Which is best for a home theater – a projector or a TV?
You are building a wonderful home theater, but you have hit a roadblock. You don’t know if you should use a TV or a projector to display your movies. This is a debate that has been happening for years, and in my personal opinion, neither is better, both provide wonderful movie viewing experiences. All that matters is that you buy a screen (projector or TV) that fits your home theater setup. This article will talk about the pros and cons of both and help you decide which is best for your home theater.
Size
Imagine you’re sitting in your Tuscany from Valencia Theater Seating enjoying a movie on a big screen. The bigger the screen, the better the movie experience. Thus, to make the ultimate home theater you are going to need a big screen that fits the size of your room. Getting a big projector screen is fairly inexpensive compared to a TV. A high quality 100 inch projector screen like Reference EVO 8K from Elunevision paired with a 8K Projector is about $6000-$10000. This may seem like a lot, but a 98 inch 8K TV is at least $70000. When it comes to getting a bigger screen, projectors are much more affordable and projector screens can get much bigger, some screens can get as big as 500 inches! So in terms of affordability, getting a big projector screen is much cheaper than a a massive TV.
Resolution
Another thing you need to understand before making your decision is resolution. Resolution is the total number of pixels available on a screen. Since projectors screens get much bigger, you can easily see the difference between 4K and 8K quality because more pixels are displayed on the screen. Thus, Projectors have the better resolution when compared to TVs
Brightness
The screen brightness matters for one main reason. The dimmer the image is, the darker the room needs to be to see it. If your home theater is in an area that constantly has light coming in, you would need a bright screen in order to properly see the image. TVs are much brighter, so they can be placed in rooms that face a lot of light. Typically projectors are dimmer so you will need a darker room to see the image more clearly.
Contrast
Another thing that needs to be considered when choosing your screen is the contrast. The contrast is is the ratio between the brightest white and the darkest black. The better the contrast, the deeper the colors on screen will be. TVs typically have a higher contrast.
Cost and Maintenance
The last thing to consider is cost. As stated in the size section, projectors are substantially more cheaper than TVs, but some people would argue otherwise because projectors need maintenance. Since projectors use lamps, these lamps will burn out and you need to replace then ever 1500 hours. A 8K lamp will cost roughly 150 dollars. This may seem like a lot considering you do not need to do maintenance on a TV. But even with the maintenance costs an 8K TV is still substantially more!
Now that you know all the main points about projectors and TVs its up to you decided which one will be more appropriate for your home theater setup.