Digital Projectors under $1000

[brien_szabo]

I've been thinking about purchasing a digital projector for slide

shows and talks. With all sorts of prices and products, I just

haven't been sure what to look at. So instead, I thought budget.

The number of a thousand dollars is about a cap I can deal with at

the moment. The question is then, can a good reliable digital

projector be had for under a thousand dollars? If so, which ones

tend to perform the best?

[ricky_szabo]

Absolutely no answers, but as we share the same surname I thought I'd respond anyway!

[jay_blocksom]

<BLOCKQUOTE><I><B>Brien Szabo, jul 06, 2005; 11:06 p.m.</B>

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I've been thinking about purchasing a digital projector for slide shows and talks. With all sorts of prices and products, I just haven't been sure what to look at. So instead, I thought budget. The number of a thousand dollars is about a cap I can deal with at the moment. The question is then, can a good reliable digital projector be had for under a thousand dollars? If so, which ones tend to perform the best?

</I></BLOCKQUOTE>

 

I can't comment on an individual make/model basis; but I will offer some general thoughts...

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At that price point, you're probably looking at either an LCD-based unit, or a DLP-type unit.  The latter are generally preferred -- they're small, lightweight (as little as 2 lb.!), and perform *very* nicely for what they cost (and they're technologically just plain *slick*); but there is a HUGE "gotcha" lurking -- the light-source lamps used in these things have very finite life-expectancies (generally in the range of 1,000-2,000 hours; tho' some newer models are claiming up to 3-4,000 hours) and they are VERY expensive (typically several hundred dollars) to replace.

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Another thing to be concerned with...  Not surprisingly, the cheaper units also tend to be the less powerful (i.e., not as bright) ones.  In your home living room, that might not be an issue.  But if you're planning to take this "on the road" for use in large-ish (and often brightly lit) meeting rooms and similar, you may find that 1-Kilobuck budget (which is pretty much the very low end of the market) too limiting.

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I will note this...  There's a relatively new local "home theatre" shop near here that is big on InFocus DLP projectors.  I wandered in one day a few months ago, just to see what there was to see; and I was *very* impressed by the relatively huge images (up to 16-feet wide) they were getting out of these things, using DVDs as the source material.  It looked *quite* good -- excellent brightness, color saturation, apparent "sharpness", etc. -- but, of course, this was under "ideal" conditions, in a very much darkened room, and using a "moving" picture (which tends to mask rendering artifacts, as compared to a static image).

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[neal_thatcher]

I worked as an audio/visual tech for some time and we would go to the projector shows and have reps do shootouts of their products. I haven't researched prices lately but we usually purchased Panasonic and InFocus Lite Pros. They were the smallest w/ the biggest bang for the buck and easiest to get serviced when we had problems. Definitely check into the lamp life ratings because that is where the true cost will be if you use it constantly. Anything over 800 lumens should work for small dark venues...if you are doing huge screens in big venues or trying to show in brighter places, go over 1200 min. Good luck!

[ed_schoch]

Hello Brien

 

For what it's worth, here's my personal experience with a digital projector.

 

I'm an "advanced amateur" who's been shooting 35mm slides for the past three decades or so, and I enjoy putting on slide shows of my travel photos. A few months ago I took the plunge into digital and bought a DLSR (specifically, the Minolta 7D). I've been agonizing over how to put on a digital slide show, so two weeks ago I bought an Infocus X3; this in an XGA (1024 x 768) DLP projector. (I chose this model because Circuit City was selling it for $1200, with a $100 manufacturer�s rebate plus a $265 Circuit City rebate.) Here's what I found when I showed photos from the 7D. Note: The colors looked fairly accurate, and the images reasonably were sharp, on my laptop's display; the problems below were thus due to the projector.

 

Photos of fall colors taken in PA in late October looked like they were taken in July - the yellow leaves displayed as green. After playing around and talking with a technician at Infocus I got the leaves to be yellow by using the "warmest" color temp and turning down the green gain. However, this caused other photos with green in them to look faded.

 

The images were not very sharp.

 

Lastly, the images just lacked the overall brilliance, color saturation, and "snap" that I'm used to with slides.

 

Bottom line - I returned the projector and got my money back. But I don't know what I'm going to do to put on a digital slide show.

 

Hope this help you make a decision.