Projector & Screen OR LED/Plasma TV?
A commonly asked question for any home theatre system is should I use a projector or LED/Plasma TV. To find out what is best for your situation, you or your home theatre designer should ask some of the following questions;
– Will this be a dedicated theatre room or an open living area
– Will the system be used for general viewing or just to view movies
– Do you want the image to be bigger than 65 inches
– Will there be ambient light in the room from doorways and windows
If there is a lot of ambient light in the room, like in most living/family rooms, then an LED or plasma TV will work best. Projector systems don’t work well with lots of ambient light unless you have a special type of projector screen and a really bright projector, which can be quite expensive. Without this, the image washes out and is hard to see.
A projector and screen is great in rooms were there is little or no ambient light and give a real cinema feel. They are also the most cost-effective way of getting an image over 65 inches. People are always surprised at how cost-effective projector systems have become with projectors and screens packs starting as low as $3000.00
Projector screens coming in many formats making them flexible for your room such as
– 4:3 older video format
– 16:9 widescreen
– 16:10 mainly used with computers
– 2.35:1 Cinemascope
16:9 widescreen most people are familiar with as current LED and Plasma TVs use this format. A question we get asked all the time is ” How come we have black bars at the top and bottom of our image when we watch a movie?” Well, most movies are recorded in 2:35:1 Cinemascope. As the 2.35:1 format is much wider than your 16:9 format it is compressed down to fit into your widescreen TV. So the image doesn’t look stretched from top to bottom it is pulled into ratio with the width giving you the black bars above and below.
To get an image in the 2.35:1 format like at the movies you need a 2.35:1 projector screen and an anamorphic lens. The anamorphic lens slides in front of the lens of your projector. Each projector system does it differently but generally select the 4:3 Letterbox format stretching your image to the full height of the screen. You then slide your anamorphic lens into the position which pulls the image out wide to fill the screen.
Another great option for projector screens is acoustic transparency. With an acoustically transparent screen, you can hide speakers directly behind the screen. This is great if you need the speakers to be in a particular position or like the aesthetic look of not seeing speakers. Always check with your manufacturer of the minimum distances the screen needs to be from the speakers. One size doesn’t fit with some being as close as 50mm to others over 300mm from the front of the speaker.
For more information on projectors, screens, LED/Plasma TV’s or to book an appointment with one of our designers please contact us on
Ph 1300 795 469
E: sales@mccormickconcepts.com.au
