RCA home theatre cable, except for the connecting ends. Each end of the BNC cable features a connector that attaches to the projector and locks with a twist. BNC cables are a possible solution in environments where there is considerable interference, or where running new twisted pair wire is not feasible.

Home Cinema Projector Screens

Screens make a difference for home theater projectors. Everything from quality, resolution, brightness and glare will be affected. You also want to keep durability in mind. Here are some tips for purchasing a home cinema projector screens:

* If you've invested in a widescreen format projector, you need to get a widescreen screen, too.

* If space is limited, consider a portable projection screen that rolls into the screen case, or a traditional tri-pod screen that can be folded up and put away.

* Consider screen gain – how much light your screen can capture – especially if you're going to be dealing with ambient light in the room.

* Consider a gray screen for improved contrast.

Wiring And My Home Theater Projector

Wiring is probably the most difficult issue to overcome with your home theater projector. The projector is behind you and usually mounted to the ceiling and your sound system, cable box, DVD or any other electronics will most likely be in front of you. Because of this, many wires need to be connected and hidden. You'll want to hide the wires inside your walls if possible, but that can be time consuming and expensive. An alternative is to use wall stripping which will cover the wires on your walls and camouflage with the wall color, these strippings cost only a few dollars. Keep this in mind when purchasing your new home theater projector and make sure you ask if there are any other options recommended by the manufacturer before purchasing.

CRT Projectors: Less bright than LCD and DLP Projectors

The true downside to CRT projectors is the level of brightness and range of maintenance involved. In terms of brightness, even the top of the line CRT projectors top out at about 500 lumens.

Now in comparison with something like the NEC LT265 DLP projector, which has 2500 lumens of brightness and a much stronger contrast ratio, it begs the question of how important is having no pixels when you can gain so much more from another technology?

Fortunately, today's home theater projectors offer a vast choice of both LCD and DLP projectors that feature enough brightness than you can watch a movie with the lights on!
Discover the difference in DLP projectors and LCD projectors with brightness, great video quality and affordability.

Projector Lamps For Home Theater Projectors

Projector lamps for your home theater projector will be something you need to keep in mind as they are expensive. They can run you anywhere from $200 to $1000, with an average price of about $350. Life span can be anywhere from 1,000 hours up to 4,000 hours. When you make the purchase for your new home theater projector make sure you are aware of the life and cost of the lamp your new system will use. This may actually become a determining factor in the choice you make, since the replacement cost for lamps are all part of the overall investment for your projector.