PROJECTION!
Of course nothing really says ‘sport!’ like going truly big with a projection system...
So, yes, you can get an enormous picture with a large-screen TV. But those 75-inch and 88-inch monster tellies will cost you big money. You can get an enormous picture at a much lower price with a projector. With a projector you might go for 100 or 120 inches. Indeed, many say 200 inches, but you’ll most likely need a dedicated theatre for that — rare is the lounge room where you could comfortably watch such a large picture!
And projectors can cover the gamut from a large but cheap-and-nasty picture through to glorious cinema quality. Of course, the closer you get to the latter, the more you’ll need to spend.
Let’s dig in to some of the choices that are available and what they’ll deliver.
Fixed or ad hoc?
The first thing to consider is whether you want to just pull a projector out of a cupboard as needed to watch the games — or are you going to permanently install it? Either way, you’re going to want something to serve as a screen. See the ‘What makes a screen?’ panel (right). As for the projector itself, your ad hoc projector is typically going to be lighter and cheaper than an installation model, and you’ll need to think about placement.
You see, if you install a projector, chances are it will be going on a ceiling mount, projecting over the tops of every one’s heads. But if you’re just popping a projector on a coffee table, you’re going to want it close enough to the screen so that you can sit behind it. Anyone walking in front of it will block the image. But the size of the image from a projector depends on the distance between it and the screen. The further away, the bigger the picture.
So the best projector to use when you’re just pulling it out for special occasions is a shortish-throw projector. That is, it makes a large picture from up relatively close — say a metre or two. Whereas for an installation projector it’s quite OK for the specs to require four or more metres distance to fill your screen — it’s all down to image size.
The ad hoc projector can also be helped by having a decent array of optical picture adjustments. The wider the zoom range the better, and lens shift can help you get the picture onto your screen more easily by shifting the picture up and down, and sometimes sideways, without geometric distortion. (Yes, just about all projectors have ‘keystone correction’, but keystone is a digital correction and it will come at the cost of reducing resolution.)
A nano projector might seem like a good idea for ad hoc use. But while wonderfully tiny, they are also quite low in output, and often low in resolution. Any projector is going to work best in a fully dark room — but for a low output projector it is even more critical. If a little room light splashes onto the projector image, it can be hard to make out what’s going on. With a bright projector — say, 2000 lumens or better — you can tolerate a bit more light. Still, with any projector, the darker the room the better the results.
(How dark is a nano projector? As we said, a bright projector can produce around 2000 lumens. A nifty major-brand nano projector we’re hoping to play with is rated at... 40 lumens. That’s not as bad as it sounds, since the brightness response in our vision works logarithmically, but still.)
Note, we say ‘shortish-throw’. There’s also a species of truly short-throw projectors that sit up at the base of the screen and use mirrors to cast the picture up at it. These are usually not practical for ad hoc use because setting them up and getting the picture precisely aligned with the screen can actually be a finicky, even tedious, process.
If you’re installing properly and permanently, and if money isn’t a problem, then there are some exceptional shortthrow projectors that can produce fine results, avoiding the need for something hanging from the ceiling. But these tend to cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Resolution
There’s a problem with projectors. The picture is big, which would suggest that higher resolution would be useful. However 4K projectors have been fairly slow to market. There are currently two options for them — superb performance and a big purchase price, or a reasonable purchase price but problematic performance, particularly for Australian sports fans.
By 4K we mean Ultra HD, which is 3840 by 2160 pixels. As with TVs, more pixels can help regular 1080i quality by giving more room for processing, and keeping processing artifacts smaller. The high-end projectors even include motion processing just like that in TVs. But these start at about $8000.
The entry-level 4K projectors use pixel shifting technology which, amazingly, manages to deliver a full 4K picture. But at this point they have trouble with Australian 50Hz TV content — yes, they display it, but they convert from 50 frames per second to 60 frames per second. That means that every fifth frame has to be repeated. And that makes for visibly jerky motion, especially when the camera pans across a sporting field.
So for a reasonable mix of price and performance, we’d suggest that full-HD remains the way to go for the moment, especially for sports viewers. You can get a high output, fairly flexible model, suitable for ad hoc use, in 1080 resolution for between a thousand dollars and two thousand. A true high performer — with motion processing — might be up between two to three thousand dollars. Both should have the brightness required to light up a 100-inch screen. Stephen Dawson
Projector picks
Make sure you seek out home cinema projectors, which match the resolution of movies and TV while making the best choices for image quality, rather than being built for blasting out Powerpoint slides. EPSON: projection leader Epson has some superb-value high-quality models: this EH-TW5600 is a 1080p awardwinner at just $1149. Epson hasn’t yet gone full 4K but has models that use information from UHD inputs to improve image quality. SONY: the real deal in oering native 4K projection, but at a price. Sony’s lowest4Ker is $7999 (this award-winning VW550ES is $23,799). But it’s the goods if you’re aer the best for an installation. BENQ: If you’re going the ad hoc route, BenQ has the small (but not pico-small) GS1 (right) at $999, which oers fully portable 720p projection on battery or mains power along with an Android interface which allows streaming and app control.