Gadget of the Week
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Samsung UA55C9000 3D LCD TV
At $10,000, the Samsung UA55C9000 costs more than twice what an otherwise similarly specified, similarly sized, Samsung TV would sell for. So what’s so special about it? We reckon that several of the more extraordinary features justify that price.
Home Theatre
What size screen do you need?
A moderately-priced projector can produce a huge image in the home, so it's tempting to shoot for a monstrously large screen. Tempting, but often not correct. In most circumstances a smaller screen will give a better result. How big?
Let us assume that you will be using a 1080p projector. At the rate that prices are falling, these are rapidly becoming available at excellent prices. Let us also assume that you are using a Blu-ray player, or HDTV, so that you are getting real high definition.
The rule of thumb for screen resolution is that two adjacent pixels should not be more than one minute of arc (that is, one sixtieth of a degree) apart as seen by your eye. I won't work through the maths here, but what it boils down to is that for a 1080p display, the height of the picture shouldn't be more than one-third (31% to be precise, but one-third is close enough) of the distance between you and the screen. If you are sitting three metres from the screen then you will want a screen about one metre in height, which is about 200 cm on the diagonal, or 80 inches.
Much larger than that and the picture will not look as sharp as it should. Of course, this is too large for DVDs and standard definition digital TV broadcasts; they will look quite soft on such a big screen. The solution here is to zoom the picture down to a smaller size.
Back Page 6 of 7 Next - Projector screen purchasing checklist and conclusion
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