I am planning to upgrade my home setup and want to buy projector that offers great brightness and clarity for both movies and presentations. There are so many options out there, so I’d really appreciate suggestions on reliable brands or trusted online stores. Has anyone here recently purchased one and can share their experience?
A lot depends on how your room is set up, what sort of presentaion you like, whether or not you are able to black out your room, and how much you are prepared to pay.
It is not easy to demo a selection of projectors because they need to be individually set up in the room. When we installed our home cinema three years ago we demo’d Sim 2 and JVC. Both makes have a good reputation and get good reviews. The former has a very bright and colourful picture which we found too garish and in your face but that is simply down to personal preference. The JVC’s are much more “cinematic” and we tried the NZ7 and NZ9. The latter is double the cost of the former! Both have been updated since, I believe, but have the same model numbers, and neither (especially the NZ9) is cheap, although JVC do produce models at less cost! We could see real improvements in the NZ9 over the NZ7 and so took the plunge and bought one. However, the projector is excellent, fantastic picture with 8k emulation (by a clever sytem that moves the pixels and fills in in between them) and brightness. We do have electric blackout blinds but the projector will function in daylight, although that is not ideal.
We have this working with a dCS Vivaldi Apex front end, CH Precision preamp (needed to bypass the signal frrom the cinema processor) into ATC SCM 200 active speakers for the fronts (also used as the primary hi fi system). The surround sound comes from a Lyngdorf processor, into multiple Lyngdorf power amps to provide 7:4:2 Dolby Atmos into ATC speakers for the centre and surrounds and Lyngdorf speakers for the heights.
We thought we would only use the cinema on the odd special occasion but we in fact use it several times a week, preferring it to the Sony TV in the living room downstairs, for both films and TV, it is a much more immersive experience, although newsreaders look quite intimidating on a 3m wide screen!! Neighbours love to come and watch films so we have regular “cinema nights” for small groups of people. They also love the sound. Overall it really is like going to the local cinema and paired with Kaleidescape you can have uncompressed video and sound.
I am not sure I would trust buying online becase you need to see the projector in action and you will need a dealer to set it up for you. If you are buying a good projector then please do not forget the screen, it is a very important part of the setup and again not cheap. We installed a Screen Research with variable masking. Looking at the projectors in your link, whist OK for presentations, they are unlikely to work well for films.
I am not sure where you are based but we demo’d the Sim 2 at Pulse cinemas and the JVC at Audiobarn, both located in Hertfordshire UK. I have no affiliation to either but Audiobarn were excellent and helped us design the whole system (h fi and cinema). They also have their own demo cinema.
Good luck and enjoy the journey.
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