To start out I need to make something clear. We were not, are not, and will never be looking for the perfect video-phile experience. To this point we had a 15 year old TV (not even any S-video jacks), a $60 VCR and were watching DVDs from the kids PS2. The wife and I hated going down to the “family room” as it was always a mess (2 teenagers) and the picture on the TV in our bedroom looked at least as good. So as the old TV was having quite a few problems we started looking at the idea of getting a “big screen TV” for Christmas. This led me to the idea of using a PC projector and thus began our adventure.
First we tried the local HT shops. We were told by a very cooperative and friendly salesperson that at a minimum, for a projector (either CRT or digital), a screen and line doubler, we would need to spend about 15 thousand dollars.
We almost gave up right then.
Well I can tell you, it’s not only possible to get all the necessary equipment for less than that, you can get the equipment, new furniture, paint the room, get curtains, have some fun planning and building the whole thing and still have enough to buy a professional popcorn popper and cart for less than HALF of that amount.
Does it look as good as the 15k projection system? Don’t know, don’t care. To us, it’s incredible!
Here’s the scoop.