I have always had a pretty good projector available for doing presentations and that was way it was utilized. At the same time I occassionally viewed videos from the web on my laptop or desktop, but never quite put the two together. Recently there was a battle between my television provider and one of the local channels. This created a problem with viewing two of only a few shows that I watch on TV, so we decided to try out the projector for watching video on the web. Since I had a place to mount it I got a large screen and we set out to see “Lost” in almost life size. A 100 inch screen is fantastic! We then started using the watch online version of NetFlix and that works out nicely as well.
You have to dim the room significantly (this will vary with the power of the projector – ours was selected for portability so it isn’t quite as bright as some of the larger units) more than you would for watching on a screen, but we brought down one of the reading lamps for reading or working on a laptop while watching. Additionally we have found that this works well for the few times that you need a really big monitor to work on something – especially if you are collaborating. The resolution is more than sufficient to provide a working view and the size is awesome.
The projector I have, did not come with an HDMI imput, but it does have a DVI – found an adapter at a local electronics store and a fifteen foot hdmi cable and I now hook up my Blu-Ray disk player to the projector as well for group movie night.
Don’t do a lot of gaming, but I could see how this setup would be interesting in that environment.
This also made it clear to me that a computer as part of the home entertainment system is now becoming more than just an interesting add-on – it now gets used much more than the DVD player and if we didn’t already have a dedicated DVR I would probably use it to record as well. Not quite ready to replace all of my equipment and reset, but when I do, I will definitely consider how this fits into the overall setup and integrate it into the sysem.
So if you have a projector sitting around most of the time that you don’t use, give it a try – you might be amazed. Andyou might want to see where the computer plugs into the entertainment system (P.S. there are devices for wi-fi-ing your video and audio from your computer into the entertainement system).