Winner: Best in Class - Bright Room: Epson Home Cinema 1040

Projectors like this Epson Home Cinema 1040 are moving out of dedicated home theaters, caves, and dark basements and into the light!  For this to be possible projectors have had to get a lot brighter.   10 years ago the typical home theater projector produced 700-1000 lumens.  Since then projectors got brighter to compensate for 3D dimming the projector by about 2/3.  Here we have 3000 lumens. (and no 3D).  Folks, that's a world of difference.  This means that for many, a projector like the HC1040 lets you have a 100 inch or even 120" diagonal screen for those incredible football games, olympics,  award shows, Blacklist, Game of Thrones, etc., whatever turns you on.  With special screens designed for bright rooms, combined with this projector you can still spend less than $2000, so why settle for some tiny 65" or 71" screen. The HC1040 is definitely a cross-over projector - it will easily double as a business projector for your next presentation to 50 or 100 people, but that's not why it won this award. I would have liked to see a bit more on home theater/home entertainment features, so I consider this a basic 1080p projector in that regard (Epson has more expensive "bright room projectors" with additional features, at a variety of price points.)