Project or TV for home theater?

R

ReelFilmGeek

Well-known member
So I've settled into a new house and my living room has become the main room for movie viewings. Problem is, I sit 11 feet away from my screen and have a 55 in tv, so its time to upgrade. Currently have a TCL 55in Series 4 and was looking at upgrading but honestly this generation of the tv doesn't do the best in HDR content and it seems more streaming services are offering content in a form of HDR. So with those things I've started looking at doing either a larger tv or project. Working on a tight budget and it seems like a projector may be the cheaper route while giving me a larger screen at the expense of having to control the rooms light.

Curious to hear thoughts on what everyone else is running in their home theaters.
 
When you're buying a projector, you also have to consider the screen. There are many different types.

There are also the ultra short-throw projectors that you pretty much put within a foot of the wall and the conventional that you can suspend off a ceiling or place on a table/cart.

A good place for the info is Projector Central. I remember, around 2004, Sony released their Qualia 004 1080P piece. It was $27,000 without the lamp. And the lamp was another $3,000.

Personally, 75" and under - I'd buy a flat screen. After that, it gets a little bulky.
 
can you get similar contrast with a projector?

But I think that if you want a huge image on a budget, a projector is probably the way to go
 
ahalpert said:
can you get similar contrast with a projector? ...
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It depends on an ambient light or lack thereof. If you have a basement/windowless cinema room, modern projectors can be placed almost anywhere. If you're near water and have large windows on top of that, an investment in curtains and/or blinds might be required. How they compare to the latest OLED TV's, I've no idea.

PS. There's a new short throw projector on Indiegogo selling under a brand name of Polaris that claims a different type of light dispersion but I've been out of the projector loop a long time to be able to vouch completely for their technology. It seems to be priced well though - 4K, laser, $2,000 for the funders.
 
If you’re considering a projector, I’d recommend heading over to some of the home theater boards, like AVS Forum. It’s a deep rabbit hole. With that being said and just speaking in generalities, if you are considering 100” or less, I’d probably get an 85”-88” flat panel, because they are so inexpensive now and you won’t have to worry about some of the things that you would with a projector(like ambient light, where to place the projector, etc.). I wouldn’t go through the trouble of projection unless I was wanting at least 110”. Now, back at the beginning of January, I installed a 4K UST projector and 120” UST screen in my den, in place of a 92” rear projection TV that I had had for years, and I’ve been very happy. In fact, I rarely watch the 4K OLED set in the bedroom, now, and I was always trying to find an excuse to go to the bedroom and watch it vs. the 92” rptv.

Something that a lot of people don’t talk about or isn’t mentioned much, front projection is so much easier on the eyes than an emissive direct view display. I can watch my projector for hours and hours on end with no eye fatigue. And something else I tell people: watching a high quality flat panel is like looking out a window, but watching a high quality projector/screen is like looking out an OPEN window.
 
TV's are dirt cheap now so price wise, I'd say it's a wash up until the 80-85" range. Since it's a living room, I'd just go with a TV set. Even a tiny amount of light spill can ruin the contrast on your projector screen and you'll go nuts trying to seal the room. I have a projector but its in a basement cave. Also, projectors generate noise so unless you have some kind of cabinet with ventilation for it, there's that as well. Mine is behind a wall, shining through a port hole. There are some new laser short throws that pair with a special screen that rejects ambient light, but they aren't cheap.
 
You won’t find a home projector that can display true HDR. The maximum theoretical contrast ratio possible on a matte white screen in a completely dark room is 500:1 , which is about 7 stops.

A midrange model 75” HDR rated LED TV will do much better and do 4k for comparable or lower cost.
 
We bought a 7 series LG 65" LED TV last February in anticipation of the Covid lock down. It supports HDR10 and HLG, but not Dolby Vision. Less than $500 on sale at Costco. Would rather have had a 75" but there was no aesthetically acceptable space to fit it into our 17' x 15'6" living room. Our viewing distance is around 11 feet too.
It definitely has a theatrical presence compared to the 12 year old 32" LG it replaced, which cost about the same when I bought it. Equivalent screen height to viewing distance ratio for the 32" was about 4.5 feet.
Black level is about 2 stops higher than the LG 9 series OLED sets and one stop higher than the 8 series nano LED models. But far better than the old TV. It is a typical 350 nit max white consumer display, so meets HDR300 luminance level calibration standards.
I prefer LG's because of their relatively easily accessible custom calibration menus, but the setup on this HDR model was not straight forward and it took several rounds of tweaking the HDR calibration over a few days to finally get it dialed in to the room ambient conditions.
Out of the box Netflix HDR programs were way too dark in the midrange gamma, which seems to be common. You do have to calibrate any HDR TV to your viewing environment to get best results. This one had a significant learning curve for me. For one thing, you had to display an HDR source to even access HDR expert calibration menus.
Here are a few room shots under daylight dark viewing conditions taken with my iPad in HDR photo mode from about 11 feet so you can get a sense of the scale with the room. . Doesn't really do the TV justice though.

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ReelFilmGeek said:
So I've settled into a new house and my living room has become the main room for movie viewings. Problem is, I sit 11 feet away from my screen and have a 55 in tv, so its time to upgrade. Currently have a TCL 55in Series 4 and was looking at upgrading but honestly this generation of the tv doesn't do the best in HDR content and it seems more streaming services are offering content in a form of HDR. So with those things I've started looking at doing either a larger tv or project. Working on a tight budget and it seems like a projector may be the cheaper route while giving me a larger screen at the expense of having to control the rooms light.

Curious to hear thoughts on what everyone else is running in their home theaters.
Click to expand...

The problem with projection is that it's reflected light. Light bouncing off a screen. So your blacks can only be as dark as your environment. So you don't have to "control the room's light", you have to watch in the dark. If you want the full range of contrast from the signal anyway.

If there's just the one of you doing this, fine, have at it. But as soon as there's a second person watching this becomes problematic. You end up having to turn on at least some light somewhere whenever someone calls for a bathroom break, wants a snack, etc. This can quickly become a PITA.

Also, price out your screens before you decide on a projector. A good screen can cost a large percentage of the projector's cost, and they have interesting issues.

OTOH, you can use an acoustically transparent screen and hide the speakers behind it. Which is helpful from an aesthetics standpoint during the day or when the room is lit.

As you might guess, I've already done these calculations. I'm watching the prices drop on the LG OLED77CXPUA. Probably what I end up with in the not too distant future. Or next year this time. Who knows?
 
DLD said:
Yup. Some people can spot the flicker. It depends on the eye/brain.
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My projector does not have a color wheel, it is triple laser(red, blue, blue phosphored to green), so there is no true "RBE"(rainbow effect), but I could see a version of it when I first got it(blue edging/ringing in the whites/brights if you were moving your eyes rapidly across the screen, because it's motion based, so you usually only see it in your periperhal vision), but my brain tuned it out within that first week or so. Now I RARELY see it. Maybe every few weeks or month it'll pop up for a few moments, then it's gone again. Last week I actually tried to see it and couldn't.
 
If HDR is important to you, look at TVs with full array local dimming. I think the cheapest option that look decent are the TCL 6 series and Vizio M series, but I'm not sure about the longevity of those brands.

I opted for a TV, as my family room has an 8' ceiling with a ceiling fan in the middle, and S. & E. facing windows. I have blackout curtains in my family room, but a lot of light can still come in through windows in an adjacent room.

I used to install home theater systems, and most of the projector installs were in a basement theater room.

P.S. I just ordered a TCL 55" for $148 on a Walmart Black Friday sale. I'm not putting my expectations too high for $148, it might end up as a basement TV.
 
Imamacuser said:
P.S. I just ordered a TCL 55" for $148 on a Walmart Black Friday sale. I'm not putting my expectations too high for $148, it might end up as a basement TV.
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You stole my TV! I tried to order that thing 4 times - each time they released new stock. And I was shut out every time. How did you pull it off?

FWIW I think they usually sell it for $450
 
Same here, at first I thought that Walmart was scamming everyone. I placed three orders only to have it tell me that the TV was out of stock, but the fourth try went through somehow. I sniped the TV each half hour as it went on sale, and had my credit card info saved to my Walmart account and selected local pickup. I'm still waiting for an email with pickup instructions, so they must all be at a warehouse as opped stocked in stores.

I don't know why it went through for me & not for you. Maybe it helped that I'm in a smaller city & only a block from my ISP's DSLAM station, albeit 64 Mbps VDSL 2+. Walmart's site was very sluggish, I had to reload the page at least three times to get the Cart icon to appear.

Even though the TCL doesn't have the greatest panel, it should be quite an upgrade from my old Sony 42" rear projection TV.
 
Run&Gun said:
My projector does not have a color wheel, it is triple laser(red, blue, blue phosphored to green), so there is no true "RBE"(rainbow effect), but I could see a version of it when I first got it(blue edging/ringing in the whites/brights if you were moving your eyes rapidly across the screen, because it's motion based, so you usually only see it in your periperhal vision), but my brain tuned it out within that first week or so. Now I RARELY see it. Maybe every few weeks or month it'll pop up for a few moments, then it's gone again. Last week I actually tried to see it and couldn't.
Click to expand...

Laser projectors use a phosphor wheel, which can also produce RBE (depending on a scene?). Some use a phosphor wheel and a color wheel, a combination that's supposed to eliminate RBE.

But, at least, there's no screen door effect anymore.

Or is there?
 
My first projector was DLP with a fairly fast wheel and I still definitely noticed the rainbow effect. Noticed them less with time, but all my projectors since have been LCD. LCD's used to not be as sharp because they combined three LCD panels into a color image, where even a slight misalignment could introduce blur and color fringing, but with the ability now to shift individual RGB panels you can get them perfectly aligned. Most of the LCD's are faux-k though, which use rapid pixel shifting to create the illusion of 4k resolution. Looks pretty nice to me but I have no basis of comparison. Can't imagine I'd need much more sharpness unless I wanted to sit two feet away from the screen.
 
Imamacuser said:
If HDR is important to you, look at TVs with full array local dimming. I think the cheapest option that look decent are the TCL 6 series and Vizio M series, but I'm not sure about the longevity of those brands.

I opted for a TV, as my family room has an 8' ceiling with a ceiling fan in the middle, and S. & E. facing windows. I have blackout curtains in my family room, but a lot of light can still come in through windows in an adjacent room.

I used to install home theater systems, and most of the projector installs were in a basement theater room.

P.S. I just ordered a TCL 55" for $148 on a Walmart Black Friday sale. I'm not putting my expectations too high for $148, it might end up as a basement TV.
Click to expand...

HDR is the main thing making me jump back and forth on my decision. The TCL 75in Series 6 is nice but for a little over half the cost I can get a refurbished Epson 2150 1080p projector and 100-120 in screen. I'm leaning towards that for now to hold me over till OLEDS get cheaper since then I'll own a projector for other projects where it could come in handy. Plus allows me to throw the 55 in Series 4 in the bedroom haha.
 
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