budget projector ideas

linerw

linerw

linerw

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Joined
22 Dec 2013
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2
hello everyone

i am looking to get a projector and screen for our local scout group and require some advice as i have no idea what to look for.

we have up to £700 to spend in total for everything we need.

the room is around 4 meters wide and 20 meters long, the room can be made fairly dark but not totally dark or we can have around 20 florescent lights turned on. the general opinion is to have the projector on a table against a wall (where it has less chance of being knocked) and project to the opposing wall about 4 meters away where we have a usable width of 280cm wide by up to 300cm high.

we have seen a screen that is 280cm wide for about £250 with delivery leaving us with around £450 to spend on a projector.

as there are so many to choose from i thought i would ask here for advice as to what to get.

it will be used for mainly presentations, slide shows and watching films on.

we will be hooking it up to a laptop and blueray player so would need connections for both (hdmi, vga etc).

when not in use it will be put into a store room so is not going to be permanently mounted

we would be grateful of any advice as to which ones to consider.

many thanks.

Andy
 
I've just stepped into the world of Projectors and purchased a 2nd hand Optoma HD230x.
has two HDMI and VGA.

For the screen, I found it much better (and cheaper) to just make my own.
- 2400x1400x3 (or 6mm if 3 is unavailable) sheet of MDF (white faced if possible)
- Paint, I used Dulux (1 litre). Clouded Slate 3 was the name. You can get this mixed at places like B&Q. the colour code for it is: 00NN 72/000
- Black Velvet adhesive strips. I managed to get a roll of this for £20 from somebody on AVForums, but I guess you can google around for it.

I made the screen (approx 100" diagonally) for around £50 in total. There's a pic in my Man Cave Thread (link in sig) if you want to know what it looks like.

Projector wise, that leaves you with quite a big budget. I couldn't tell you what's best on the market at the moment but I purchased 2nd hand, and certainly don't regret it. For something that was £800+ a year or so ago, got mine for £300, with very little lamp use.
 
as shaun says, you can get a screen off ebay for well under £100, i've seen a few 1080p 3d ready optoma projectors the last couple of days for around £5-600 on hukd. so sorely tempted myself :p
 
Your budget is a lot higher than mine but you also have a much bigger room. Just updated my build log (in sig) to include my media room, clickies for info.

My screen is just from ebay at £80 and have been very impressed by it. Some piccies in the build log to give you an idea, but the phone cam is so poor, i dont know if they will be at all useful. lol
 
I have put my projector in a home made quite box
Mine is behind a Pictur which I have put and metal draw runners slide it to one side and there is a hole in a 500x500 door that the projector lens is
To cool it down I use one of those pc energy saving plugs that has a master socket that turns on the slave socket
and Have a inline extractor fan pluged in to the slave socket so when the projector is turned on It will turn on the extractor fan thus keeping it cool
When you look for my projector you don't no where it is
 
Starting with the practicals first from the suggestions made:
  • Don't buy a secondhand projector unless you really know your way around the technologies, the models and their pitfalls.

    At this kind of budget, new models are improving or getting cheaper a lot faster than people are willing to lose money on what they bought a year ago. You also have to consider replacing the lamp sooner in a used projector. In short, you get a better deal new when all the factors are weighed. In addition you're getting a brand new product, with a full warranty, probably with a longer standard lamp life, and you'll have a receipt made out to the Scout group for insurance purposes
  • It has been suggested you make your own screen. That's not really a practical solution for this type of application.

    For a start, there may not be the space available for a permanent wall screen. Second, there's how the space is used at other times to consider. Do you want to come in to find the screen dented, scratched or scuffed? A roll-away screen as you probably intended is the correct solution
  • You don't need 1080p. For the type of things you will be doing then the priority is brightness, picture quality, then resolution. WXGA (1280x768) or 1280x800 is perfect for your needs. You won't find onscreen icons too small from the PC as you might with 1080p

Just reviewing your own ideas;

a table mounted projector at the back of the room is going to cause you a lot of trouble. The sight lines of the projected image will be blocked by the heads of the audience. This isn't like using a slide projector or 16mm film projector where the projector lines up with the vertical centre of the screen. A table mounted digital projector lines up roughly with bottom edge of the screen. So anything between it and the screen is going to be in the way.

If you want to table mount then you need the projector up close to the screen. This means having a projector with an ultra-short-throw very-wide-angle lens.

We use a number known as the throw ratio to describe the relationship between screen width and projection distance. It can be used to divide or multiply depending on which start dimension you have. Since you know your screen diagonal (2.80 mtrs) which equates to a screen base width of 2.44mtrs then we can work out by multiplication what the throw distance will be. Very-short-throw projectors have a throw ratio of somewhere between 0.6 and 0.8. At best then, the projection distance is 2.44m x 0.6 = 1.5m

The rub with these ultra wide angle projectors is cost and model choice. A better solution if practical is to consider a standard throw projector (1.2~1.8 throw ratio for a zoom lens) and then to have a detachable ceiling mount. This way there's no risk of the projector being knocked in use but neither is it left on view when the hut is either in use by others or unattended.

Similarly, a ceiling-mounted pull-down screen is a good choice for this type of application.


If you have the projector up on a ceiling bracket then you can leave the power and signal cables attached in place up the wall and across the ceiling. Just from a health and safety point this is better than having them trail across the floor where people are walking. You'd just hook them up as and when required.

A 10m HDMI cable will be sufficient for picture and won't cost much at all. You'll have to be a bit more careful with the VGA cable though. Cheap rubbish doesn't cut in when it comes to long analogue VGA connections. The problem is two-fold.
1) laptops rarely deliver enough power to the VGA port to drive more than a desktop length lead. A small VGA booster soon fixes that
2) signal losses over distance are a problem with cheaper VGA cables. The booster helps, but if the cable if thin and poor quality then what signal does arrive will have a degraded picture. This is seen as ghosting and as movement and raggedness around letters and other high contrast icons

Finally, what will you about sound?

Some projectors has a token speaker inside. It's okay for a bit of desktop audio but it won't cut the mustard for a full on film show or even an ambitious multimedia presentation. You really need something with a bit more poke and also a volume control. PC speakers will work just so long as there's an audio out on the laptop and whatever you are using to play DVDs and Blu-rays. Have a think about that.

In the mean time have a look at the Optoma H100 (v bright, excellent lamp life, plenty of inputs, quiet, good video performance, aprx £450) or the marginally cheaper H180X with similar specs but fewer inputs @ aprx £400.

There are brackets on Ebay which have a quick release bolt. They're around the £30-£35 price range.
 
thanks

thanks everyone

the info from you guys will help us to make an informed choice when getting the projector

Lucid thanks for the excellent reply which will give me a couple of things to think about, mainly table mount or ceiling mount,

the table would be at the back of the room to keep all leads out of the way of the kids and they will all be sat down while watching the films.

the idea of a ceiling mount was the most obvious choice for us but we are worried about it getting hit buy balls and stuff when the kids are playing so we will look into detachable ones

i didn't even think about cable length and picture loss to be honest

as for sound we have a plug in amplifier which connects to the pc (used several times and has plenty of power for our needs)

thanks guys you have all been great

Andy
 
linerw said:
the idea of a ceiling mount was the most obvious choice for us but we are worried about it getting hit buy balls and stuff when the kids are playing so we will look into detachable ones

Andy
Click to expand...
Isn't that what I said already?

:confused:
 
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