Projectors
are the way of the future. With them you can achieve a large screen sizes without having to have a large LCD or plasma in your home. LCDs and plasmas are very nice, but if your looking for the largest possible screen size for your home, an LCD or plasma will prove to be complicated. With a 60 in. LCD or plasma (which is fairly large), you'll have to carry in and mount a huge, heavy screen on the wall, which can be a big hassle and costly. Anything larger than 60 in. will most likely be heavier and costlier altogether. It's just not feasible or practical to even think about getting a LCD or plasma if your wanting a viewing screen size of much more than 60 inches.On the other hand, the benefits of projectors for home theaters and large screens are very nice, and often much less expensive. This is of course is if you have a wall or an area that is big enough for the size of screen you are wanting.
The main benefit is the larger screen sizes! On my wall, I have a wide screen of my computer desktop on my wall. The size currently measures about 114 inches diagonal, and 97 inches by 61 inches, width by height. This is a big screen! I currently have this positioned in my living room so it's somewhat centered and I have it mounted to my ceiling so my chandelier doesn't block it. If I experimented and tried some alternate arrangement, I could even get a size larger than 114 inches, filling up my wall from end to end.
The projector I have is the Epson EX70, this appears to be an overall great projector for the price. It's native resolution is 1280 pixels by 800 pixels, so it will do 720p native which isn't bad at all for the price when compared to other options in the price range. Also, it has 2000 lumens which is good. The lamp on this thing is advertised to last 4000 hours in low power mode. The pictures on this site are taken during the day in low power mode at my place. I do the best I can during the day to shut out all the lights and close the widows, but I do have a sky light that is right above the far right in the top picture, so that can't be helped. Even with the skylight nearby during the daytime, the low power mode is adequate for viewing. And at night it's is more than bright enough.
Another benefit is the mounting is much easier because you don't have a huge monster of a screen to mount! With a projector, mounting devices cost less and it's easier to move the whole setup if you chose. Normally mounting will take place on a ceiling and projecting against a wall, so there is more space overall in your room since your screen equipment is mounted to the ceiling.
I've used the above mount by Vantage Point. It works great and it even worked on good on my diagonal ceiling, which was a concern I had while I was waiting for this in the mail. It's a sturdy and solid and does it's job.
To finish off the setup I found some little wire covers from Ikea that go down the ceiling to the wall. They have a little sticker back that you can use to stick them to the wall. Unfortunately, they tend to fall off after a while. My friend told me he uses them too, but he has to just nail them to the wall. I've done that and they're staying up fine now.
Now I didn't just get this projector as a computer monitor, although that is very useful if you have business type presentations or discussions where it helps to be in front of a computer.
I also got this setup so I could have it for the Wii and other games systems in the future, should I decide to get another one. The Wii outputs at 480p component video, so this projector is more than enough for it. But the Playstation 3 actually does 1080p natively, which is more than the Epson EX70 can handle natively, but the two will still work nicely together, only the Epson EX 70 can do 720p natively.
As for the Wii it works great on the Epson EX70.
