Maybe I'm not being creative enough, but for the average living room setup that would currently have a TV (e.g. (couch with a coffee table facing a TV stand), where exactly do you put the projector? You could put in on the coffee table, but that takes up space and doesn't look great. You could mount it to the ceiling, but that's more of a pain than just putting a TV on the stand you already have. And either method makes it significantly more difficult to connect anything, including power, to the projector.
Don't get me wrong, I think projectors are cool, but I'm not sure about their applicability to a large percentage of TV use-cases. Aside from expensive home theater type setups or janky dorm room style installs, both of which I'm a huge fan of, I'm not sure how the average person is supposed to use a projector. I would love to be wrong though, especially if it means I can use a projector in my fairly average living room layout.
The short-throw projectors only need to be a maximum of 12" from the wall. That's for the largest size, so if it's 12" away you get a 120" screen. You can move it closer for a smaller screen. This should work with most TV stands.
The more they are oriented towards normies, the more "smart" they will be. As someone else said in this thread, this is what normies want, sadly. So the only stronghold is "real" projectors that are far more expensive and aimed at home cinema enthusiasts because they are far more difficult to set up (but you get way better results if you're prepared to put in the time/effort/money).
Projectors are designed to hang from the ceiling. That is how I installed mine, above the couch. The install is easier then mounting a TV to the wall.
The problem is light control. You want to have blackout curtains and you have to close them every time you want to watch something.
And I might be out of touch with current offerings, but I think the sweetspot for price performance still has not LED options. Only entry and high end. The non-led projectors have a bit more fan noise and expensive to change the bulb, which has limited on-time.
I had my entry level projector for 10 years now and the bulb is still fine. But I also don't watch that much. Paid ~700 EUR. I shitty smart tv with no internet probably also turns on faster. I have to wait ~20 seconds.
The question is what's the budget? Ultra short throw projectors are more convenient because they can be put on the counter in front of where you'd hang the TV, but they're pricey. No need to hang it from the ceiling, or across the room.
Takes an hour and it will hang there for a few years.
I see the use case if you want to move it often though. Though as soon as you bump it you have to move it slightly again. Or let it run through autocalibration etc. For me it's more convenient to hang it to a fixed position where it can't accidently be moved.
I think this is going to be the "hacker" answer for a long time to come. Hardware that by most metrics is technically better, it's a little more expensive (but not commercial signage expensive) and a lot more inconvenient to set up which puts most people off. Functionally immune to ads
being a serviceable business because selling cheap and making it up with ad revenue requires volume they'll never have.
> Hardware that by most metrics is technically better
I think that's a hard one to sell with projectors. Picture quality is substantially worse, and images are substantially less bright, than with TVs. People buy TVs on 3 axes: price, image, and smart features. Here we explicitly don't want the smart features, but TVs are much cheaper and much better image quality (even at that much cheaper price) than with projectors. Brightness matters a lot for where/when you can use them.
Projector image quality is great, what kinds of projectors are you referencing? Image quality per dollar is a win for TVs but it's not that bad. $3k for a nice movie projector isn't crazy especially given the screen size.
And I agree that brightness is an issue but if you "only" want a 65-80" screen then even modest ceiling mount projectors can pump out enough light to compete with daylight.
Projector image quality depends on the surface you're projecting onto, the angle you're projecting at, and the light in the room. Maybe the difference is less around $3k, but that's not most people's budget for a TV. Personally I have disposable income and care about image, and spent A$1k on a TV that I'm very happy with. I don't believe there's any comparable projector for less than twice that price.
I bought a ~700 EUR Projector 10 years ago and I still think the quality is fine @ 100". (870 EUR in todays money)
I do have full light control though. But yes, no 4k, no HDR, fan noise, ~20 seconds startup, cooldown on poweroff. I do wonder how well a 10 year old TV would hold up.
PQ is the problem with all of the supposed solutions in this thread. Computer displays, video conferencing displays, commercial advertising displays, and other "dumb" displays all look like junk for watching video content, and using external devices to drive them from the streaming apps on the other platform introduces another level of uncertainty about whether the picture is being processed optimally.
A nerd friend of mine proudly showed me his dumb TV streaming rig and the picture quality was smoking hot garbage, worse than anything I've seen in the hi-def era. But he sure knew a lot about the software licenses.
Gotta be honest, if we're talking about picture quality where plugging-in a
laptop with HDMI or
using a Chromecast is of unacceptable quality then we've lost the plot a little when it
comes to how real humans consume media.
Came here to write the same. I got an Epson LCD projector used, 2m wall. Works great with an ipad mini and bluetooth box (although Apple ios is kind of dumb, I need to tell it every time I turn it on to not use the speakers in the projector). Watching happens mostly in the evening/night.
LCD (vs DLP) are kind of hard to find these days, which is unfortunate. Proper lens shift isn't so easy to find either. And you need to make sure you get a reasonably quiet one (so a movie projector, not a presentation one).
If you don't want DLP (presumably due to colour wheel issues) then you want LCoS (aka D-ILA). Only JVC and Sony make these, with JVC being most well regarded. But be aware they are about the size of a mini-ATX tower on its side, and a second hand one will set you back a thousand credits at least.
