Looking for a replacement

That's still not a lot of information. However, I assume the screen being on the far wall in front of the blinds means that in daytime you will have partial darkness, with some degree of backlighting behind the screen, as the blinds will not amount to perfect light control. This situation is tolerable.


You will be shopping for a bright projector and a screen with gain. A viable and easier-to-install alternative would be a rear projection television, with the obvious drawback of the giant black box. However, if the wife is already to the point where she understands that a front projector is actually less intrusive to the decor than other TVs, go for the projector. Allow me to suggest a ceiling mounted projector and a pulldown screen.


My suggestions:


Draw detailed floorplans including screen location and the seating arrangement. Don't try to use too large a sceen - as you double the screen width, the brightness declines to 1/4th the prior value. I would suggest a screen width of no more than six feet, a 4:3 aspect ratio for the screen and projector (because of TV display), and a viewing distance of 1.2-2.0 screen widths (8-12 feet, a single row of seating in an arc which is also the surround sound sweet spot). You should be able to accomodate about 6 people with such a setup. Early on, you must decide between ceiling mount (best suggestion for a remodel) or table mount, and draw a side elevation view - the top or bottom edge of the screen lines up with the projector due to a feature called "lens shift".


To support a larger screen or more audience, you'll need a 2000+ lumen projector in a room with some ambient light. This is $4000 alone in today's prices.


If you are building a HTPC, that will cost about $1000 - double that if buying an assembled unit. You will not need a standalone DVD player or TV tuner.


The pieces are:


1000-lumen XGA projector - about $2500

Pulldown manual screen - $200 to $600

HTPC - $1000 to $2000

Misc. (ceiling mount, cables, etc.) $400

Existing surround receiver and speakers.


Be realistic with your budegeting and proactive in planning in detail before deciding upon a particular projector. All of the above expenses pale in comparison to the most expensive part of the theater, the room.


Gary

I looked it up here:

http://www.projectorcentral.com/proj...fm?part_id=191


...and found out it's a 5000-lumen large venue projector with an original list price of $115,000. It's something that would normally be used in an auditorium. It uses an 1800 watt bulb that probably can't be bought anymore and would cost about $1500 or more if you could buy it - so viewing cost for "free" TV is kinda high at $1.50 per hour for that bulb.


A modern projector is a lot more reasonable to own - my VT540 has a $320 bulb that lasts 2000 hours - $0.16 per hour bulb costs. Since I pay about $2.00 per hour of DVD viewing of rental disks, that's not significant.


That's not to say you can't get a deal on a used projector - you can. But remeber that repairs on older units are costly and bulbs are generally hard or impossible to find and always expensive. Do your homework.


A good place to start:

http://www.projectorcentral.com/home.cfm


Gary