i have been thinking about purchasing a projector for a long time now. it’s been a long time since i first started looking into the buy. naively, i thought that i would be able to quickly decide which projector i wanted to get and just buy it. it turns out that like any major purchase, there is a lot of research that needs to be done to make a smart buy.

originally, i was thinking about getting a 720p projector. it seemed like a good idea. it’s a good value buy as 720p projectors seem to have fallen out of vogue and are at rock bottom prices. would the difference between a 720p projector and a 1080p projector really be noticed? it turns out that for the size screen that i’m getting, and the distance from the screen i am at, you actually CAN make a difference.

this decision was not quite that simple, though. what put me over the top and make the plunge to the 1080p projectors was that my company had decided to close its doors. in doing so, they are letting all of us go and giving us severance packages. it is with this severance package that i decided that once i secure a new job, i can make the plunge.

well, it’s the end of the month, the company is out of business, and the severance package should be on its way. so here i am making the purchase.

the details of the buy are after the jump if you are really so inclined.

of course, the centerpiece of the new home theatre system is the epson powerlite home cinema 1080 ub. it is an LCD-based 1080p projector. there are difference schools of thought for what kind of technology is best. DLP, LCD, LCoS: it was all a bunch of acronyms to me at first. what it boils down to what projector would work in the space that i have available. there are some projectors that will work more easily with smaller spaces with inflexible projector placements.

and the projector needs something to, you know, project an image on to. this was another tough decision for me. the cheapest option is to just get some kind of pull down screen. they are cheap and effective. true home theatre enthusiasts probably would scoff at pull downs because of the ripples and waves that they are susceptible to. any movement from the screen will degrade the image quality of the projector. with big screens, there can be rippling due to little things like air conditioning, the wind, or who know what.

it seems the preferred screens are actually tensioned fixed frame screens mounted on the wall. the problem with that is that you will always have this big screen on your wall. this might not be a problem if you have a dedicated theatre room, but for a multi-use room, this could be a problem.

my compromise was to purchase an elite cinetension2 screen. this screen is a motorized, tab-tensioned screen that can be operated via a remote control. this seems like a fantastic solution, though at a cost. a similar pull down screen is nearly 5 times as inexpensive!!

of course you’re gonna need cables to connect all of this stuff! HDMI cables, component, splitters, and the like, it’s all there.