We are finishing off our basement and will have one room as a dedicated HT.
Here are some details of the soon to be HT:
Dimensions: 15' W x 19' L x 8.25 H with controlled lighting
Screen wall: 10.5' W x 8.25 H, hope to make as a AT proscenium
Screen: considering DYI SmX AT screen, 110" diag 16:9 or 119" diag 2.35:1
Seating distance: 12'
Will be used for: watching DVDs, cable HDTV programming, and hopefully soon HD DVD or BD

I'd like to budget $4500 for the front projector. I don't have any bias towards LCOS, LCD, or DLP. The end result is what matters. I haven't seen the latest LCD's - in the past I've seen the HS10 and was not impressed, but that could have been a less than optimum viewing condition and set up. I did see an infocus ( model ? 5xxx maybe ) about a year ago that was set up with reasonable care on a 92" Stewart Greyhawk and was impressed. Haven't looked lately - we don't have many A/V places in town to just stroll in and take a look. After owning a 60" 4:3 RPTV 4 years ago and a current owner of a 2 year old 42" ALis Hitachi plasma, this is what I want from a FP - good, solid blacks, very good shadow detail ( more important than deep blacks ), low ( video )noise, and accurate color and decent gray scale tracking out of the box, that won't demand the expense of ISF calibration. Also want it to be quiet. Projector could either be ceiling or rear-shelf mounted. I don't care as long as it works, but I need to know soon in order to plan where to place power and cable runs for it.

I've read the reviews at projector central. At the screen size I want to use, it seems a number of projectors do not have enough light ouput when put in low lamp mode and optimized for cinema viewing. I'm wondering if the latest 1080P projectors would work ? I'm not the kind to be constantly upgrading, so I'd like to be positioned to take advantage of 1080 P/24 if possible. I tried the calculator Pro at Projector Central on the new Panny 1000U, but got confused by the throw distance slider - with my inputs it looked like I couldn't do more than a 104". Otherwise, this seems to be one promising projector and fits my budget.

Can someone recommend some projectors that could work in my future room given the parameters I've set and my budget ?

Thanks,
Bill

I am in the same boat ... moving into a new home with 3 sides poured concrete my unfinished Dimensions are 14'w 24'L 9.25H- I like the look of the 2.35 screen .. Thinking of looking at the rs1 when avail.. any suggestions would be great !

Thanks everyone this site is great ...

Good luck with your project. Sounds like the RS1 is a very cool projector. Love to have one, but it is priced above what I want to pay. I had hoped to get other responses. Maybe this question has come up too often. I checked reviews at Cine4Home. Very thorough reviews. Much better than PC. I'm impressed by what I've read on the Pearl, the HC5000, and the new Epson. The best is to see projectors in person; however there aren't many places in my hometown that have fP on display in their showrooms. I looked at a Marantz 8600, which had a pleasing picture, but I think the price is too high for older, DLP HD2+ technology. I guess another thing for me to do is to contact Jason Turk and ask for his recommendation.


Bill

The RS1 is inline with your indicated budget.

Really ? I haven't taken the time to read a lot about it - so much to read and plan for, so little time ! I got the impression the price was in the mid 6's.

Bill