What Projector Best Suits These Needs

What makes you think you need at least 1200 lumens? You may ned less; you may need far more. What is your price range? How much light will there be in the room? How big a picture do you want and how far do you want the projector from the screen?

That's what I'm wondering how does someone know how many lumens they need? Heck, most people take manufacturer specs as gospel when most of the time the calibrated specs are far different.

Here's an example. When I upgraded my 1100 lumen rated Infocus X1 to a 600 lumen rated (in low lamp mode) Infcous 4805 I saw a huge leap in brightness. The 4805 was a freakin light canon. This is because it calibrated to about 600 lumens in low lamp mode and the X1 calibrated to about 300-350 lumens. Not to mention the 2,000:1 contrast X1 calibrated to about 800:1 on/off where was the 4805 met its contrast rating when calibrated.

Since you probably won't be able to control the ambient light, you should think even brighter. But more important may be issues like offset and magnification. How far away can you put the projector? How big an image? Will people be walking in front of the projector blocking the image? I'd be looking for an lcd projector in the 2000 lumen range. Possibly the Panasonic AX100.

This seems a ready made situation for an all-in-one PJ/DVD player like the MovieTime.

Just burn the footage to cd/dvd instead of dv tape, drop it in the allinone and point it at the wall.

Likely your audience won't be too concerned with critical viewing (dark room, high contrast, high resolution, spot on color) because this is an ad hoc setup.