£5k budget - TV or Projector?

Domo

Domo

Domo

Soldato
Joined
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Surrey, UK
I keep reading good things about projectors - OK, for that budget you’re still required to pretty much blackout the whole room for the best experience, but with a 120” throw in 4K can a projector tip the balance in its favour?

By the way this is going into a new snug once build work has completed. Regular setup remains in the main living room (55” Samsung KS8000).

Been looking at the Sony VPL-VW320ES.
https://www.whathifi.com/sony/vpl-vw300es/review

Hoping to get some advice from owners of both. Either set up, Projector or TV, will be getting the same speaker package. The £5k is for the visual component though I might need to think about projection screens which can be punchy in price.
 
ffwding through gadget show last week stopped to see their comments on the http://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/epson-eh-ls100
a reasonable priced laser projector, had not realised they were 'only' £2500 , so same as rrp for usual 65" oled;
but the ability to work in daylight was impressive albeit not 4k , but some of the porjectors are not real 4k anyway.
the noise seems a drawback though.
 
You also need to factor a good quality screen into your budget and also think about the fact that all projectors can't give you the HDR that a TV would easily provide - a good demo of both picture types will make your decision easier as well as looking at the kind of room that you are going to have your system in.

Of course as a HD projector user myself I'm extremely happy with my setup.
 
That is literally in a different league. Wow!! Though now I feel a bit sad and my £5k seems woefully inadequate. Total budget is £8k but the additional funds is meant to cover speakers and amp (and should I go for a projector, the screen too which I plan to be fixed).

Will be coming to you with questions for sure + subscribing to that thread of yours.
 
had to look further on the projector I ref'd , can't see db noise, but the liefspan is impressive (what is the guarantee?)
Besides being more silent, the Quiet mode also brings another advantage. The Epson EH-LS100 projector uses a laser lighting source that is designed to last for 20,000 hours in Normal mode, which means on its highest brightness. If you switch to the more economical Quiet mode, the laser source should last for an additional 10,000 hours, bringing its expected lifetime to 30,000 hours. If these numbers do not manage to impress you, consider this: if you use the projector for 5 hours each day, its laser light source should last you for more than 10 years in Normal mode, and over 16 years in Quiet mode. It is more than you probably expect to use your Smart TV, isn’t it?
Click to expand...
 
Domo said:
That is literally in a different league. Wow!! Though now I feel a bit sad and my £5k seems woefully inadequate. Total budget is £8k but the additional funds is meant to cover speakers and amp (and should I go for a projector, the screen too which I plan to be fixed).

Will be coming to you with questions for sure + subscribing to that thread of yours.
Click to expand...


you will get a nice setup for 8k , got my projector new , but went S/H with the speakers
 
If it’s a dedicated room go for a projector every day of the week. Save some cash for making the room perform as well - a great screen, blackout blinds, comfortable seating and acoustic treatment will probably benefit you more than maxing your budget on the electronics. A £4,000 setup in a perfect room is going to be better than a £8,000 setup projected on to the wall with no proper ambient light attenuation.
 
dedicated room projector edges its.. if u can nab that sony 4k pj its a no-brainer.


TVs in smaller rooms are an easy winner due to superior black levels + contrast + ease of use + 4k
 
Domo said:
That is literally in a different league. Wow!! Though now I feel a bit sad and my £5k seems woefully inadequate. Total budget is £8k but the additional funds is meant to cover speakers and amp (and should I go for a projector, the screen too which I plan to be fixed).

Will be coming to you with questions for sure + subscribing to that thread of yours.
Click to expand...

That is what the culmination of obsession looks like plus lots of other factors - happy to answer any questions :).
 
If it's essentially a dedicated room, and there's regular TV viewing done somewhere else, then nothing beats the scale of a projected image.

I'm coming up to the final stages of a JVC X5900 install for a client. We looked at a couple of projector options including the 4K Sony, but for this chap with his bat cave room and coming from an 8" Barco CRT which did stunning blacks and excellent shadow detail, there really was only one choice - the X5900. It uses e-Shift so it's not a true UHD projector but a lot of the additional 4K UHD resolution does come through and the lower real world black level plus the higher brightness over some rivals gives HDR a nice little boost.

Perhaps the biggest change though is the much larger screen. Unlike lamped projectors, CRTs never developed enough power to drive very large screens. The maxim was tube size in inches equals screen size in feet, so that gave us 7ft, 8ft and 9ft screens in general unless one was able to push the boat of for a Stewart Studiotek 130 to get the extra foot advantage without too much light loss. For this client's install then we went from his 96" 4:3 screen to a 112" 16:9. That's a big change when the seating distance is still 10ft.

Given that the JVC has the motorised lens memory feature and can store settings for 5 different picture sizes then if it was my room I'd have gone to a 2.40:1 screen. However, one of his priorities was retaining a decent image height for old B&W movies in 4:3 and 5:4 formats. Juggling throw distance and screen size I was able to retain 93% of his original 4:3 image size while boosting the widescreen formats by up to 66%, so that's a good result. Now the room feels truly cinematic. This size of TV wouldn't be possible without either a ridiculous disposable income or a sizeable lottery win.

I would second what others here have said about getting the room right. It's a major component and has a significant impact on the way the gear sounds. Also budget for some creature comfort features: light control, AC with air exchange if the room is sealed for noise pollution, a back lit touch screen system remote working from wireless.
 
I'm on the cheaper end of the scale with, Optoma HD50, Sapphire 106" screen, Denon avr and q acoustic 2020i's. Think I spent about 2k and have no regrets, I have black out curtains and blinds but can watch without closing. Our 42" tv that's behind the screen rarely gets used now.
 
Interesting your total budget is 8k but you're going to spend 5k on a projector?
My current setup is nearly at 8k also but my projector was 2k (Sony VPL 40ES)
Projector everytime for films. You do not need a blacked out room though thistimproves contrast. I feel no immersion watching a film on a TV.
 
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