The joy of a digital projector

A couple of weeks back, I was having a party at my place, and I knew that my little 17" TV wouldn't cut it for the amount of people who were coming over. My work has a few digital projectors, so I borrowed one for the night to hook up to use for gaming or movies.

I had never really used one of these things before, and I absolutely fell in love with it. I wasn't sure how the quality of the image would be, especially since I was just projecting the image straight onto my wall, but I was amazed at how sharp and detailed the quality really was. There, really, is nothing sexier (when it comes to electronic things) than playing games or watching movies on a huge "screen" on your wall. Christ, on the four-player games, each person's section itself was bigger than my entire TV.

I checked on prices for digital projectors, and sadly found that the one I had borrowed was a $4,000 unit. That's a lot, but the thing is, a lot of flatscreen TVs cost more than that for far smaller of an image. I've really decided that if I ever have the money for a really nice TV, I'd really think hard about one of these things. It's kind of a pain to get set up, because you have to have it across the room and deal with cables and whatnot, but man it'd be a sweet set-up.

The first pic is with flash just for comparison to other things (my TV, consoles, etc.), and the second pic is without flash for seeing the image better. One of the guys brought over the arcade-quality Pop'n controllers... that, along with Pop'n huge on my wall, was just so wonderful.

Nice!

holy shit.

Damn.....that is sexy...

Our school has one of these (and a "smartboard" screen) in damn near every classroom.

Last year, I used the P4 machines in the biology room during my study hall to play Quake 3 with four or five friends nearly every day, and the PC hooked up to the projector was the server, and spectated from a bird's-eye view. Sexy, indeed.

Yeah, I learned about this hookup when I worked for the A/V department in my college. The entire set up rocks, especially if you have the sound system to back it up. It's pricey to create, but if you have the extra cash to burn and love playing games I suggest you buy it.

Oh, and the bulbs aren't cheap either. They last about 1,000 hours but can cost a few hundred dollars. That's where you really get screwed.

My friend and I did this a few years back on halloween night. We built a white screen roughly the size of a movie screen and hung it off the back of his two story house. We watched horror movies and hooked up the Dreamcast and played DOA2.

I thought gaming was bad for projection tv's?

Hmm gonna go get a game manual and find them infamous warnings, that I never pay attention to.

A digital projector is different from a projection TV.

Back in college we had DDR running with the projector as well as some Halo multiplayer action. The quality is indeed amazing.