Ask the Expert – Recommendations on projectors for church

Ask the Expert – Recommendations on projectors for church

What type of projector is best for our church?

 

At our live Ask the Expert session Dean Watson asked:

“Wanting info related to buying a projector for a Sanctuary. Lumens from 2800 up. 20 foot throw. Want to use it w/all lights on. Networkable. Considering a Sanyo.”

Tim Horton, SFL:
A projector should be chosen based on the screen size you want and the kind of image you want to project. The bigger the screen, the brighter the projector! It’s a simple calculation: there should be at least 80 lumens of projector intensity to every square-foot of screen surface. Therefore an 8×6 screen = 48 sq-ft needs a 4,000 lumen projector.

If you are doing song words, and a bit of DVD playback, then there is no need to go HD…!

You should also ensure that the projector is straight on to the screen. As soon as you start to use keystone then the image quality is compromised.

The throw distance is not an issue. A decent projector will have inter-changeable lenses; just choose the lens according to the distance. For example, if you have a 10ft wide screen, and you are 20ft away then you need a 2:1 ratio lens. If you are 40ft away you need a 4:1 lens, and so on…

Jarod Richardson:
Take a look at the NEC NP3250 or NP3250W (widescreen). This is becoming a standard in a lot of installs that a friend of mine in the PA/Video/Lighting world is doing. It has great features, crisp picture and a solid track record. He has had very few DOAs and very few troubles out of the box. These also have a built in wireless functionality that you can hop onto your wifi with for monitoring, service/maintenance reasons. It also has LAN, serial, etc. on the back. Remember though, any widescreen projector you go with, you cut out lumens. You can generally pick the NP3250 up for around $2400-$2800 depending on the vendor.

 

Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons https://www.flickr.com/photos/60186309@N08/11184846174