Buying a projector for the man Cave

Aidanspaghetti

Hi all....
currently converting  my shed to a man cave/ music room and am gonna put a projector in it for PC/Xbox/ps4 fun too... I’ve a pit of lazy boys and a 5.1 surround system too

I’ve been looking at the Optoma gt 1080 Darbee aS it seems to be great for gaming but I hear great things about the BenQ one too.... 3D will be a great plus for the kids also...
any advice on the projector front? I’m guessing 4K projectors will be common as muck in about 3 years and I’m not looking for 4K anyways so should I just buy something like the Optoma HD 142 for about e500 and replace it in a few years time? As most YT videos are terrible for home gaming setups has anyone used one and been happily pleased?

my next question therefore is the screen.... I have a space of about 10foot by 7 for the screen wall.... will I just go with a pair of ikea blinds initially and see how I get on?
Cheers!

Sporky

My main recommendation would be don't buy a single-DLP projector - the yellows are always awful. 3LCD is much better.

4K will get more affordable but I wouldn't spend more on it (rather than full HD) at the moment; a decent screen will give more improvement.

strumjoughlamps

@Sporky  is defo the forum man for this..

my tuppence worth is I’ve seen a better image on a lesser spec machine projected on a good screen than a better spec machine on a cheap screen. 

Sporky

Screens are tricky - the most important contributor to projected image quality is ambient light, as the ambient light level sets your black level. There are fancy screen fabrics that reject off-axis light but they're ludicrously expensive compared to a set of decent blinds and a basic pull-down screen.

FX_Munkee

Sporky said:

My main recommendation would be don't buy a single-DLP projector - the yellows are always awful. 3LCD is much better.

4K will get more affordable but I wouldn't spend more on it (rather than full HD) at the moment; a decent screen will give more improvement.

What he said, I'm always amazed how unpopular 3*LCD projectors are. For small scale stuff they're perfect. Single DMD devices use a spinning colour wheel in front of the DMD and are always going to produce washed out colours and lower brightness because of basic physics.

If you have enough brightness a grey blind will be enough, if you're scraping around for lumens you'll need a more specialised surface.

Alternatively consider removing a wall of the cave, replacing with a framed screen and going rear projection

I used to design digital projectors.for a living.

Sporky

I had a quick Google and Epson do a £500ish full HD 3LCD projector. Working from just the specs (and having used a few hundred Epsons ) that looks worth investigation. 

Aidanspaghetti

Good gen lads! @Sporky ..Is that the 143? I think I'ev narrowed my choice down to that - itll be perfect for a few years until 4k becomes a bit more practical... I've been looking at screens from Newegg .. Some relatively cheap, big options there....

Sporky

Nope - I was looking at the Epson:

https://www.epson.co.uk/products/projectors/home-cinema/eh-tw650

There are three 1-star reviews; two don't like the inbuilt speaker (well, duh) and one thought they could stream full HD video to it via wifi.

All the people who read what it was for before buying it gave it 4 or 5 out of 5...