[oldchap]

Hi

I'm a volunteer for a charity which puts on a youth event every month. We've managed to get enough money together for a video projector, which would be used to project both Powerpoint presentations and live video from camcorders. We have about £1300, and I have found the Infocus LP640 at eBuyer for just under that - it seems to be of a fairly good spec (native XGA, 2200 lumens) as well as having horizontal keystoning which would be quite useful as often the projectors we've borrowed have had to sit to the side of the stage at an angle.

My main question is that the projector has a stated contrast ratio of 400:1, which is much lower than I've seen on many others. How big a difference is this likely to make? It would normally be used in a fairly dark room (we have coloured lights for atmosphere), but there is a possibility that in the future we'd have more daylight present.

Thanks...

[digi al]

i would look at the screenplay 4800 if i were you,as it has every thing you need,and you should be able to get it for £700-£800 and maybe less if you really hunt around,and having seen this working,i can tell you it is amazing value for money and has an excellent picture

infocus sp4800

[brownrog]

For motion video, the Infocus Screenplay 4800 has effectively been superseded by the Screenplay 4805 launched earlier this year and now widely available in the UK. Although the 4805 has a street price of £1300 it is far superior to the 4800 for motion video display with a contrast ratio of 2000:1. Like the 4800 it uses DLP technology and its disadvantages are low luminosity (750 lumens), some "rainbow effect" (though better than the 4800 in this respect), relatively low resolution (854x480 native) and high fan noise.

However for your application mix I think you should look seriously at the new Panasonic PT-AE700. This was launched in the US about 5 weeks ago and is just becoming available in the UK - I bought one last week though it was hard work finding one in stock. I am delighted with it. It is £1540 packaged with a 60 inch pull-down screen. It uses LCD technology but achieves a 2000:1 contrast ratio (previously unheard of with LCD at this price), using dynamic aperture and gamma control. It also has very low pixellation through effective use of video processing software. It has 1280x720 res and 1000 lumens. It is native 16:9 with various other aspect modes and HD ready with excellent set of inputs including HDMI (also component, RGB, S-Video, Composite and D-Sub XGA). IMO it is a true breakthrough in projector price/performance.

Being LCD it is superior to the cheaper DLP projectors for your presentation work and is still fantastic for video though you will need a reasonably dark viewing environment (soft ambient lighting is no problem). Also maximum screen size is realistically 120 inches. If you want/need larger and brighter and still cover both your applications well you will have to spend a LOT more money on either a pro-level DLP machine or on 2 projectors for your 2 apps!

Hope this helps. Good luck.