HUGE screen home cinema under £400

Magic_Time

oops... posted this on the consumables board by mistake....

HUGE screen home cinema under £400
For anyone like me who has been drooling over big screen TVs for years but always been put off by the price, here's a radical alternative that I'm very glad I considered!

The Optoma DV11 is an all-in-one home cinema projector, which means it combines a projector, DVD player and speakers all in one unit. It also comes with a storage/carry case, the idea being that you get it out when you fancy a movie night, sit it on a coffee table and point it at a blank wall (or screen, if you want to splash out on one). Being all-in-one it's very quick to set up and put away, and the only trailing wire is the power cord.

According to the Tesco website the model is now discontinued, which probably explains why the price has recently dropped to £399 at various websites. If you order one from Amazon at the minute you also get a free subwoofer - unfortunately I missed out on this offer because I ordered it elsewhere before Amazon dropped their price from £459. (Not that I'm that bothered, the built-in speakers sound fine to me.)

Obviously there are some downsides. It's not HD, it doesn't have surround sound and it's probably not ideal as a permanent fixture in your living room for watching TV (especially because the lamps in these things have a limited lifespan of around 2000 hours, and cost around £100 to replace). But if your reason for wanting a big screen is wanting to watch DVD movies on it a couple of nights a week, I don't see how you could beat this for £400. I get an 80" image in my living room with the projector sitting on a coffee table just in front of my sofa, around 8 feet from the far wall (I mention this because the image gets bigger the further you move the projector from the screen - so if you've got loads of space you could have an even bigger picture, whereas if you're using it in a smaller room you'll get a smaller one).

In all honesty, if I'd spent £800 plus on a 42" or 50" TV and then seen this in action, I would have been KICKING myself. I am now a confirmed convert to projectors and would recommend anyone to explore this option in general whether or not this particular model is right for them (e.g. someone wanting to watch HD films is going to want an HD model).

This probably reads like a sales pitch, especially as this is my first post in quite a while - but I promise, I'm just wanting to share what I think is a bit of a well-kept secret: that you can get DVD-quality pictures four times the size a 42" TV can offer for around half the price.