Home Theater Projectors

Home Theater Projectors are projectors designed for use in Home Theaters.

History
Until about 2001, projectors designed for use in homes to view movies and TV were rather rare, and extremely expensive. In 2006 there are more than 50 models of home theater projectors available, with prices from under $1,000 to $10,000 or more. Sales of home theater projectors in 2006 look to be in the 200,000 unit range in the United States, and perhaps 500,000 total, world wide (estimated). Most home theater projectors sold (in the US), sell for less than $2000.

Although today's home theater projectors are very similar to the business projectors that have been around (and improving) since the mid-1990's, there are several differences that set them apart.

Technology
When referring to home theater projectors, the phrase typically refers to front projectors. Such projectors are normally ceiling mounted, placed on a shelf in the back of the room, or sitting on a table, but in almost all cases shining their images on a screen on the other side of the room. Most home theater projectors can also be used in a "rear screen" setup, but few homes have the space for a "rear screen" setup.

Almost all home theater projectors are "widescreen" producing images with an aspect ratio of 16:9 (the same as HDTV standards), compared to most business projectors which support the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio of most older computers, and TV sets.

Home theater projectors are designed to operate in fully darkened rooms, or rooms with very little ambient light. For this reason, some people, who cannot darken their rooms, instead may choose to put a more powerful (but less suitable in other ways) business projector in their home.

These home projectors sacrifice brightness, instead, focusing on achieving the darkest possible black levels, which allows viewers to see details in dark areas of movies and other content. High contrast ratio are a good measure of a projector's ability to reproduce shadow details, but other factors do apply.

Although there are still a few (very expensive) home theater projectors that rely on older CRT technology, today's home theater projectors primarily use one of three technologies; LCD, DLP or LCOS. LCD and DLP based projectors dominate the home theater projector category, but the LCOS technology, is starting to be used, as well. Each technology has advantages and disadvantages, compared to the others.

The typical home theater projector is a stand alone projector that is interfaced with a home theater receiver, or HTPC (home theater PC), speakers, screen, DVD player, /satellite box, and other sources. There are, now also, a number of low cost "all-in-one" home theater projector systems, that include not just the projector, but also a built-in DVD player, and speakers.

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