How to Choose Home Projector for Movies

January 11, 2020

Being able to watch your favorite TV shows or movies in your home on a massive screen, with all your friends is an exciting prospect. With the quality of home cinema projectors available on the market, it has never been easier to create incredible entertainment in almost any living space. If you are thinking about purchasing a home projector for movies to make your cinema experience more enjoyable, then there are a couple of things you need to know before you choose one.

Home projectors for movies come in a variety of shapes and sizes and range in price based on a number of factors. In this article, we will focus on how to choose a home projector for movies that meet your needs.

1. Find Perfect Space

A person who is fond of movies won’t settle for anything less than their own dedicated home cinema room, equipped by an AV specialist who will take care of almost everything. But there are other options. Home projectors today allow you to convert any space in your home into an entertainment zone that can challenge a dedicated home cinema room. Elegantly styled, remarkably quiet, and reliable, they don’t have to collide with other everyday activities.

However, to choose the best home projector for movies, you need to determine the size of the room where the device will be used. The position of the home projector and its maximum distance to the screen is a vital consideration when selecting this device. For small to medium space, the distance from the device to the screen is usually between 1.5m and 2.5m. For more prominent space, a Standard throw ratio projector can project a 100-inch screen from a distance between 2.5m and 4m.

2. Select the Right Projector

The right home projector brings more emotion and thrills to every movie, from a classic reissue to old favorites and latest releases. The resolution of the home projector determines the quality of the pictures it produces. A home projector with a higher resolution can project images with better detail levels, thus improving your viewing experience. As you are going to use a home projector for movies, it is recommended that you consider a unit with at least an HD resolution (1920x1080p). Most of the movies available today are in HD resolution.

You can also consider home projectors for movies that have a 4K UHD or True 4K resolutions if your Blu-Ray player supports them. However, this type of projector is quite expensive but can project pictures with a great detail level. There is a different class of 4K UHD projectors available, and they use different mechanisms for projecting pictures, and this dictates the image quality.

True 4K home projectors, on the other hand, are top of the line offerings which has better screen resolution than the 4K UHD projectors. However, the true 4K home projectors are the most expensive of the lot, but the pictures projected by this device are equally incredible. So, unless you are satisfied with washed-out images that lack punchy highlights and deep blacks, you must go for at least an HD resolution projector.

3. Screen sense

If you want to get the best movie experience, you need to pair your home projector with a screen that is up to the task. There is a lot of choices out there, from motorized drop-down screens to a wall-mounted model. You might want to skip purchasing the right screen and project images onto a white wall instead. The chance that even a spotless looking white wall will be truly flat is low. Besides, those tiny imperfections can cause shadows that cause disorder with getting a truly crisp image.

Moreover, ordinary white paint can’t reflect projected light accurately and brightly as a specially-coated screen. That said, a black surface is more suitable when you truly want to capture the darker colors of bright pictures. And since black surfaces absorb more light than white surfaces, blacks are more suitable when you are in a setting with ambient light.

But since you will be watching a lot of movies, you can go for a gray surface. Gray surfaces are suitable because they balance shadows and highlights of images, thus offering an image that maintains a good contrast. Matte is also a great option for home theater, as it reduces glare at the loss of color saturation and cost of image dullness.

4. Better Sound All Round

Movie directors will tell you that sound is important as what is on the screen. So, it’s not a surprise that commercial cinemas have sophisticated sound systems that flood audiences from all angles with thundering bass and ear-shattering volume. Luckily, you can achieve incredible results without hurting your pocket.

However, how this impact your choice of a home projector for movies is dependent on your technical set-up. For instance, some home projectors only have an audio-in port. You will need an audio-out port to connect up speakers. But there is a way around that; you could instead connect speakers to your media player, which usually comes with an audio-out port. For instance, if playing via a PC, you can just plug the speakers into the PC.

To summarize, you can expect a great video when you purchase a home projector and don’t consider a sound system. But when you include standard audio, you won’t be disappointed. So, if you are looking for incredible audio to go along with your audio, you will need to get a set of an external sound system to deck out your entertainment system. Moreover, you can use wireless speakers to get the level of volume you desire. Plus, you can consider tricks like laying rugs in your movie room rather than bare floors to absorb redundant sound reflections.

5. Ambient Light

Home projectors work best when viewers can watch their movies in darkness. The more light from doors or windows that enter your home theater, the dimmer your home projected picture will be. The image brightness is determined by the number of lumens in the home projector, with most projectors for movies ranging from 1000 to 2500, you can purchase a home projector with fewer lumens.

However, when you submerge the room in complete darkness, you and your audience may struggle to find your drinks and snacks. So, little ambient light might help during the show. For instance, you can keep the light sources towards the back of the cinema room, where they won’t have an impact on the screen. You can also fine-tune lighting levels using dimmers or go a step further with a state-of-the-art room automation system, with which you can adjust light, room climate, sound, and other functions from a dedicated control, tablet, or smartphone.

6. The Media Center

All the things we have talked about so far won’t do you a lot of good if you don’t have the right device which is capable of playing your movies. This could involve as much as creating a home theater PC or as little as purchasing a Blu-ray player. You should have no issue to buy a Blu-ray player, but if you want to build a home theater PC, you have tons of options.

For instance, installing XBMC and jailbreaking the Apple TV 2 is a simple, great solution. Moreover, you can always run Linux or Windows on the same hardware. And you can buy less RAM, purchase a smaller hard drive, swap in a slower processor, and so on if you want to save some money.

7. Maintenance

The good thing about home projectors for movies is they require little maintenance. We would recommend that you use some compressed air to blow the dust out of the vents every few months to prevent buildups that reduce internal airflow. You will also want to make sure that the projector lens is very clean before using it, a bit of microfiber cloth and alcohol work perfect to clean it of any debris and dust.

You may also want to check for any dust filters. A couple of the bigger movie projectors will have these installed close to the vent to stop dust from entering. Finally, you need to learn how to replace the bulb once it burns out – this process involves removing a few screws, popping out the old bulb, and fixing the new bulb, and closing it back. Although some homeowners prefer purchasing a replacement bulb with their first order, it might be better to wait because the bulb might not need replacement in the next ten years.

Conclusion

A quality home theater for movies can create an incredible image quality to optimize family enjoyment and movie fun in a variety of environments. There are a lot of things that go into selecting a home projector for movies, but now we have provided you with detailed information you need to know to choose and use a projector.

So, whether you are a home cinema connoisseur or new to home projectors for movies, use this guide to find the right device for a whole new visual experience.

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