Home theater projector

Stilly74

Hey guys

We are going to be building a new house in April next year and we have designed a 13'6 x 27' x 9' high theater room. I have been looking online a lot about theater projectors and have narrowed it down to the Epson 8350. This will be my first projector. Looking at a 106" fixed screen.
I do 50% gaming and 50% movie/tv. The reason I picked the 8350 is cause It has gotten good reviews on its display as well very short lag times which is good for gaming. Not into 3D either.

Can anyone else help me out here on picking the right projector, or is the Epson a good chose

Syndil

The Epson 8350 may have less lag than other projectors, but according to one source that did some comparative testing (a certain A/V forum), it still averaged 18.5ms of input lag, which is HUGE for gaming. By comparison, most LCD monitors have about 5ms input lag, and your more expensive models targeted at gamers have 1ms or 2ms of lag. 18.5ms of input lag for gaming is downright unacceptable.

Stilly74

Syndil wrote: »

The Epson 8350 may have less lag than other projectors, but according to one source that did some comparative testing (a certain A/V forum), it still averaged 18.5ms of input lag, which is HUGE for gaming. By comparison, most LCD monitors have about 5ms input lag, and your more expensive models targeted at gamers have 1ms or 2ms of lag. 18.5ms of input lag for gaming is downright unacceptable.

So any recommendations on which one the get?

Syndil

No, my point was that for gaming, you don't want a projector. I'm assuming since you do 50% gaming, you're fairly hard core at it, and you will not be happy. If you want to game on an HDTV, plasma is best. Of course a gaming monitor would be even better. But you want to shoot for at least < 10ms of input lag. You could mount a plasma (or monitor) on the wall, and have a retractable screen lower over it for movies. That way you could buy a better projector for movies. The 8350 doesn't score very well on color or black levels, according to that other forum.

evhudsons

I was wondering why I suddenly seem to kick **** on my lcd tv rather than my dlp projector. I had been blaming the ping time of internet because I'm all the way down in Key West, hundreds of miles from the server. Well, seeing the replays I seem to be a full one to two seconds behind others, so I am not sure the projector is the whole issue but I do seem to do better on the lcd tv rather than projector.

I know that computer gaming is faster than console gaming, so does it matter as much for ps3/xbox vs pc?

I'm looking at projectors too, and have similar situation to the op.

Syndil

The problem is that so many games that I would consider built for PC gaming (mainly first-person-shooters) have now become popular on the console. These types of games are very sensitive to any sort of lag, regardless of what platform you play them on. Obviously in terms of lag, a PC is going to give you a better experience. But at the same time, people can and do play FPS games on consoles all the time. Personally I think they are nuts, but I'm resisting the urge to devolve this conversation into PC vs. console. (PC!!)

If you play casual games on your console, input lag may not matter much, but for FPS games, he who has the lowest input lag is going to have and advantage over anyone else. If someone is seeing things happen in the game 10 or 20 or 50 ms sooner than you are, then of course they are going to be able to react to them faster.

Games (in general), whether they be on the PC or a console, have gotten very adept at compensating for network lag, to where it's pretty much a non issue as long as your ping time is < 60ms. They do this by allowing actions that happen on your screen to occur on the server after the fact. For instance, if you headshot someone on your screen and you have a 60ms round-trip ping, the server isn't going to know about until 30ms after you pulled your trigger on your controller. But that's not a disruptive amount of time to notify the other player that he's been killed, so it's allowed to happen. This is the reason why sometimes it can feel like you get killed immediately after ducking around some cover. Someone killed you before you ducked, it just took a split second for that info to get to you.

But input lag is another animal entirely, and should be avoided as much as possible. It cannot be compensated for in FPS games. While the servers are compensating for network lag and sending info to you as fast as possible, if it takes >10ms from the time your console spits out an image to the time that image is displayed on your screen, then it's pretty much a wasted effort.

Input lag can be compensated for in music games, which are a very good tool for measuring exactly what your input lag is, and seeing what kind of effect it can have on your gameplay. If you really want to get a feel for how much input lag can mess up your game, try playing Rock Band or one of the other music games with all of the audio and video calibration set to 0ms. It will be a real eye opener.

polkfarmboy

I just bought an optoma gt750 with zero lag time but I do mostly console gaming so 720p (1200 by 800 native)works fine. You could buy a jvc rs1 for $675 and an optoma for around $600 used and have the best of both worlds, bright 3000 lumens for gaming and great punch contrast for lights out movies

You do not want to have a gaming and movies doing double duty as you will beat the sh#t out of LCD panels or lycos panels. The optoma gt 750 has great 3D and better than my epson 5010 was as far as ghosting. The bulb inside is the cheapest around and it has built in speakers that are actually as good as a plasma TV plus it has a short throw distance so you could fill a 105 inch screen from about 5 feet. You should go with a HC grey screen for gaming as you dont want black hole gaming because it hurts the eyes after about 5 hours straight :eek:

Stilly74

I realize there is going to be lag but just wanted input on which projectors have the least amount of it. I've looked at the GT 750 but I want 1080p for movies

Syndil

Then you want two different things, not one thing. If you try to get one projector to do it all, there's going to be a huge compromise somewhere. Unfortunately that's just the way it is. 20ms is low for a projector, but still far too high for gaming, IMO.

But maybe I should mention that I absolutely refuse to play an FPS on anything other than an old-school CRT (Samsung SyncMaster 997DF). I freakin' HATE input lag.

Stilly74

Syndil wrote: »

Then you want two different things, not one thing. If you try to get one projector to do it all, there's going to be a huge compromise somewhere. Unfortunately that's just the way it is. 20ms is low for a projector, but still far too high for gaming, IMO.

But maybe I should mention that I absolutely refuse to play an FPS on anything other than an old-school CRT (Samsung SyncMaster 997DF). I freakin' HATE input lag.

You stated the Epson had a 18.5 ms lag so if under 20 is low, I think my pick is good. Thanks for the help

Syndil

Low for a projector. Very high for a gaming monitor.