What is a good lamp-free projector?

Projector and projector screen question?

• I'm wanting to get a projector and a projector screen for my room but one thing I don't understand is the ratio thing. The projector screen ratio is 4:3, and the projector I want to get is also 4:3. So does that mean that the projector will work with the projector screen size and stuff since they are the same ratio?

• Answer:

  To further complicate things, the content also has a ratio. Most movies these days are about 2.4:1 so if you watch a movie there will be very large black bars top and bottom on a 4:3 screen. This is normal, it's because the screen and the movie picture are not the same shape. The 4:3 screen is almost square and the movie picture is a rectangle more than twice as wide as it is tall. Most projectors these days have a 16:9 imaging device. This is what you really want, 4:3 is very old style. The 16:9 imaging device is more of a rectangle than 4:3 but still not as wide as most movies. So, just like with the 4:3 you do not get to use the entire imaging device. You could make the screen 16:9 too but you will still have the black bars top and bottom on most movies. The black bars will not be as large but they will still be there. The best way is to make the screen 2.4:1. Your 16:9 projector if adjusted to fill the screen vertically on full 16:9 content will have black bars on each end of the screen. When showing 2.4:1 movies you can zoom the projector to again fill the screen vertically and eliminate the black bars completely. A better solution to zooming is to use video scaling to vertically stretch the picture to fit the screen vertically and use an anamorphic lens to stretch the picture horizontally back to the correct aspect. You definitely don't want 4:3 anything unless you have some application that this works well for. If you are doing some sort of business presentation for example then 4:3 might be ideal or if you have some sort of game console that uses 4:3 imaging. If the plan is to watch movies then get a projector with a 16:9 imaging device (native aspect) and build a 2.4:1 screen. mk