Who Needs a TV - My Awesome Home Cinema

Written by Rolf

Since maybe 5 years, I have had a projector, or beamer if you will. It is much cheaper than, say, a plasma television and much bigger, so ideal for a home cinema and I can recommend it to everyone.

Five years ago I bought a cheap Philips projector to try it out. It was around 700 euro but projectors were not very mainstream at the time and it was actually not expensive. The lamp could supply a staggering 4000 hours, which is good enough for 2000 movies. It still works, because 2000 movies is a lot. With 4 movies a week, it would last for 10 years. A new lamp would cost about as much as half the projector, though.

Last year I moved the Philips to my bedroom, and bought a new projector, an Acer X1160 for about 350 euro. Main reason for getting this Acer was the upgrade from 1100 to 2000 ANSI lumen, which is the strength of the light source and determines the brightness of the projected picture.

It is smaller, prettier and quieter than the Philips, and the projected picture is about the same size, 100 inch in a 4 meter (13 feet) wide room. It has a zoom wheel but not to enlarge the projection, only to sharpen the image. But 100 inch is a perfect fit on my wall, as you can see in the picture below. For size reference, I photographed myself in front of it, on the left side. I'm 1.84m, or 6'2" if you must know. The picture is dark, but that is because of the nature of the movie and its menu (No Country For Old Men). Check out the bright of the white in the picture.

It is a cheap projector, as I said, but for the next few years it will do just fine. The resolution is only 800x600, so not HDMI and also not suitable to play World of Warcraft on the wall. I am very content with the quality of the picture it produces and it is quite satisfactory for watching DVDs. For optimal home cinema experience, a surround sound system is required of course, but the total package (projector, dvd player, sound system) does not need to cost more than 500 euro or 600 dollars. If you want more lumen or higher resolution, there are other projectors available, but it will obviously be more expensive. I can really recommend a setup like mine.

Update: About 3 weeks ago, a broken pixel showed up as a bright, fully illuminated dot. Since that first pixel, every day 1 or 2 extra broken pixels have spawned. Most bright white, but some dark. At the moment of writing, there are probably at least 40 broken pixels and all of them in the right half of the image. Very uncool. But still I would recommend a projector.