Video Projectors - What You Need To Know

Designing your home theater system is getting more exciting all the time. Televisions are bigger, better, cheaper, and slimmer than ever. The home theater consumer has choices ranging from the traditional tube-type television to large screen rear projection sets, to the latest hang-on-the-wall Plasma and LCD flat panel monitors. All of these types of television configurations have been successfully incorporated into many home theaters around the world. However, all of these TV viewing options place the viewer "outside the box" (so to speak). All of the work of generating the video image (from input to display) is done within an "enclosed box" of some type. The box is also a piece of furniture that takes up space either on a floor, table, or wall.

On the other hand, the movie theater places the viewer "inside the box". You enter a special environment where curtains open up, revealing the screen, a hidden film projector (or digital cinema projector) then starts up, and the room is enveloped in image and sound. The image is projected from behind or above and is reflected off the screen. You are within the image environment as the beams of light travel from the projection unit to the screen. That is what separates most home theaters from the movie theater.

Making Your Own Home Theater Magic

How can one capture the same "magic" as a trip to the movie theater? You can come very close with your own home theater projection setup. Of course, such units have been around for some time, but they were big, bulky, power hogs, and very, very, expensive; definitely out of reach for the average consumer.

However, as an outgrowth, in recent years, of the need for compact, affordable, portable multi-media projection units for use in business presentations, new technological developments in image processing have made this once out-of-reach option more affordable for use in home theater by more and more consumers.

Video Projection Vs Film Projection

The video projector is similar to a film or slide projector in that they both accept a source, and project the image from that source onto a screen. However, that is where the similarity ends. Inside a video projector is processing circuitry that converts an analog or digital video input signal into something that can be projected onto a screen.

If you haven't considered the projector option, you may find that it may fit your home theater setup. However, there are some basic things you need to know before you can get started.

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