Cinema is the one place that no matter what age or gender that will likely to go for some family entertainment or even with friends. Thanks to the pandemic that enjoyment is pretty much non existing for now at least. Home cinema or theater has been the next best thing to have. This days with so much high resolution content from blu ray discs to online streaming. Is totally no brainer to seat at home to enjoy the endless titles of movies.
Traditionally, it has been the TV that dominant the home theater or I will say TV is a common hardware you can find in almost every home in nearly any countries around the world. The best thing is the prices of TV this days is very much encouraging and the size of TV is easily goes up to 85" with affordable price. Although that is the case but a relatively large screen size of 100" or more still is unreachable for most for the TV. The best alternative option is the projector. The same can be said for projector as well with much affordable price and easily bought this days.
For people who are venturing into projector or about to take the plunge, there are few things to consider to get the best of projector or the very least avoiding any blunder. Of course the first thing will be the projector itself. What kind of projector, just like TV with many different models and specs. Probably when choosing a display (TV or Projector) will think about the picture quality in term on resolution. Is either fullHD or 4k display. Is pretty straight probably for most to go with 4k however this will be also more costly. Next thing which is very important is the light source. Traditionally projector uses lamp as light source. Just like TV using backlighting as light source. Recent years, laser is being introduce as light source to the projector world. Now the thing with different light source of course will give you different kind of picture quality and so on but the thing most people will consider is the cost. Laser projector is more costly than the lamp projector. Of course the good thing about laser is the long life span compare to a lamp that might burn out in about 3000-4000 hours. Different brands of projector the cost vary as well.
The next part of the light source is how it is use to project the image into the screen. There are 2 types which is the 3LCD and DLP. As from the image you can see that 3 LCD uses 3 pieces of mirros for 3 prime colours of red, green, blue to project the image. Whereas DLP uses a colour wheel for the 3 prime colours. DLP being the more simple setup also means the cost is lower than 3 LCD in general of course in term of picture quality, 3 LCD will be preferred as the colour is more accurate.
Of course once you know which projector to go, you will also want to know screen. There are many screen types but the main consideration to start will be the size. How big you want your screen to be. This need to depend on your projector throw as well. What is means is that, how far away the projector from the screen to have the size that you want. Every projector is different. This is best refer to the projector brand with proper calculator to get this right. Also you can consider acoustic transparent screen. Meaning the screen has micro or tiny holes for sound to pass through. With this kind of screen you can place speakers behind the screen and not blocking the sound. Finally we can choose for fixed screen or roll up screen.
Projector and screen is done and next will be placing the projector. Some prefer to mount the projector, some will place it on some rack or furniture. Now if you do mount the projector, it is important to know the mount so you will know if that fit your projector. Not all projector will fit into standard projector mount. Also the weight need to be consider. The placement of the mount is important to make sure you can have the projection image throw into your screen. Some projector do have function to move the display or screen shift. If your projector doesn't do that, than is even more important to place the mounting accurately for the display to be in proper size and location.
Last but not least is the HDMI cable. Assuming with projector, usually you will need long run cable from player to the projector. Usually cable length is really not much of a concern, after all it is digital cable. Now the thing with long run cable is the speed of the cable will reduce on long distance. Again this is not much of a concern most of the time. Now the issue we need to consider is the 4k HDR or HDR+. To enable 4k 60hz image with full colour chroma of 4:4:4, the cable need to be able to sustain 18 Gbps speed. What happen if it fail ? The possibility of not getting any image. The audio part is fine as HDMI can carry any kind of surround format without issue. Normal copper cable is not enough to run high speed. Its like home high speed internet is usually fiber cables are use. This apply as well for HDMI. To achieve high speed requirement for the display, fiber HDMI is the answer to it.
Finally once you have your hardware setup is time to enjoy your movie with some nice popcorn.
