I've always wanted to have a front projection Home Theater ever since the very first big screen TV came out in the 70's early 80's. But I've always known that I would want a Theater Room, not a Big Screen Oversized TV. Every time I went to a class or seminar where they used a projector, I said to myself, " that would be a cool way of watching tv, hook up a vcr (for tv tuner) or DVD player and I can have a theater".

Well about 4 years ago I started searching around on e-bay and the net for info on projectors. I found your site...Projectorcentral.com. Awesome site. I bought an Optoma 702 dlp projector at a local pawn shop for $1000 this really started it. I hooked it up to my dvd player and my prologic sherwood receiver and we had a big white wall...waaallla HOME THEATER is born. Well I started to know more and more about projectors and Home Theater equipment (thanks to your site), and the prices keeps coming down and down...and my business started to flourish more and more...I started having a desire to get better equipment.

Well my wife is the type that would watch from a 13" TV with a 13 channel, non remote, rabbit ear fed with VCR and be very happy with it. So to justify a theater room and equipment upgrade, I decided to build her a 3900 Sq Ft home, with 1200 sqft basement of it for my business. So my family room is a theater room at night. Daytime picture shows a fireplace with a 50 gal fish tank above it with my Audio equipments on both sides of it. I wanted to conceal the speakers and projector but never got around to it except for the center speaker . At night I have an electric drop down glass bead 8'X6' Screen covering the fish tank and fireplace and I just raise or lower it depending of the aspect ratio of the DVD / Video we're watching. I still couldn't justify spending too much so I was still quite budget conscious about it.

I'm running a BenQ DS650 SVGA DLP projector with 600:1 contrast ratio and 1600 lumens output with 1.8 gain on the screen. I have a Pioneer Elite Reciever, Paradigm cinema 90 speaker set with 150 watt 10" powered sub. I have a Denon DV1080 (spent $500 but very disappointed, been to the repair 2x and my $100 dvd player still works better and plays more formats besides I can't tell the farouja difference in quality of picture). So not great but not bad.

Our home is now the favorite family party gathering place. My kids (3,5,7) love watching their Nemo and Shrek, etc on it and now all their friend love coming over to watch or play playstation 2 on it. We have a 2 seat Lane Theater recliners and a 6' Love Sack (giant bean bag) for seating. We had an outdoor backyard evening picnic with outdoor Movie night for our neighborhood and it was a hit ( I used my old Optoma 702 and old Prologic stereo).

Now I told my neighbor about your website and now he's got his own Theater room too. Its been great.....NOW here's the great news, I had to move out my business to an office space so now I have a 800 sq ft open in my basement........Time for an upgrade. I've been looking at the Denon 3805 or a Rotel Receiver in similar price range. I'm upgrading to either a Klipsch Reference setup or a Paradigm Reference setup. I'm also looking at a newer BenQ6200 or the NEC 240 or 260 ( there's so many choices now a days). I'm looking for a system to be able to tap into my network and pull video files and pictures from my computers. I would like to be able to store my videos on a hard drive and just pull them out through the network. I still like the 4:3 ratio because of its massive size when I'm watching one so I might still stick to that. Anyway, I'll update you guys when its done.

Here's the equipment list:

BenQ DS650 $ 1,400

Da-Lite Screen 8x6 $ 800

Pioneer Elite 41x $ 600

Denon DVD 1080 ? $ 500

Paridigm Cinema 90 (5 spkrs) $ 700

10" Powered sub $ 100

Monster Cables $ 250

Playstation2 $ 150

Lane 2 seat Theater Recliner $1500

6' Love Sack $600

Total $6,600

Thanks a bunch!