What Are Home Theater Projectors?

Yep you guessed it I woke up today and thought to myself “Today is a good day for the Maxman to go and see what he can find out about PROJECTORS”

We’re not talking about TV’s baby. Today I want to play with some of the big boy’s toys. Projectors and some of those gihuge’s screens that go with them.

So it wasn’t until about the early 2000- 2001 era (long ago in tech yrs), that we began to see projectors that were designed specifically to be used in our homes for watching movies, as opposed to the TV which is pretty much standard when it came to your traditional home theater set up. That’s not to say they didn’t exist, that they did. But they were pretty much out of most people’s budget including mine. I actually remember checking one out and loving it until I saw the price $15 000.00.

Fast forward to today and man have things changed, technology wise and price wise which means yes they are more affordable. Put it this way, there is something for everyone’s budget. Including mine.

I am happy to tell you that today there are more than 50 models available that can be used not only for your home theater set up but for just watching everyday TV. Yep that’s right ladies if you want to watch “Young and the Restless” on the big screen you can, but a word of warning don’t let your hubbies find out cause to them that’s big screen infidelity a definite No No.

Prices typically range from $1000 to $10 000 and even higher if you so choose. Now the home theater projectors we are seeing today are indeed very similar to the projectors that are commonly seen in the corporate world how ever there a few differences which are worth taking note of.

When we talk of home theater projectors what we are referring to is “Front Projectors” in other words the projector is either mounted to the ceiling or on a bookshelf or even a coffee table and the image is projected frontward onto a screen.

A lot of these home theater projectors can also be used in a "rear screen" setup, which is having the image projected on one side of the screen and viewing it on the other side. Of course this requires heck of a lot more room space and simply isn’t that practical for the typical home.

For the most part ht projectors project images in the widescreen format (aspect ratio 16:9) which is identical to that of an HDTV. Good to know right? Where as your typical everyday business projector projects its images in the 4:3 aspect ratio which is what your traditional old TV uses.

Home theater projectors really do work best when they are used in rooms that are completely dark actually a dark room is what they are designed for. I mean if you are trying to recreate the movie theater in your home you don’t open the curtains and let the sun shine in do you? This is quite possibly one of the reasons that most people opt for a TV over a projector and screen because they don’t have a completely dark room. Some may even opt for the business projector which is more powerful but not necessarily more suitable.

Home theater projectors do sacrifice brightness, but by focusing on attaining the darkest possible black levels, this enables viewers to see details in dark areas of movies and of course what ever else you watch. High contrast ratios are a good measure of a projector's ability to reproduce shadow details, but other factors do apply.

Now there are still some home theater projectors out there that use the older CRT technology, but most home theater projectors typically use one of the following three technologies LCD, DLP or LCOS. LCD and DLP projectors make up the majority of the home theater projector category, but the LCOS technology, is becoming more and more common. Each one has its pro’s and con’s of course but we’ll save that debate for another day.

Maxman Out!