I have a theater room that has 10 foot ceilings, 14 feet wide, and 20 feet deep. The room is already pre-wired for the projector and it will put it about 14 feet from the wall. I am thinking of either going with a 110' or 120' screen fixed mounted on the wall. I am really torn over projectors and which one to get. I have spent countless hours researching on here and I keep bringing myself back to the Optoma HD65. There are several windows in the room, but I black out blinds on them to control the light. I am not looking to get the best picture out there, but I would like like to have a nice clean setup that is a good bang for the buck. Any suggestions on projectors that would keep me in the price range of the Optoma HD65 that would be a better choice?


Update: I thinking about picking up the Focupix 16:9 110' viewable screen in the matte white with the 1.3 gain.

I just picked up an HD65. I love it so far.

For the price it is hard to beat. I have been thinking about the Optoma HD20 also, but it seems to be out of stock in a lot of places.

Yeah, I started out looking at some of the new 1080p projectors, too. I wasn't convinced that the extra resolution would make much of a difference in my setup, so I didn't feel like it was worth the extra price. You're talking about using a bigger screen than me, though (I'm using a 92").

bump for some more opinions.

Pony:

The Optoma HD65 and HD20 do not have lens shift. I am assuming that you will be ceiling mounting the projector. With 10' ceilings, this means that you will need a fairly long drop on the projector mount to not have the screen too high. I would avoid using keystone correction since this will degrade the picture.

I would suggest that you look at a projector with at least vertical lens shift, which probably means you are looking at an LCD projector. This way you can mount the projector closer to the ceiling making it less obtrusive.

The Viewsonic Pro8100 seems to be a very good value right now. Lots of features and performance for the price. There is more information in the above $3,000 forum.

Cheers!

the ceiling is not quite 10 feet probably more like 9 feet 6 inches. I kind of assumed that the projector would probably sit about 6 inches off of the ceiling anyways. I never realized that to set up a home theater there is so much information that needs to be taken into consideration.

It really isn't that hard to set up. It is understanding what you need to suit your situation that can become overwhelming.

The Optoma HD65 has no vertical or horizontal lens shift. This means that you have to mount the projector so that the lens is at the exact middle of your screen (no horizontal shift). In addition, since there is no vertical lens shift, for a 13' to 14 ' throw (i.e. the distance from the lens to the screen), the lens has to be about 11" above the top of the screen.

Doing the math, this means that the top of the screen would be about 97" from the floor. For a 110" screen, the bottom of the screen would be just under 4' from the floor. This is somewhat high for comfortable viewing.

Installation is much easier with a projector having lens shift. The image can be moved using the projector lens shift to match the screen location.

I am not saying that the Optoma HD65 or HD20 won't work in your case, you just need to be aware of what the installation requirements are.

Another option may be to look at projectors having a larger offset. I think both the new budget Vivitek and BenQ 1080P projectors have larger offsets than the Optoma.

No, you're going to have a pole hanging down a couple of feet from the ceiling in order to make this work with any projector that doesn't have vertical lens shift. I have 10-foot ceilings, so I'm going through the same thought process.