My new media room debate...

Hey everyone,
I've been lurking on here for quite some time and am getting close to getting things together for our non-dedicated entertainment room in the basement. We are building a new home and wanted to get an idea of what I'm going to do down there so we can get the wires run before the drywall goes up. Thankfully, I have a couple months to figure all of this out before crunch time.

Right now, we have a Samsung 65" LCD and something has come over my wife (I probably should have her checked...) and she wants something "a little bigger" for our basement entertainment room. We will be sitting somewhere between 9.5-12 feet from the screen and there is room behind us if we need to mount something further back. Our budget is around $3500 or under.

My dilemma...as I have noticed many have had on here after reading through the forum, is do I go LED/Plasma TV or go with a projector. I have to say, I realize that projectors give you the bigger screen and it would be fine for my basement room, but they make me nervous because it will be our main "TV" for watching general TV, sports, movies, and XBox. I don't want to have to feel guilty about using the thing in fear of running up the hours on the lamp. I've played that game before in the past with a projector and it always irritated me being in the back of my mind.

I do plan on having a pool table/bar down there and it will be in the same room as the screen. If we end up going the projector route, I was hoping people could give suggestions based on the $3500 limit for projectors/screen combos that have great picture (including in the ambient light from the pool table/bar area) as well as offer no lag in video games.

I've been digging around and it doesn't look like there are any of the LED DLP projectors where you don't have the traditional lamps that are in this price range. I wish there were because then there would be no question for me as to what I'd do!

Other things I've entertained and am actually leaning more towards are the 70" flat screens...unfortunately that pretty much limits you to the Sharp series...or Vizio and I'm not going there. I haven't been terribly thrilled about the image I have seen on any of the Sharp 70" models in any store I've been into. I've been kicking myself trying to figure out if I could sacrifice picture quality for the peace of mind that I'm not burning the bulb out when I'm using the thing. The 80" Sharp is completely out of the picture as the picture quality is horrendous and I'm not paying that much more for another 10".

Any suggestions/thoughts are certainly welcome!

Unfortunately, the TV will be staying upstairs in the living room, or this would be a perfect solution.

Thanks for your reply. I will do a little more digging around the projector forum. I still am having a hard time deciding whether or not there will be too much ambient light if people are playing pool/darts/using the bar and if I want to deal with replacing bulbs.
Trying to do some research into setting up the projector as well as I would like to not have to have someone come out and install it due to cost reasons.

After much digging around on the forums and reading many reviews, I think for my starter projector I am strongly considering the BenQ w1070. My concern with DLP was the whole rainbow effect that everyone talks about, but it sounds like with the 6x color wheel that this projector while not completely void of the issue is manageable. The thing that interested me on this system is it's strong reviews, seems like it is suited for multiple uses, and has great low input lag for playing Call of Duty and other lag sensitive games.

I am trying to find home theater places in Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky that may have some things on display, but no success yet.

I think I will pain the walls gray to dark blue and do the ceiling in gray to help with reflection. I had looked into the Jamestown screens as recommended above and they seem alright for a first timer. Still looking around at screens though. Trying to get a good understanding on what gain I should be looking at and gray vs white. The ambient lighting will be somewhat dim. I plan on having all of the can lights on dimmers so I can adjust the light levels. I just don't want to be in a completely dark room all of the time, especially when we are hosting Bengals games! I will ensure that we can always have the lights around the screen off.

I've been talking with a gentleman who works at a home theater business around here and he recommended a Mitsubishi DLP with the "best screen we can afford on my budget." This was in an email he just sent me and didn't specify the model so I will work on that. There isn't a whole lot about that brand of projectors on here. What do you all think? I was pretty sold on the BenQ but I am no pro and am open to suggestions.