Projector advice

blargoe

I was wondering about your experiences and recommendations with projector technology for presentations on a large screen.

I have been asked by my church to help them spec out, purchase, and set up some audio/visual equipment for the auditorium. Ideally, they would like to have something that can be mounted to the ceiling, be controlled completely wirelessly, and wirelessly connect to presentation content to a laptop computer somewhere in the auditorium and display on a large screen yet to be purchased. I know most of these projectors these days must have wireless remote controls by now but the thing I'm the most skeptical about is the capability to transmit the content to the projector wirelessly. Do any of you have any experience with this?

I'm still shopping and doing some research, but I found one model, this Epson projector on Dell's website that can connect to a computer over wireless or wired ethernet and play movies and powerpoint presentions. Supposedly, if you install the software on the computer it is smart enough to know if you opened a powerpoint and display only the slides and none of the other notes and stuff.

Any insight you can provide would be apprecieated. I'm really not that hip when it comes to a/v technology, I'm way behind the times there, not really sure what to look for in a quality projector.

Thanks,

blargoe

Ahriakin

Wireless projection is not great, you install the application to send on your Laptop and the hardware at the projector (unless it has it built in). It sounds like a good idea but can be a pain in the ass. You're better off getting decent cable in place instead.
As for the projector itself you need to take the environment into account too. How bright is it in the auditorium? What resolution is acceptable?

blargoe

For the time being all they're really concerned about is being able to have simple powerpoint slides with songs and maybe sermon outlines, so as long as it "just works" over the wireless it should be sufficient. I'll have to find out where they want the computer to be and look over the room to see how a wire would work. Eventually there is going to be a new auditorium built that will be wired and it will be a moot point.

Lighting isn't the greatest, it's an older building and the room doesn't have many exterior windows.

dynamik

Anyone used Vista with a networked projector yet? 620 covered some interesting features related to that.

As a general rule, LCD is better for sharper text and DLP is better for motion, but they're both pretty good either way.

How bright/dark is it going to be while it is used? I'd go for higher lumens and a better contrast ration over resolution. I used to have a projector and just the light that crept in through the shades during the day really washed it out, and it was 2000 lumens.