Renovating at present – will have a nice family area and tempted to put in a projector. The room will have lots of glass but is in shade after midday. Looking at a ceiling mount 4 or 5 m from wall. Need to decide before we plaster.
Probably great for my occasional watching of movies and sport. Less ideal for flicking on TV but another room has one.

You really need black-out blinds to get the most from a projector. That said TV – as in shite that’s on in the day doesn’t necessarily benefit from a dark environment and you would get away with a bright projector. Your black level and contrast will be compromised.

For movie viewing though you need to be getting the room as dark as possible. Then get the projector setup/calibrated. I watch all film / series content on a projector.

Plasma as a secondary device.

My parents have one due to my mum hating having a tv Sat there in her living room. They project directly onto the wall and it actually works pretty well. The room is naturally not too bright, but even with the lights on and in the summer it’s perfectly watchable.

Their only complaint is that sometimes the fan noise can be a little intrusive at quiet sections of the film, but this is only the case when the fireplace is lit so the air temperature is probably pushing 35? near the ceiling!

Most home cinema projectors have different bulb modes where you can pump more light for a brighter room at the expense of raised blacks/shadow detail. This is okay for sport where there is no shadow detail anyway.

Was looking at the Sony 40 or 45es which have the different light levels. They are meant to be relatively quiet machines.
One reason for thinking of a projector is that we find the LED TVs quite harsh.
Thinking of projecting onto the wall – getting some of that screen paint.

You will be okay on a wall. Just make sure the paint doesn’t taint the image.

I have had one and my folks do have one. A dedicated roller pulldown screen is the easiest way to ensure good colours and brightness. If you can reach the projector where its mounted you can probably “zoom” the image so if youre not desperate for a full-size view, you can reduce the illuminated area and increase the brightness – probably better for watching daytime Jeremy Kyle when it’s light and you don’t need such a large image.

The main drawbacks of a projector are light intensity, bulb life and purchase cost.

I looked into it. I guess if you had a dedicated home cinema room then it would work fine, but the things that put me off were the cost of the decent projectors, the bulb costs and black out situation, fan noise (they can start off quiet but after a few years become noisy as the fans get covered with dust and bearings start to go) and complications of installation – it’s hard enough to hide cables and wires with a conventional screen but even harder to route them behind the ceiling.

So I decided against it for general use and just went for a 65″ screen instead. Far more convenient.

Having said that of the couple of people I know who did go the projector route, they love them. They recognise all the problems I mention above, but somehow don’t care.

I’ve had several projectors in the last 20 years. I’ve never got around to replacing a bulb. Some are 5000 hours.

Fan noise can be an issue but these days fans are pretty quiet in eco mode. Heat from them can be a pain though, especially in smaller rooms.

Cost for projector is not inconsiderable as decent models start at 700 or so. Projectors are around 300w so about the same as a plasma – 3-4p an hour depending on your tariff.

However if you want the big screen experience nothing compares (save the huge 103″ Panasonic plasmas!).

I’ve had a home cinema system setup in my 6m long lounge for several years now with a roll down screen attached to the far wall. No TV can quite replicate that cinema experience but as others have said total darkness is best so we tend to watch at night.

We usually only fire it up for blockbuster movies and every Christmas it has become a tradition in our house to pick out the big movie of the year and watch that after Cristmas dinner. The surround sound is great also because we don’t have this on our 36″ plasma screen TV which is used for everyday viewing.

Nowdays with LCD screens getting larger and cheaper I would probably go for one of them now with a decent surround sound setup as well or maybe just a soundbar.

I had the same conundrum a few months ago and bought a big tele instead, due to cost and work involved

I just can’t seem to get over excited about the big tele’s; but the prospect of a projector seems cool.

I use a second hand Sony Cinema PJ and a Beomax electric screen. Room really needs to be relatively dark, even for TV. I also have a plasma TV behind it. F1 on the PJ is intense – lifesize in car action!

A higher quality projector is possible, but the teens like to play PS on it, and quad play means they each have a 1/4 of the 108″ screen.

I use an AV amp that splits HDMI to the plasma or PJ, so surround sound is available from all sources.

We did this for a decade, didn’t watch much telly (almost none) and tended to use a PC screen for that anyway (ie streaming off internet). Projector with big 100″ screen is great for films. But you do have to have a reasonably dark room – perhaps less these days with increasing projector performance? – and it was rather expensive back then. Still not all that cheap if you want decent quality.

Old projector is a bit past it so we looked into getting another with a view to setting something up again but long summer evenings and limited light exclusion capability combined with the cost put us off. A big LED display (which we already had) these days is pretty good anyway and doesn’t demand such a devoted viewing arrrangement.

I use a small pocket projector for all my TV/Film viewings and it is perfect for me.
I only tried the projector after my 42″ tv broke, and I do not want to get another tv again.
I have a small room and the tv took up a huge space in the corner, and now instead of sitting watching tv during the day, I find myself doing more interesting/worthwhile things. I only usually put my projector on at night and my room looks bigger without a huge tv in the corner as I use a 100″ pull down screen.

I have a blind I pull down over my window if I want to watch anything during the day.

I think a room looks nicer without a huge black TV sitting there taking up lots of space.

I think I’m sold on the seasonal variation – if its light then I should be outside. Dark then movies are OK. Wife has said do what I want. So I think for once I will.

We’ve been using an infocus in76 for 8 years, no TV in house.

I’m not all that bothered about live TV content and so just watch films/sport/game on the projector whenever we fancy it. I’m still on the 1st lamp too!

Our lamp definitely faded and we bought two new ones over the projector’s lifetime, I had to take apart the thing to clean the spinning glass a few times too (both of which made a big difference to performance). However that was years ago, they are probably better in all respects now.

WRT lamp life, depending on budget you may be now able to find a unit with non-incandescent light source… Some Epson’s have had blue lasers for a while, and LED’s have really come on. I confess I’m not up to speed on this though, budget been too tight for a while!

Ours is actually due for replacement and has probably faded but the picture is still very good.