that1dude
Auditioning
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2009
- Messages
- 14
- Real Name
- Bill
I'm going to be building a theater in my basement. After several years of trying to convince myself its the most important thing I can do with that several thousand dollar investment, I've come to the conclusion that I don't really need all that. I just want it to be cool, not pretentious. Maybe pretentious isn't the right word, but my audio will be coming from a $200 Panasonic 5.1 home theater in a box that's served me just fine upstairs to this point, not some acoustically perfect $20,000 system. My theater will be relatively pretty, but not acoustically perfect, and will have no back wall so I can see it from the game room to shoot pool while watchin' sports. Basically, my interest is having a BIG picture down there. It should be awesome for watching sports & races, great for movies, and fun for playin' Wii. The more I read through here, the more I see the fine art of home theater is infinitely more involved than I'm planning to do. I'm looking into going the used route for my projector to save substantial amounts of money.
I found a Panasonic PT-AE900 for sale used. Its got a little over 800 hours on the lamp, and they want 500 bucks for it. This seems like a good price to me since the lamp should last 3000 hours and the specs are considerably better than those of anything else in this price range I've seen so far, including used stuff. Basically the way I see it is that I've got 2000 hours left, so at 4 hours per movie/race/game/party, I get to use it 500 times, so I've got a huge screen for about a dollar a day. I see lamps for it online for around $315 shipped, so if I replace the lamp down the road its still not as expensive as buying a comparable projector for $3,000+. What am I missing here?
Then, after the projector, Any reason not to get a cheap screen too? Keep in mind my goal is not the ultimate cinematic experience. I've seen 120" screens for as little as 80 bucks online, will those suffice? Whats an $800 screen got that those don't?
So, for projector, screen, and audio, I'm looking at
I found a Panasonic PT-AE900 for sale used. Its got a little over 800 hours on the lamp, and they want 500 bucks for it. This seems like a good price to me since the lamp should last 3000 hours and the specs are considerably better than those of anything else in this price range I've seen so far, including used stuff. Basically the way I see it is that I've got 2000 hours left, so at 4 hours per movie/race/game/party, I get to use it 500 times, so I've got a huge screen for about a dollar a day. I see lamps for it online for around $315 shipped, so if I replace the lamp down the road its still not as expensive as buying a comparable projector for $3,000+. What am I missing here?
Then, after the projector, Any reason not to get a cheap screen too? Keep in mind my goal is not the ultimate cinematic experience. I've seen 120" screens for as little as 80 bucks online, will those suffice? Whats an $800 screen got that those don't?
So, for projector, screen, and audio, I'm looking at