Home Theater Projectors Gaining In Popularity

A few generations ago, home theater projectors were viewed as a dream to end the need for home video film being enlarged on a wall or a bed sheet hanging in the middle of the room. As recent as 10 years ago, business projectors began making a surge for making business presentations to large audiences and the use of front projectors was extremely limited, mainly due to the room size needs and the cost. Business projectors offered images in a 4:3 aspect ratio and cost around $1000 while home theater projectors offer a 13:9 aspect ratio, typical of high definition and could cast between $2,000 and $10,000.

Room size is a deciding factor of whether home theater projectors can be used in a traditional environment. Most homes are simply not long enough to use the projectors as a back of room source for movies. Additionally, most of the home theater projectors are designed for use in near total darkness and many homes have too much ambient light to make viewing appealing. Especially during the day the images tend to be washed out and lack detail.

There are some that have adapted the brighter business projectors for use in the home, but the aspect ratio usually cannot be adjusted to match the wide screen needs of many digital video sources. Some of the home theater projectors also are designed to enhance the dark colors of the projection to provide better detail during dark scenes in the videos.

Projector Position May Eliminate Use

In some entertainment venues, the home theater projectors are hung from the ceiling or placed on shelves on the walls and aimed at a centered viewing screen. They can also be placed on tables in the center or the back of the room, depending on the distance from the screen, but projectors on lower surfaces also run the risk of having the image blocked by people walking in front of the units.

The screen surface on which the image is projected may also render the image less sharp than is viewed on a traditional high definition television. The surface texture may detract from the clarity as the home theater projectors are also enlarging the video, similar to the way the image was enlarged with the old style film projectors. While they are in wide use in commercial theaters, the transition from traditional television to home theater projectors is slow, but with the current prices around $2,000 is expected to being increasing in the near future.