Total noob - considering projector for gaming & blu-ray - better than plasma?

Once you game on a projector there is no going back. The extra size (4x bigger for a 100") really makes a difference and the game is so much more immersive. The $1k budget is tight and if you can stretch that a little you won't be disappointed.

If you have a lot of ambient light then I wouldn't recommend it as to get a PJ to work in that environment would be a pricier screen. You can actually have a fair amount of light and still have a decent picture as long as that light isn't competing with the PJ to light up the screen.

I would just order a projector from a place that has a 30-day return policy. Try it for a bit, see if you like it, if not, return it and get the Plasma.

You can project onto a white wall if you have one, but you may need to buy a screen, so figure an additional $300 or so for that.
First keep in mind that you are in a projector forum, so people are obviously going to respond by saying get a projector over a Plasma, and I will be the first to say --- Definitely the projector.
A shelf mounted, floor mounted, or table mounted projector should work in that room. If going DLP, watch for the offsets because that could cause you problems.
55" is real small, you'd be suprised how small it will start to look after a while.

I am on a 106" screen from about 12-13 feet back and it feels just right, but it does take some getting used to.
The main difference between the Plasma and the projector will be black levels, unless you paid 2.5k+ and up for a JVC, but even then the Plasma will likely do blacks better. Some scenes on a lower-end projector will look slightly hazy during dark scenes. Other than that, the Plasma will look a bit more contrasty sometimes, but not always. The sharpness difference between a projector and a Plasma will just vary according to which projector model you end up buying.

Overall, the Plasma will look better, but the projector will be far more immersive and life-like. Also you might consider the Acer h5360 3D projector for gaming and its generally under $600, and many people love it, but if your sensitive to rainbows it won't work.

The is no doubt that a plasma will look better, last longer, and does not need bulb replacement. There is only one reason to game on a PJ, let's face it, it's because of size. Me loves big! But honestly, for 1000 bucks, go get a panny or Samsung plasma. FYI, I have 2 plasma's and a 110" fp screen. I game on the plasma the most. But the front pj is great for entertaining.

I'm just the opposite, everything is done on the PJ in our living room and our other TVs in the house get very little use. There is a group of us that routinely play multiplayer COD and HALO and when I go to their place they ask if I can bring a PJ and screen instead of playing on their plasma. Their plasmas BTW are Panny 58" VT25, 50" LG PK750 and an older top of the line 50" LG plasma (forget model number but was ~$2500 1.5 years ago) which are all nice TVs and PQ probably beats the Infocus 7210 and 92" tripod screen I typically bring with me. We also use a Marantz 11S2 and Epson 9700 PJ at my house and although the plasma might have some advantages in black level and contrast compared to the PJs, not many would choose to watch a plasma instead.

Also, I find I do much better at gaming with the bigger screen, maybe its my aging eyes. It's just easier to see someone crouched, prone or in the shadows to take a distant shot at on a bigger screen. They are just small dots on a plasma and I have more trouble noticing them sitting 10 feet away from the smaller display.

The biggest disadvantages to a PJ at this price level is going to be price and ambient light. There are some good screens and brighter PJs for ambient light but the screen alone would be more than your budget. If this is going to be your main display and you can't control the ambient light I wouldn't consider a projector.

A trial from a place with a good return policy as suggested is a good idea to see if a PJ is right for you.

Sometimes it just depends on the type of game you will be playing as well. I do find some PC games to look too washed out on my old Sanyo Z5 compared to an LCD or Plasma, because of the black levels. This does not bother me as much if I were playing a car racing game or FPS (although then sometimes I want a sharper image). It did bother me when playing space games or games that have a lot of black in the picture (X3:Terran Conflict as an example game), because that is a space game that is completely based on black levels. This particular game was also troublesome on my Z5 because I needed a sharper projector and darker blacks.

Given that, I also tend to think DLP is the way to go for gaming in the sub $1000 market, because the image will likely be sharper with better motion (althoguh the Sanyo z700 is pretty sharp for under 1k, but it's a slightly an older model which you can still purchase).

Sharpness doesn't matter so much in most things, but it does matter a bit in gaming, depending on your screen size and distance from the screen, you will notice sharpness in gaming and HTPC text FAR more than in viewing TV or movies.

Now for games like Mario Kart or something like that, or Wii type games, rockstar, most FPS, racing games, a projector screen is definitely more fun (at least to me).

It's the super high-res games that need the darkest blacks and highest sharpness that may look troublesome on a projector. Also, sometimes the super huge screen can cause fatigue while gaming in FPS or similar type fast action games.

It just depends the overall direction the light is coming from and the room itself.

Walmart and similar places sell blackout curtains you can get cheap. I bought the Eclipse brand from Walmart, they aren't necessarily the best looking curtains (they aren't bad looking), but they do a good job of blocking 90% or more of the light depending on how tight they are to the wall.

You will also likely need some velcro or similar method to get the curtains more flush against the wall. It will also help if the windows have blinds on them before you place the curtains.

Your also likely going to want a Da-Lite High Power screen if buying an LCD, otherwise for a DLP projector you'll have more trouble finding a cheap screen with a gain that does not cause hotspotting. The HP screen can work with a DLP, it just doesn't work as well because with most DLP's you'd have to floor mount (although honestly if you shelf mount the DLP and use keystone correction, the DLP still looks sharper than an LCD for gaming purposes). It's not a simple decision.

The plasma will be much cheaper once all these other factors are included.

BlindWarrior,

You really cant go wrong either way with getting a plasma, or projector.
I have alot of experience with HDTVs. I currently own a Sony Bravia LCD and more recently dropped $2500 on a projector.
With taking everything into account that you read here as far as space and light control, let me just say if you think it works for you to get a projector then get one!!!!

Get a new projector for about 2grand--- take a look at a (Panasonic PT-AE4000U) at projectorpeople.com

It will blow you out of the effing water. I sh*t you not-- YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT.

The best thing about new projectors (or ones made in the last few years I should say) is that because they are so bright you dont even need a screen, all you need is a white wall.
I had a screen before and all it did was make the room look like sh*t. Now I just shoot my PT-AE3000U right on to a plan white wall.
Will special paint help? yes. Will a screen help? yes, but only about 5-10%. The most important thing is light control. At first all you need is a white wall. You can always get a screen later or buy special projector paint later.

Will you be happy with a plasma? im sure, and if you cant control the rooms light or have a small room then a smaller tv is fine. But if you have the room and you can make the room semi-dark (because it will alway be dark at night obviously) then get a projector. I have blinds and black out blinds over them so its night all the time in my house if I want. But it doesnt have to be completely dark for the viewing to be good. yeah its better the darker it is but you can still watch it fine with semi darkness.

I mean yeah I can always go in my other room and watch my LCD, but do I? h*ll no! I might as well throw the effing thing in the garbage or off a cliff for that matter...

Right before I bought my PT-AE3000U my friend bought a 55" Sony Bravia and yeah we thought it was sweet as hell. Now when he comes over and see's my projector shooting 140" on the wall he cant help but think he made the worst decision ever. I mean in comparison his 55" now looks like that little 13" TV your grandma has in the kitchen.

I do gaming on PS3 and 360-- Its great for that. Sports off of DirectTV- Awesome! Best of all blu ray movies-- Totally amazing!
Everyone that comes over my house is completely blown away!! I must say I bought the 3000 for $2500 and it was probably one of the best purchases I ever made (easily)
The 4000 is even better and its only 2k. If you can get the money together then go buy it. Like I said you wont regret it, at least I didn't. All this writing Im gonna go watch a movie now.

A projector will make you very, very happy. I upgraded from a 32" HD CRT to an HC3800 about six months ago.

Don't worry too much about light control or a screen. Blackout curtains solve the light problem easy. I've been using a $20 white sheet over the wall and the picture looks great (not that an actual screen wouldn't make it a bit better). Iron it, stretch the wrinkles out when you put it up, and you're good.

I love black levels. I love black levels so much, I skipped over all the slim LCDs and plasmas to buy a chunky CRT four years ago. The black levels on the projector are simply not as good, but despite my love of blacks, it's a minor complaint. The size of the image offers so much more than deep blacks alone could.

The only problem with owning a projector is after about 5 years you watch so many movies, you run out of stuff to watch.

I'm literally struggling to find a good movie lately, hah.

Both of our sons are intense gamers - the oldest in particular - this past Christmas he brought over a game system - I think PS3 - and a bunch of accessories - like the steering wheel and foot pedal package for car racing. He wanted to compare the experience of a fairly large 1080p TV versus our older 720p projector and slightly older "business" Canon projector.

First, he played on the 60in television - next he played on 100in (diagonal)fixed wall screen using both projectors and then 120in (diagonal) using the pull down screen.

Without question he preferred the projectors including the Canon (business) over the little television and it's all about screen size.

It's like wanting a Home Theater experience - those little televisions just can't deliver a genuine "at the movies" experience - it requires a projector and screen and the same is true for maximum gaming experience.

We older folks are NOT gamers but are amused with our Wii and I gotta say I agree with my son - whether it's playing tennis of teeing up the ball for golf the screen "real estate" with a projector just blows away the television experience.

Budget considerations are personal - what looks good enough to your own eyeballs is what is most important - not some name brand or specification printed on the side of a box. I bought our Panasonic projector for $600 when new ones were going for over $2500 - it was a floor model at CostCo with 88 hrs on the lamp. I bought our Da-lite fixed wall gray screen at a close out store NIBox for just $50. I bought our larger gray pull down screen via Craigs List for $70. I am a very patient but determined bargain hunter and have learned that you can save tons of cash by looking for bargains without giving up any quality.

I do recommend a screen - we prefer gray surface as it reflects almost no light back into the room/eyes of the viewers compared to white surfaces and it makes the scaling bars almost invisible to viewers. I enjoy 120in diagonal images produced by our older Panasonic 720p projector using a decent Up Converting DVD player - I enjoy that so much that, for now, we are not interested in making the BD upgrade - to us and our eyeballs, it just ain't necessary yet so long as our 600 or so standard DVD movies continue to look very near HD - to us.

We believe having a decent sized TV is important for watching TV type stuff and you can trial a very decent projector experience by starting with a much less expensive yet new 720p model.
GoodLuck

First you really should get a screen. The 4000 has been overcome by events. In mixed content scenes its blacks are gray. Panasonic should have introduced a replacement, but the 3D technical issues to overcome take considerable time.

The 60-65 inch plasma's are very rewarding. Even with 3D built in. However front projectors get the newest technology last.

The Panasonic's 4000 low price was a sensation for quite some time, but now there are better choices, as the completion has intensified and prices have dropped further. 2D projector prices are quite a bargain. 3D is not, at 2-4x the price.

I bought Mitsubishi HC4000 and ceiling mounted it. I am quite pleased with its accurate color (better than my $4700 JVC I purchased two years ago), and overall high level of performance. All at $1149. A true bargain which would have cost 3-5 times the prices a few years ago.

The upcoming trend is the Chinese are releasing their own front projector designs at very nice prices. But they are NOT recommend, at least until they establish themselves in the USA.

Front projectors are notorious for having image defects (similar to LCD screen uniformity issues). So you need to charge from a company which has an excellent return policy.

The trick manufactures play is their unstated optical and alignment tolerances may be completely unacceptable to you, yet they will try to stick to you! You need to very objective, evaluate and make hard decision all within four hours operating time.
Here is a common image flaw example:
Attachment 200764

Is that the HC4000 that you just bought? Returning it to try another unit?

All the above said by everyone, there are some games I really cannot stand to play on a projector and I would go back to my sharper 22" LCD with better blacks for certain types of games.

I'm not a big gamer though, I play a few games here and there, used to be more so when I was younger.

Well I bought a epson 8500ub and a 106"fixed screen for the home theater I built in my basement and I.also bought a 50" plasma the same week for the living room, the plasma has slightly better blacks but its not the same experience, the only buyers remorse I have is not going 120"...

What happens to the black level performance comparison when you step up to a mid-range (say approx. $2k) projector and a high end screen, particularly something like Screen Innovations' Black Diamond screens? Once you get over the sticker shock, it seems like an interesting proposition vs Plasma as you can keep the screen and just upgrade the PJ, versus replacing the entire unit with a Plasma.

You need a completely dark room to take advantage of it (all black or near all black) including walls, carpet, ceiling, furniture, etc...

With the JVC's starting at 2.5k, blacks start to get darker, but on the RS40+ they get fairly close to plasma, but again most people don't have the room to benefit from it.

The BD screen has some issues according to others that have seen it, I wouldn't waste my money. In a purely dark room go with an HP screen or a gray screen.

If you mean fully dark as in black walls, floor, ceiling and furniture, then I would recommend a white screen. A HP screen if your screen is to large for the lumens of your projector.

Not necessarily true, just depends what you are going for and your budget. The HP screen or a gray screen works very well in many situations. There is however a common misconception that an HP will not help a semi-bat cave or a near pure bat cave. Several people in the forums that are very knowledgeable on ANSI contrast situations have pretty much come to the conclusion that very few people have a bat cave good enough to eliminate the benefits from either a gray or HP screen, even if people think they do. Guessing less than 1% of people have a true bat cave, even black paint is up to 10% reflective, and most people have something reflective in the room to go far beyond that reflectivity ratio.

Read this thread, the article was vetted by others such as dovercat, Rich, DarinP, and several experts argued the theory of this out and we all pretty much came to the same conclusions:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...933&highlight=

Hi blindwarrior
If you're using the word "PLASMA" literally, I would not recommend a PLASMA TV to play games. Burn-in: All phosphor based display systems (CRT -direct and rear view- and plasma) are susceptible to image retention when displaying fixed images. This is also known as "ghosting", "image shadowing" or "image burn in". This damage is irreversible and is due to physical properties of phosphor.
The LCD TVs are not prone to burn-in but the have less contrast than Plasmas.
IMO, the PJ, with a 4x bigger screen (or more) and low ambient light, will give you TOTAL INMERSION in the games (and movies) with projected images that will cover your viewing area.

The HP raises the whites and the blacks. The contrast ratio stays the same. If your room is a bat cave and your projector has the lumens to light up our screen without needing gain, I still recommend a 1.0 gain white screen for movie watching. If watching HDTV then many people prefer more pop and a screen with gain is often times preferred. I have a 1.2 gain white AT screen with masking system. A white 1.3 gain screen and a 2.8gain HP screen. For TV viewing the 2.8 HP screen makes the image look like a large plasma TV. Perceived contrast looks good, but the blacks are not black.

Only if you use the gain of the HP. If you mount off-center or lower your projector's brightness, you can keep the brightness around the same or even negative. I don't think Da-Lite HP looks like Plasma, just increases gain. I know some people describe it that way, but seems like a stretch. At least it looks a lot more film-like then my cheapo Elite screen.

Given the OP said budget for everything is under 1k, he should get a cheap Da-Lite Matte White or Da-Lite HP Manual B if he doesn't want to go DIY. I have seen other cheap screens and they don't come close to the Da-Lites for the price. People keep recommending screens with no regards for the poster's stated budget, which are irrelevant.

I suppose I'm in the vast minority here, but I don't like gaming on my Projector. I play mainly first person shooters and it is extremely hard to track the whole screen when it is humongous. Plus the fact that it makes me pretty dizzy with all of the motion. I looooooove my PJ for everything else, but I still use my plasma for gaming.

And personally I wouldn't worry about burn in. My first plasma was a 42" Maxent ED display (extremely old technology) and I gamed constantly on it... no burn-in. Now I have a 63" Samsung plasma that I game on daily... again no burn-in or image retention.

OP - If you see this in time and are ready to make a move on a PJ now, check out sellout.woot.com for a really great deal on refurb 1080p Optoma PJ's.

I agree about FPS being too much on a PJ with some games, depends on the game. Sharpness and contrast is also an issue with some games.
Racing games are ok, as long as not too multi-dimensional. WOW type games seemt to work better since it's not as much fast action.

All I can tell you is my Marantz VP-12S4 mounted near center on my HP screen gives me a lot of pop and it does look like a 106" plasma.

I've never seen a projector look like a plasma, but I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder (and I've seen a JVC RS 20 in a bat cave), still isn't quite up to a Pio Elite or even a cheap LG.

It will not have the black levels of the plasma, but it has the sharpness, pop and depth of the plasma. When my parents came down to my house to watch the Olympics in HD, they said it looks just like a giant plasma also. For comparison they have a 60" Pioneer Kuro that I installed for them a couple of years ago. The 12S4 (14'-4" throw) and a 106" 2.8 gain HP are a great match. Adjustable height (gas struts inside) pedestal can be set up to give nearly all of the gain that the HP offers. Here is pic with projector up higher for Kintect and Wii.
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/f...m/IMG_2842.jpg



Pedestal in lowered position.
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/f...m/IMG_2844.jpg

Hand held camera shot just using auto settings. Looks much better than photo shows. I am not good with cameras.
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/f...m/P1000826.jpg

I just bought a Panasonic Plasma and have been gaming on it frequently with no image retention issues. Burn-in is irreversible, image retention is not and will go away when you watch other content that does not display a static image (like a HUD). Most if not all modern plasmas do not have burn in issues. Image retention can be dealt with by using the built in tools or just watching regular full screen content.

LCDs are not prone to IR, but may have input lag issues.

The size of the PJ is the biggest selling point. I have not played any FPS on a PJ so I cannot say if I would not like it as some others have commented. But I do love playing COD:BO on my 65 plasma and am guessing I would like it more on a PJ, hence my reason for viewing this thread.

If I got a PJ it would go in the basement and the plasma would be for the routine viewing or the kids to use.

I play black ops frequently on my projector and have played it on my 50 inch plasma and my old 65 inch dlp, I wouldn't go back to anything less than 100", by the way how many 50" plasmas would it take to equal a 106" screen, is there any algorithm to calculate that?