I’m personally thinking of just plugging a decently capable little media PC into the display, using KDE’s “big screen” interface with KDE Connect as a remote. I’m pretty sure I could train my family on that…
Then there are fairly good projectors for like $80 or less
Um. You and I have a very different idea of “fairly good”. The only good projector I’ve used (at work, not my own) cost $12,000. It’s overkill for a home theatre, but not by a wide margin.
If you want a projector as bright as a TV you could buy for 20 bucks at a goodwill store, you need to spend quite a bit of money on it… especially if you also want decent black levels and of course significantly larger than a cheap LCD (otherwise why get a projector).
You also forgot sound. Good speakers aren’t cheap either. And you definitely don’t want the sound coming from the projector itself. Or from your laptop speakers.
Unless you’re trying to achieve 4K on a projector, you definitely don’t need a $12k model.
Similarly, sound is dependent on the user. I’ve used many projectors that had decent speakers. Yes, speakers can be expensive, but not outlandish unless you’re going for an audiophile set, but then you’re going to drop money either way because most TVs don’t have movie theatre level speakers.
I’m just interested in having a big enough picture without paying a fortune or having unskippable ads while I play Horizon: Forbidden West.
An $80 projector works just fine for me.
I’m not trying to build a theatre or anything here.
I’m personally thinking of just plugging a decently capable little media PC into the display, using KDE’s “big screen” interface with KDE Connect as a remote. I’m pretty sure I could train my family on that…
Roku is so scummy.
This is my thought:
Good enough laptops are about $200, and Linux is free.
Then there are fairly good projectors for like $80 or less that have hdmi, av, rgb, etc. with an led bulb.
So, grand total about $300 for a massive screen and zero ads.
Um. You and I have a very different idea of “fairly good”. The only good projector I’ve used (at work, not my own) cost $12,000. It’s overkill for a home theatre, but not by a wide margin.
If you want a projector as bright as a TV you could buy for 20 bucks at a goodwill store, you need to spend quite a bit of money on it… especially if you also want decent black levels and of course significantly larger than a cheap LCD (otherwise why get a projector).
You also forgot sound. Good speakers aren’t cheap either. And you definitely don’t want the sound coming from the projector itself. Or from your laptop speakers.
Unless you’re trying to achieve 4K on a projector, you definitely don’t need a $12k model.
Similarly, sound is dependent on the user. I’ve used many projectors that had decent speakers. Yes, speakers can be expensive, but not outlandish unless you’re going for an audiophile set, but then you’re going to drop money either way because most TVs don’t have movie theatre level speakers.
I’m just interested in having a big enough picture without paying a fortune or having unskippable ads while I play Horizon: Forbidden West.
An $80 projector works just fine for me.
I’m not trying to build a theatre or anything here.