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Your Viewing Habits

By Art Feierman

Consider Your Viewing Habits

Before projector shopping, please ask yourself two very important questions:

  1. What type of content will I be viewing?
  2. When will I be viewing and also when?

When considering content, think:  Movies, TV (HDTV), Sports (we consider an almost separate category), Gaming, or even using your projector as a computer screen.

Projector for Movies Only?

If your purpose for owning a projector is almost exclusively to watch movies, your overall requirements will be different from someone who likes movies and sports equally (as one example).  If you are an “explore the world type”  (DiscoveryHD, TravelHD, SmithsonianHD, etc.), you may not need quite as ideal a viewing situation as you would for viewing a movie with lots of dark scenes (such as Skyfall, or The Hunger Games.)

Projector Hours of Operation

Will you be watching content on your projector in the daytime, nighttime, or both?

Since it is primarily movies that have plenty of dark scenes, ask yourself consider this compromise--one that I did for years:  Do I want to watch sports HDTV and even most gaming in the daytime, and save Movie viewing/other content that needs a very dark room for after the sun goes down? Can I have both? Consider, while the differences between the “Multi-media room” and a dedicated Home Theater can be dramatically different during the daytime, the “Multi-media room” can very much approximate a dedicated home theater at night when it is properly dark.

Some of you might be very lucky, in that you only plan to use your projector only in the evenings. I certainly hear from plenty of folks who tell me that.  Typically that doesn’t include the sports fan types who might be watching their daytime sports on their 55” LCDTV.  (How small, how sad!)

Playing Games on Projectors: Depends on the gaming you do. Most gaming can take place with some ambient light present, some with a lot of ambient light, but many games including FP Shooters are very dark. With night scenes, those will play better at night if you don’t have a cave or dedicated theater, but a good Multi-media room might be fine…

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