# Projector



## theaa (Sep 25, 2020)

I'm searching for the best projector to buy and I hope you guys can help me.
So, my specifications are:
maximum price: 1500€ /1.745$
Distance between screen and projector spot: ~300cm / 118in
screen size: 110'' 16:9

To get 110'' at 3 meters distance, only short throw projectors can do, right?
I found this LG HF85LA, is any good?


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## Da Wiz (May 8, 2019)

No projector ever manufactured can produce images as good as a well-chosen flat-panel UHD/HDR quantum dot flat panel TV. For under $2000, there are NO projectors that can display UHD resolution and the luminance capabilities of projectors in that price range on a 110-inch screen and you won't have more than 90 nits for the projector's peak white capability. If you get a screen with "gain" to bring the peak white level up a little, it is nearly (and maybe, completely) impossible to find one without Hot Spot problems once you go past 1.3 gain or so. Certainly beyond 1.5 gain you're going to have hot spots (the area of the screen that is ALWAYS in the center of your field of vision appears to be a ball of mosquitoes flying in front of the image. It's not literally a bright spot, it is very different and because the pixels are all flickering, it looks like "soft" "static" in the central viewing area. You can find 65-inch TVs with up to 3000 nits capability for HDR. That makes HDR and the UHD expanded color space look FAR better than it can look on ANY projector. Also... if you think you may be able to get away with using inexpensive projection lamps when the original is used up, projector manufacturers sometimes do nefarious things when you put in a projection lamp they did not sell. For example, I had an Epson xx40 projector here for a while and the lamp finally got unbearably dim, so rather than paying $300 for an Epson lamp, I ordered a $60 "clone" Epson lamp with PRECISELY the same molded housing around the lamp. Upon install, the projector made a beep beep beep beep sound anytime it was turned-on with the non-Epson lamp installed. Put the Epson lamp back in, no alarm. So Epson puts a hidden feature somewhere in their lamps that the clone lamps don't know about so it's not copied to the inexpensive replacements. Do not forget that when you START with 90 nits or so on a fresh lamp, when you get rid of the lamp (if it doesn't fail first), you will only be getting around 45 nits. The "magic" of a big screen is completely lost when you start with an inexpensive projector. I have a $35,000 UHD/HDR projector in the back of my room, a current model. It has a light source with over 50 blue lasers aimed at a spinning yellow phosphor disc that glows bright yellow. The yellow light is split into green and red light and some of the blue laser light is used to create on-screen images. It reproduces about 90% of the expanded color space of UHD and it can get up to 220 nits of peak white brightness. I have a 113 inch screen with motorized masking done with remote control, Projectors are 15 feet (12.9m) from the screen and have amazingly good lenses at that price point. Compared to a $900 Hisense UHD/HDR ULED (their term for quantum dot)... I can pick either one to watch TV shows and movies on and I pick the $900 TV every time for the last 3 months. The projector hasn't been used at all in that time. If you are COMPLETELY dedicated to NOT enjoying UHD/HDR content on your system, be my guest. But be aware, that in your price range, the optical quality of the components in the light path, including the lens, are not very special. The lens alone makes images look softer than ANY flat screen TV because TVs have no "opitical path components". So your nice big 110 inch screen is going to be big and not very sharp. For a 110 inch screen with HD resolution being displayed, the proper seating distance is 2 times the height of the screen. The 110 inch screen is 62 inches high in 16:9 format. That means you should sit agout 12 feet from a 110 inch screen if your highest resolution being displayed is 1080p. Sit closer than that, and you will see individual pixels and every pixel that isn't perfectly aligned with the grid will also be "off". Then there is the problem of black level. Projectors in your price range are terrible at reproducing black... though if your projector can't produce more than 30 nits on your overly large screen (for an inexpensive projector), you just might think blacks are OK because the screen is so dim. The TV however, produces JET BLACK with new tech and full array backlights. If you haven't noticed, when your blacks get too bright, you begin hating your images pretty quickly. Just try raising your brightness/black level control enough that your blacks are obviously no longer black and watch TV for a bit. I bet you HATE it. But that's what you will have with your setup. In 15 years, I predict projectors will no longer exist. They are tech that is on the verge of permanent replacement. Even movie theaters don't want projectors any more because they just cannot do what large LED panels can do. There are already some theaters here and there that have converted to projection-screen size LED walls. As production ramps up and becomes more efficient, prices will drop and eventually will compete with even inexpensive projectors. Projection just CANNOT do what is required for UHD/HDR images. As long as you understand all of this, you are free to do what you like, but remember, I have a $35,000 projector in the room that hasn't been turned on in 3 months because flat panel TVs, even $900 ones from Hisense, produce FAR better looking images with all content but especially with UHD/HDR content which is widely available on Amazon Prime Video and Netflix as long as you have a fast enough internet connection (80 Mbps ought to be enough). But UHD/HDR DISCS are the best video source we have, and they are spectacular on a bright flat-panel TV. And decidedly NOT spectacular on the $35k projector.


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## rdcollns (Oct 13, 2013)

I disagree with almost everything the previous poster stated. We have a 55" 4K TV with a perfect picture, and it is fine for TV. When we watch movies, we always watch on the projector. The screen is vivid and detailed (even though it is only 1080p), and most important, immersive. Even when I had a 10 year old 720p projector installed a few months ago, my entire family and I still preferred watching on the projector. My setup is very similar to yours, and I went with the Viewsonic PJD7828HDL. It isn't the best on contrast, but you can watch in daylight, so it is a tradeoff. I tried two different 4K projectors from Benq and Infocus first, both of which were higher quality but they unfortunately had some bad quirks I couldn't live with, your experience might be different. LG also makes a short throw LED unit that intrigued me, the HU70LA, I do wish I tried that as well to jump right up to 4K. We project onto a wall painted in flat gray paint, which I think is key to avoiding any kind of glare. Personally, I see a lot more glare from ambient light on my regular TV. Gain etc. are totally unnecessary with a projector like this because it is a light cannon. In a light controlled room, the image is beautiful. In a room with lots of daylight, everyone still enjoys it, especially with baseball and football where the players are nearly lifesize. I wouldn't watch a dark horror movie in daylight. I am able to get crisp focus edge to edge, but it is admittedly more difficult than it was on my old projector that had glass optics. One final thing about projectors vs large flatscreen TVs, is that my eyes never get tired watching a projector. Something about a flatscreen beaming light at my eyes, vs a projector's light being reflected off a wall makes my eyes fatigued after a couple hours.


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