Projector off notebook

[29dinosaur]

Being fairly ignorant of these matters what would be a decent brand & price for a projector to run off my notebook for (household use only).

[waynep]

We have a coupel of Hitachi XGA ones at work which are really good for presentations, photos etc. Not sure on price i didn't buy them

if you want to use it for watching movies ..now that's a whole new ball game ...

before you buy anything check on the price of repalcement globes .. they can be very pricey .....

[29dinosaur]

We have a coupel of Hitachi XGA ones at work which are really good for presentations, photos etc. Not sure on price i didn't buy them

if you want to use it for watching movies ..now that's a whole new ball game ...

before you buy anything check on the price of repalcement globes .. they can be very pricey .....

Have some .m4v downloads to present.They look ok on small screen how would they go projected?

[HangOver]

There are sooooo many brands hard to recommend one
look for :

Resolution (XGA minimum) I have a SVGA and it's fantastic for all movies and video clips, but useless for looking at say the text in a document of website, (if you need to)

cost of bulb/globe (as already stated) Some of them can cost in the high hundreds or more.

Duty cycle/life span of the globe, anything less than 2000hrs is getting pretty sad now. Some are as hight as 5000hrs but it needs to be weighted against cost of replacement.

LCD/DLP/LCOS: if it's got a long lamp life who cares? It's said DLP last much longer so maybe go for one of them; but I got my LCD about 3 years ago if it dies tomorrow I have had my moneys worth out of it. I Don't know anything about LCOS so can't comment.

Lumens (Brightness): In the evening with my blinds drawn I turn the projector brightness down! It's only really a consideration if it's going to be used in bright rooms or during the day. a good contrast is much more important.

Throw: Estimate the distance the projector will be from the wall and how big screen area you would like, go armed (shopping) with this info.

Brand ?: At work we use mitsubish and panasonic at home mine is an epson, no troubles at all with any of them.

One last thing warranty, expensive to fix if they do go wrong, look for something better than 1 year.

I would recommend a projector to anyone, better/cheaper than a big LCD, (but that could start an argument!).

[HangOver]

Have some .m4v downloads to present.They look ok on small screen how would they go projected?

In general if it looks good on the PC it will look good on the projector.

[Lotz-A-Landies]

There are sooooo many brands hard to recommend one
look for :
We have a Sanyo PLV-Z1 and project it across a 12' room onto a grey wall which gives us about 10' x 6' in wide screen and it cost about $1,000 as a floor demonstrator.

It is used at least 3 days a week, often all night video or music/video sessions and have have had it for a couple of years without having to change the bulb. The only real problem is if you watch it during the day you need to enhance the colours to overcome the daylight that enters the room but that is merely a mode change by the press of a button.

It is wired in parallel to the TV from the "Video out" on the home theatre unit so you can have either or both on the same channel. In addition you can also plug in a computer using the SVGA port from memory it also has an S Video port but it is ages since I took it down from the wall (mounted 7' up the wall).

Why would you spend 5 times as much to have a large screen TV which has a much smaller image and takes up half the room?

Very happy.

Diana