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If a 50-inch plasma TV isn’t big enough for you, but you aren’t quite rich enough to afford the gigantic 103- and 108-inch screens from Panasonic and Sharp then you’ll probably want to consider a projector. BenQ would politely offer its W9000 model for your consideration.
The W9000 is a 1080p DLP projector that can produce a 100-inch picture, as long as you can give it 4m to throw its beam in. The exciting part of the specification is that it supports the 24 frames per second system, which means you’ll get cinema-like quality and top-notch performance from Blu-ray and HD DVD.
While it’s not cheap — we saw it online for around £5,000 — it’s a fraction of the cost of the Panasonic 103-inch plasma, which can be yours for just £50,000 (plus installation). The bad news is that once the lamp goes, you’re looking at a bill of around £300 to replace it, which is moderately painful, especially considering you’ll need to do it every 2,000 hours or so of use.
The BenQ is much smaller than a 103-inch plasma, but it’s still pretty chunky, and if you’re thinking about mounting it somewhere, you’ll probably want to get a professional to take care of the instillation. As a guide, it’s around the size of a Betamax video recorder — the top-loading kind — and weighs about 10kg. For all you parents, that’s the same as a 15-month old child.
Although it’s expensive, you could probably recoup some of the cost somehow. Perhaps you could set up a screening room where big movie producers can check the rushes of their latest blockbuster. Or perhaps you could charge people to come over and play Gears of War with terrifying life-size realism. Just don’t dare charge people to watch films, or the Federation Against Copyright Theft will come round and eat your dog. -Ian Morris
