Home Projector Comparison Report: Summary 2

Posted on March 14, 2008 by Art Feierman

Best Projectors For Sports (and HDTV) Viewing

The projectors on this list may also be very good for movie viewing, as well, but are listed here, because of combination of features (brightness, CFI, etc.) that make them particularly good for sports events and digital content.

Forget movies for the moment, these are the projectors that are best suited for HDTV and sports. The projectors must have at least average brightness to make this list (1000 lumens or more), in brightest mode. * denotes has CFI, which is considered a plus for most sports viewing.

BenQ W1000
Epson Home Cinema 8100
Epson Home Cinema 8500UB*
Epson Pro Cinema 9500UB*
InFocus SP8602*
LG CF181D*
Mitsubsishi HC3800
Mitsubishi HC6800
Panasonic PT-AE4000*
Vivitek H1080FD

Projectors That Really Come Into Their Own on Smaller Screens

This is just a small group of projectors that really don't have the ability to easily work with larger than 100" diagonal screens (unless the screens are higher gain). Their quality varies, and not all are necessarily great projector values, but all of them share the trait of not really having the ability to work well with screens of 110" to 130" diagonal, usually due to lack of lumens in "best" mode, rather than brightest. Some of these projectors would have been serious contenders for top awards, but for the lack of lumens. I have no stats on the breakdown of the various sized screens in terms of number of owners, so I don't know if 30% or 50% or 70% of home theater projector owners are using screens 100" diagonal or smaller. Best I can tell, the most popular screen sizes are 100, 106, and 110 inch. These projectors are iffy on anything bigger than a 1.0 gain 100 inch screen, due to lack of lumens, but all of them do a great job on smaller screens.

This is not a list of all the dimmer projectors, but a list of the best of the dimmer projectors (from a value proposition that considers price, features and performance).