Front or rear projection? What should I choose?

These are not necessarily easy to answer questions. We will try to give you some tools to help you in your final decision.

Let's try to list the pluses and minuses of each:

Rear projection home theater setup

The pluses:

• Can be watched in bright environments. No need to control the room lighting.
• Decently large picture
• Bright and crisp colors
• Very little calibration required to get a sharp picture

The minuses:

• Bulky. Takes more space in your room.
• Smaller picture is possible (maximum is about 70 inches diagonal)
• Does not provide a true cinema-like experience.

Front projection home theater setup

The pluses:

• Easy to relocate the home theater setup. The equipment itself does not take too much space.
• Very large pictures possible (over 200 inches diagonal)
• Bright and crisp colors
• Best theatrical immersion experience you can possibly get.

The minuses:

• Requires a much better light control in the room used.
• Require more calibration to get an optimal picture.
• Require light bulb changes and sometimes dust cleaning periodically.

So what should you choose?

Rear projection is best suited if you want a more general home entertainment center environment. It will support as well watching local TV than console gamming or watching movies. It can also be located virtually anywhere in the house, even if there is a daylight lighting condition.

Front projection is best if your main interest is watching movies mostly on evenings or at night, in a room where it is easy for you to control the level of ambient lighting. The front projection home theater will provide the best cinema experience at home and its main purpose is just that, to provide the best home cinema experience. It can work for occasional TV watching or console gamming, but it is definitely not the best suited for these applications.

So the bottom line you may ask yourself is: Am I a die hard movie fan or someone looking for a more versatile and generic home entertainment center platform?

Answering that last question should get you pretty much on track in making your final decision and make the best buy.