Projector... or Large Monitor?

[commandercup]

I've got a dillemma...

I'm selling my paintball gear which totals to around $500 because I can't afford to pay $50-100 weekly to play... and leaving the stuff sitting around is just a waste...

Thus, with my $500 budget in mind! I'm going to be making a little room for myself to chill in during the summer with friends and alone. The room itself is 13' by 16' and has two doors and a small 2' by 6" window at the very top of the room on the far wall. (Its in the basement so the window can be easily covered if I'll be using the room for a projector)

So... should I get a budget projector for for around $400 or $500 and use that to play games on, watch movies etc.

Or should I just get a nice size monitor. (~22") and spend the money elsewhere?

I'm leaning towards the projector personally since picture quality isn't that important as long as it looks decent. The only problem I can see is that budget projectors may not have many good resolutions that will let me see text clearly... Brightness seems to be fine since you can get budget projectors with anywhere from 1500-2500 lumens for a nice price.

Just remember that if I choose a projector, the $500 budget will need to also accomodate a screen... if I so choose to use one. The room however is all white and would be decent enough even without a screen... I'm thinking that I can find a projector with a rebate that I can use to buy the screen a while after using the projector.

One problem with using a large monitor is that my poor little 9600 GT won't be able to handle it all that well... although with the extra money I could upgrade my graphics... and a 22" monitor won't fill up a wallspace and thus cant really be used to watch movies etc. on...

[Fat.Clown]

I vote projector
just because its huge, and the awesomeness of playing games on 100"+ screen

[commandercup]

lol, great minds think alike eh?

[veedubfreak]

Ya i plan on getting myself a projector when i buy a house this summer. You can make your own screen pretty easily with blackout cloth and some 2x4's.

Oh one thing to remember though, with the monitor you dont have to worry about any maintenance. With a projector, depending on the usage, you will have to buy bulbs somewhat regularly, and thats where the expense comes in.

[commandercup]

eh, the life of the bulbs won't be too much of a problem

2000-3000 hours on average so...

on the good scale: 8 hours per day = 1 year

on the bad scale: 5 1/2 hours per day = 1 year

I'll probably end up selling this before the end of a year anyways or it will just lay unused or rarely used.

Bulb prices won't matter too much next year because I'll finally get a job and i can afford paying $200-300 a year

[CalcProgrammer1]

I personally say monitor. You may wonder why, but monitors have better resolution and picture quality than projectors, especially cheap projectors. A cheap projector will probably give you a maximum of 1024x768 for resolution (that's like a cheap monitor back in 1997 or so). A good $200-$300 monitor will give you 20 to 24 inches diagonally, widescreen, a 1680x1050-1920x1080 resolution (1920x1080 is 1080p "True HD" quality), and probably HDMI input(s). With the money left after that, you can get a nice set of speakers to go with it.

IF you do go with a projector, worrying about your "poor little 9600GT" won't be an issue, as it'll only have to render 1024x768. Black levels are also pretty bad with projectors, especially during the day/in light. If you're playing games with dark scenes, that can be a problem. Most of the projectors you'll find for $400-500 aren't home theater projectors, just business ones meant for displaying PowerPoint presentations at meetings, where color and image quality only needs to be legible and presentable.

IF you go with a big monitor, your little 9600GT may have to work a bit harder, because good monitors can take really big pictures. The quality will be good, but you'll have to tweak the settings to get good performance. My 8600M GS gets fairly decent performance on a 1680x1050 17" laptop panel or 1680x1050 20" monitor in Source and Quake 3 games (those are the only games I play, Crysis demo worked OK at 1024x768 but it looked blurry).

[commandercup]

Well although image quality will definately be worse with a projector... personally it doesn't really matter...

also, dark/light won't matter because the room I will be in has only a very small window which I can stuff with black paper/cloth/towels because its a recessed window.

from my point of view... I guess it might just be a matter of size/space since if I get a large monitor, I can afford a second 9600 GT for SLI which will be decent enough for large resolutions... the other matter is visual quality...

so, large picture, worse quality or smaller picture, better quality?

I really have no idea...

I'm still leaning towards a projector

[veedubfreak]

Big monitor for gaming, Projector for watching sports/movies

[Hawk12online]

I would suggest a progector - if you don't want fantastic image quality.

If you want to spend the whole budget on a projector, you could paint a wall white and use that Its what I did - and works well

[commandercup]

all the walls in the room are white, as is the carpeted floor and the doors and the door frames

I'm still leaning towards projector... I've decided I want to indulge in some nice driving sims which would look amazing on a big screen