Best Buy Projectors

[Squintz]

My brother is looking for a Projector for his new house. He has a few hundred dollars in bestbuy gift certificates and wants to use them to purchase his projector. So out of the entire bestbuy selection which projector should he buy. His budget is $1500 or less. I think he would prefer to be in the $1300 range but i could convince him to fork out a few hundred more if the difference is noticable.

The things that i have learned from owning my Infocus X1 is that 800 X 600 Resolution is OK if you dont care about quality but i wish i had something higher. Also i wish it wasnt only 480p and 1080i. So i would recomend to him that he get 480i(Xbox), 480p, 1080i minimum.

I think he said he has one picked out right now that the bulb only last 2500 hours. That seems a little short to me. The replacement bulbs are $250 i think. He mentioned that he was looking at a Optoma that was around $1300. Thats when i told hime to hold off and let me consult with you guys first.

So what should he get from BestBuy?

 

[TechTooth]

I realize that your post is almost a month old, so I'm probably too late, but here goes anyway!

In that price range you will be looking at LCD projectors, DLP and CRT are way more expensive.

The most important thing to be aware of (apart from connectors and Hi-def standards) is to produce a good picture you should have a projector with 3 seperate TFT panels: 1 for green, 1 for blue and 1 for red. You wont be able to tell from the exterior, but it will be written in the specs. Next, Contrast Ratio, this is the difference between shades of a single color, the higher the better.

I recently chose a widescreen LCD projector for my parents to set-up a Home Theater and it is very very good. It is not too expensive and has won several awards as being "a revolution for the Home Theater Industry". It has a very high contrast ratio and 2 lamp brightnesses, meaning it can run on half power to save on lamp-life. I always run it on half power, and the colors are truly excellent.

The name and model is the Sanyo PLV-Z2, look it up on the internet and I bet you will only hear good things about it.

It has Component, S-Video, Composite and DVI-I inputs (if you want to know more about cables and connectors, see my post on "AV vs S-Video").
It supports 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p and 1080i.

You can link up a PC to it with a VGA-DVI converter or dirrectly through DVI if your PC has this output.

I definitely recommend this partical model, but I don't know if Best Buy sell it. If you go for another remember what I said about TFT panels and Contrast Ratio.

Good Luck!

Oh yeah, if you want to watch TV on it and only have terrestrial you will have to run it through a VCR or other device with RF coax input and other outputs, since it doesn't have a RF input.

 

[Squintz]

Actually your not too late yet. It will be a little while longer before my brother is ready to buy his projector. Atleast after Xmas

 

[electron]

I looked up the specs of that Projector, very impressive indeed, if I just didn't invest in a big screen, that would have been my choice instead.