I'm seeking advice from other Axiomites regarding home theater projectors.
Background:
I'm sort of in the thinking/early research mode about purchasing a new TV. My plan was that probably this summer/fall I'd take the plunge into a HDTV set. We currently have a pretty decent 36" Toshiba flat-tube SDTV that's about 5 years old. It's a good, solid, standard TV. Signal source is currently standard Dish Network. We've got a couple of friends' that own larger (56"+ HDTV) sets with either DirectTV or DishHD and they look great, I'm even quite impressed at even just regular 480p DVD's.
The Deal:
So about a week ago I discovered
this . $730 (after $100 rebate) for a 720p (and a few online reviews say it secretly actually does 1080i) projector that seems to get good reviews, a 92" fixed screen, 25' component cables, and a ceiling mount. Seems like a heck of a deal. I really wasn't in the market *today* to buy something like this, but that price is really grabbing me. It's literally less than 1/3rd the cost of the HDTV's that I've been looking at. I'm thinking that something like this would be a significant upgrade from what I have, but not be so expensive as to rule out a big plasma 1080p HDTV in perhaps a year or so as prices fall even further.
The Question:
So can anyone offer any advice about this projector or projectors in general? I've never owned a projector. They always seemed too expensive compared to a 'regular' TV. I realize that this model is a couple of years old and it's an LCD projector as opposed to DLP, which is why it's pretty cheap. Professional & personal reviews, however, all seem to be quite positive and that was when it was $3,000. My den has one clean wall that's about 95" wide, so that screen would fit beautifully. I would be sitting about 12' away, so it's a little tight on the seating, but seems ok based on reviews. A shelf above the seating position even is the correct size for the projector. The room does have quite a few windows but they're heavily draped and 90%+ of our tv/movie watching is done at night anyway, so ambient light should be ok too.
The only big negative I'm finding about projectors is the $200-$300 blub replacement cost after 2000ish hours. 2k hours for my wife and I would be more than 2 years of use, so that doesn't seem too bad.
So what advice can anyone offer? Save my pennies for that 'regular' HDTV set in a few months? Take the plunge and join the projector-club? Help!
