Choose the Right Digital
Projector for Church

Understand some of the terms
that can affect your purchase decision.

Trying to understand digital projectors? When shopping around, you will hear a lot of terms – many of which are confusing.

But it’s all these terms that affect the price of the projector. We’ve tried to give you a brief overview of the terms without giving you a lot of techno-mumbo-jumbo. If you’ve like a more detailed explanation of the terms, visit LCDProjectorOnline.com.

When buying a digital projector for church, there are several things you need to consider.

• What's the size of your audience (maximum seating capacity)?
• What's the distance between the projector and screen?
• How's your lighting?
• Will the projector be permanently mounted or remain portable for other uses?
• Will you use front or rear projection?
• How much can your church afford?
• Where does your church expect to be in five years?

The first few things on the list deal with terminology. The last two deal with stewardship.

Here are some terms you should understand and how they relate to a church environment.

LCD vs DLP vs LCoS

These terms refer to how the image is projected onto a screen.

LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) uses 3 different glass panels (for Red, Green and Blue) to pass light through. Sony and Epson are large manufacturers for LCD projectors.

DLP (Digital Light Processing) is Texas Instruments proprietary technology. Instead of glass panels, it uses a chip with a reflective surface made up of several tiny mirrors.

The expensive DLP projectors contain 3 chips (one for red, green and blue). Cheaper projectors (those less than $15k) only use one chip.

Although both technologies have improved over the years, they both have the strengths and weaknesses. LCD projectors tend to offer better color, sharpness, light efficiency (meaning more lumens) while DLP projectors tend to be better for video.

LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) is a new technology that can be thought of as a hybrid between LCD and DLP. Like the name suggests, it uses liquid crystals for each pixel on glass panels.

The big advantage LCoS has is it’s video quality, which is rated better than DLP or LCD. But the downside is poorer contrast ratios (typically around 500:1 or 800:1).

ANSI Lumens

This is measurement of the overall brightness of the digital projector. The more ANSI lumens, the brighter the projector.

This is an important factor when buying a digital projector for church. This number relates to the size of your audience as well as your ambient lighting. A higher number of lumens means,

• You can handle a larger audience
• You can handle more ambient light
• You may not have to dim the lights to see the screen

Projectors with more lumens can be used in classrooms and conference rooms without having to dim the lights. If your sanctuary is well lit so that people can take notes, read scripture, music, etc., then you will want a brighter projector (i.e., more lumens).

Projectors with 800 lumens are better suited for small audiences of 50 people while 5,000 lumens can easily handle an audience of 1,000 people.

We helped one church purchase a 1,500 lumen projector for a sanctuary that seated 100-150 people. The room lighting was poor, but adequate for note taking and reading. The projector worked fine in that sanctuary. Best of all, the church did not permanently mount the projector - so are able to use in classrooms, retreats, and elsewhere.

Here are some general guidelines about lumens.

• Projectors with 1,000-2,000 lumens are in the mid price range. They work well in small churches (especially ones with poor lighting). You can buy a 2,000 lumen projector for under a $1,000 today.

• Projectors with 2,000-3,000 lumens are better and therefore priced a bit higher. They are better for larger rooms with more ambient light. Try to stay in this range if you can afford it.

• Projectors with over 3,000 lumens are the better ones on the market. But you'll pay more money for them too. If you have a large church, you'll want to go with a higher lumen rating.

Contrast Ratio

This is the ratio of light output between the very brightest (white) and the very darkest (black) part of the image on the screen. The higher the contrast ratio, the better the image appears on screen.

Keystone Correction

Most digital projectors are tilted at an angle in church in order to protect the image onto a screen over people’s heads. This projection angle results in distortion in the image.

Projectors with Keystone Correction provide a solution to this problem. Projectors differ in whether they use fixed or adjustable correction – and some provide dual keystone correction (which allows a projector to be mounted upside down on the ceiling).

DVI (Digital Visual Interface)

This means a projector can display digital media from a computer or other digital visual source.

Resolution

Like computers, digital projectors have a resolution. Terms like, SVGA, XGA, and SXGA let you know what the resolution is.

• SVGA means the resolution is 800x600
• XGA means the resolution is 1024x768
• SXGA means the resolution is 1280x1024
• UXGA means the resolution is 1600x1200

There are other resolutions, but these are the more common ones you're likely to see. Because higher resolutions use more pixels, they equate to a better picture quality (and higher cost).

Bottom Line

Get the digital projector with the highest number of lumens and contrast ratio you can afford.

Try not to get a projector with less than 2,000 lumens (more is better). These two things have a big affect on the of your audience.

Like any other church purchase, try to buy with your five year vision in mind. If you see your church growing significantly in the next five years, you'll want to buy a digital projector that can handle the larger audience or newer sanctuary.

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