The heart of home theater is the projector. The quality of the picture on the screen, its brightness and contrast, closeness to reality depend on its characteristics. But even on such an important component, you can wisely save and choose a high-quality projector in the price segment up to 500 thousand rubles. The top 5 at the end of the article will help you navigate specific brands.
Features of Home Cinema Projectors
We meet with projectors in different spheres of life - they help to have fun, study and work. However, home cinema equipment differs from others in a number of characteristics.
- High contrast images - cinema projector produces the deepest blacks possible.
- Resolution - this indicator for modern technology should be at least FULL HD.
- Possibility of installation adjustments and settings - the projector has a wide range of focal lengths and the possibility of vertical and horizontal optical lens shift.
Three home cinema projector technologies
A home cinema projector can operate on one of three main technologies.
The first technology is called 3LCD, it was created by Epson. In this type of projector, light passes through three LED arrays that turn specific pixels on or off. The prism then collects the beam into a single image that hits the screen. Projectors based on this technology are inexpensive and have good contrast and brightness. But a huge disadvantage is the open optical unit, which quickly clogs up and requires frequent cleaning and repair. It is better not to smoke in cinema halls with such projectors - dirt in the equipment will appear with spots and stains on the screen. Another disadvantage is that there is a lot of space between pixels, which results in a large pixel grid, which can be very noticeable to the eye.
The second technology is LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon or liquid crystals on silicon). This technology does not work in transmission, but in reflection. The matrices are located on a special mirror. A beam of light hitting it is reflected or not reflected through certain pixels.
The technology allows them to be placed quite close to each other without annoying mesh, and also to get a deep black color. The disadvantage of LCOS is the high cost, which affects the price of the projectors, and the difficulty in obtaining bright images.
DLP (Digital Light Processing) technology is based on a single Texas Instruments chip, consisting of two million micromirrors. They change their position in space and reflect the light either onto the screen or into the absorber. Among the advantages of the technology are low cost, a sealed optical unit, good contrast, rich colors and a beautiful picture. The main drawback is the rainbow effect, which appears when looking from one object on the screen to another. Up to 70% of people see it. The effect is due to the fact that the luminous flux, before hitting the matrix, passes through a multi-segment multi-colored wheel rotating at high speed - this compensates for the presence of only one matrix, reflecting or non-reflecting light. The wheel rotates very quickly, the color change should not be noticeable, but whoever sees the rainbow effect will always notice it.
Top 5 Home Theater Projectors
We present to you the top 5 projectors up to 500 thousand rubles, which will help you to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of your favorite cinema with high quality.
In fifth place, SONY VPL-HW65ES is a projector based on the previous generation FULL HD matrix. It costs about 230 thousand rubles and has a contrast ratio of 120,000: 1. Based on SXRD technology, Sony's trademark for LCOS technology. The projector does not support modern HDR format.
In fourth place is the BenQ W1100H projector. It is based on single-chip DLP technology and has a rainbow effect. The projector has a good brightness, it is 2200 LM; contrast - 50,000: 1. It supports the modern ULTRA HD and HDR format and costs about 390 thousand rubles.
In third place is the JVC LX-UH1 projector. It costs only 180 thousand rubles, has a brightness of 2000 LM, is based on the latest generation DLP technology, which makes small electronic interpolation shifts. Because of this, you end up with a 4k picture.
In second place is JVC DLA-x7900BE. It is based on LCOS technology. The brightness is 1900 LM, the contrast is 130,000: 1. It costs around 400 thousand rubles. This projector also supports pixel shift technology and displays a full 4K picture despite the fact that it has a FULL HD matrix.
The gold in the rating remains with the Epson EH-TW9400 projector. It costs about 240 thousand rubles, for this money the user receives equipment that supports all modern formats, has a full-fledged electronic lens shift. The contrast ratio is 1,200,000: 1 and is very bright at 2,600 lumens. But this projector is based on 3LCD technology, the optical block of the projector is not protected from dust and smoke, which means that it will have to be removed, cleaned and repaired more often.