The time has come to buy a new projector. Our old projector, a Philips cBright XG2, was a great little piece of kit but after the buld failed we just never got round to replacing it. I've priced up a new bulb and the cheapest I can find one for is £367. Rather a lot for a bulb I'm sure you would agree. You can buy a projector for around £350 to £400 so it is touch and touch and go whether it's cheaper to get a projector or a bulb. The problem is this: our existing projector is fairly good still in terms of specs. It's XGA (1024x768) and has fair brightness (1200 lumens) but the contrast isn't great (300:1) and it's noisy. A new projector will have greater contrast, about the same brightness, will be quiter but probably lower resolution. I'm wondering, however, whether the lower resolution is that much of an issue as the new projector will be designed for home cinema use and therefore have a 16:9 display. We exclusivly watch DVDs on the projector so it makes sense to get one that displays this type of media best. Essentially that means going for a one with a WVGA display (854x480) or WXGA (1280x720). DVD resolution is normally 480 lines (matching NTSC) so a WVGA display should produce a very good looking picture. The XGA display of our old projector needed to scale the image and while it did a fine job of it I am assured that image quality suffers quite a lot on scaling

Another factor to think about is the future. At the moment there is very little HD content out there but that is likely to change in the future. The two most common HD formats that will be available are 720p and 1080i (there's also 480p and 576p designed to replace existing NTSC and PAL). A projector capable of displaying 1080i directly is a long way out of our price range but a 720p might just about be within our limit if we buy it with the intention of replacing the bulb. The reason I'm willing to stretch to 720 is because that may well turn out to be the most common format. The 720p format hits a nice sweet spot between the current resolution and the bandwidth hogging 1080i. Being progressive as well the picture refresh is more pleasing to the eye. Certainly it is likely that most broadcast media will be 720p rather then 1080i as it uses less bandwidth but produves a good picture. If we are intending to replace the bulb it will be necessary to base the decision also on how much a bulb costs. 

So what to do. There is such a range of projectors out there now that I felt the need to compile a list of likely candidates. Hopefully I will be able to pick a winner at the end. Note: all prices shown include VAT.

Benq W100

This is a nice looking entry level projector. It's WVGA so scores a plus there and it accepts all HD resolutions. It's got all the right connectors and generally ticks the other boxes. All the reviews I have read indicate that this is a good little machine. Being DLP it has a good contrast ratio of 2500:1 so blacks should be good and black (my only gripe with our esiting projector was that blacks were more like greys). It's not quite as bright as our last projector as 1100 lumens but we never had a problem with brightness preferring a darkend room to give more of a cinima feel. Projector Point are currently selling this model for £467.65 but I'm fairly sure it's possible to pick it up for much les than that. They are also the only place that I have found the bulbs on offer at about £175.

Benq PE7700 

Now this projector at £1038.70 from Just Projectors is outside our price range but it's a very nice looking machine and caught my eye immediatly. It's WXGA so will handle HD content well and should make a good job of displaying DVD content. Bulb life is stated as 2000 to 3000 hours (3000 hours using econo-mode). Which in our experience is generally exactly what you get. It's DLP so the contrast is good at 2500:1. It has all the standard inputs and a six segment colour wheel. A six segment colour wheel is realy a must as it helps stop strange colour distortions as you move your head that can happen with three colour wheels (called rainbow distortions or colour seperation distortions). Finally it has a rather remarkable zoom ratio of 1.37:1 (rare on a cheap projector). The bulbs for this projector are currently going for a rather respectable £190. Reviews 1 2 seem to be good. The DLP chip is a HD2+. Early models of this projector were total lemons. The bulb blew after < 200 hours in most cases. Apparently it was fixed with a firmware update and models after mid-2006 seem to be unaffected.

Mitsubishi HD1000U

This is a sub-$1000 720p projector (so we're talking probably £900 pounds here - sigh) with everyone saying it has a fantasic picture. One review even said it was noticably better than their current XGA projector. Brightness is excellent at 1500 lumens and contrast is fair for a DLP at 2500:1. Lamp life is the standard 2000 full / 3000 eco but bulbs are apparently very expensive although I couldn't actually find a price (I found prices for HD1000 bulbs ant they were around £200). The colour wheel is 7 segment 4x so rainbo problems should be minimal and the 720 resolution should mean screen door (wire mesh for us in the UK?) shouldn't be a problem. Reviews 1 seem to be very good. 

Optoma HD70

Having now read a lengthy review of this projector I think it is probably the one to go for. It appears to have a virtually unsurrpased price / performance ratio providing an excellent for picture for the price. Birghtness was apparently average and contrast was fair but not great but then that is in comparison to the HD1000U and much more expensive projectors. Either way I believe it will be a substantial improvement over what we have. As with most entry level projectors it's DLP and uses Darkmetal technology. The colour wheel is 4x 7 segment which accounts for the loss in contrast (one segment is clear). Reviews 1 2 good to excellent. Bulbs are a pretty reasonable price £140, £133, £135. The price is unfortunately higher than we would have liked at £675 (P+P 9.95), £678 (P+P) ?, £679 (P+P £6)

Reviews 1  

Optoma H27

Reviews 1  

DLP Technology

The type of chip being used in a DLP projector make a difference to the image being displayed. There are various different flavours commonly in use these include HD2, HD2+, HD4 and xHD4. HD2 is old now and considered fairly poor. HD4 is fair but the resolution is 640x720. It makes up the extra pixels needed to display 720p by using a mirror wobbling technology. HD2+ is full 720 resoltion (1280x720) and therefore gives an excellent picture with a 720p source. The best is xHD4 which is a wobbled 1080 resolution (960x1080). Read more about it here .