LCD Projector Advice?

[pmk]

Hi All,

Any advice on an LCD Projector that displays photos nicely but doesn't break the bank. There seem to be SO many on the market it's dizzying.....

Price is a major consideration.

Thank you,

pmk

[Jon]

Define "Break the bank". And what's the minimum resolution you'd find acceptable?

[pmk]

The use would be primarily for PP presentations, however, I hope to also use it for showing DVD films at mid-size venues, say for 150 people. Lumens would probably need to be around 2000.

I guess I'm thinking that 1024 x 768 would be the minimum resolution.

Free would be good, but certainly under a grand....

pmk

[Andrew Pratt]

Look for a Sanyo Z5. They're excellent projectors and very reasonably priced these days.

[Wilt]

Note that LCD projectors all have a 'native resolution' and additionally they have 'supported resolution' specifications. For example, a 1024x768 pixel LCD projector might use software to support input port resolutions up to 1280x1024. OTOH, you will find that two different 1024x768 projectors can have significantly different quality (bad vs. good) of reproducing the same 1280x1024 image!

And also, their ability to accurately reproduce different colors is quite variable as well. In trying to find projectors that could reproduce medical images with color annotations, for example, certain input colors might reproduce poorly, and be shown on screen as completely different colors (or even almost invisible colors!)

Lastly, with the advent of wide screen laptop PCs, how the projector reproduces a 5:4 aspect ratio image (4x5 or 8x10) vs. how the 16:9 LCD of the computer reproduces the same image, might be disappointing! Especially disappointing might be Portrait orientation photos projected, since it crams the long axis of the photo into the short axis of the projector. You gotta wonder when they finally figure out the need for square LCDs for digital photo projection purposes!