Cheap Projector

[Goldberg]

Ideally I would love an all singing and dancing 3D, full HD 1080p silent projector blah blah blah..

However for now I am in the market for a cheap one to work on a project I am starting using a Raspberry Pi and to occasionally play the SNES/Megadrive on (because it looks rubbish on a HDTV..)

I do not want to spend much at all and I do not want to buy a 'spares or repair' one only to get stung with a £80+ lamp replacement charge.

So I have been looking at these. They are roughly £50, takes HD signals and outputs at a tasty 320 x 240 (I know I know... But for what I need it is ideal).

Has anyone had any experience with these, there is loads on eBay and Amazon. For me it is the noise really.. For light I am not worried as it will be used in a dark blacked out room.

Home Theater Multimedia LCD Projector 1024-HDMI TV PC DVD Paystation VGA HDIM | eBay


Cheers.

 

[macmilm]

For the money I don't think you can beat that imho
If its too noisy just block all the vents with expanding foam !! Might work ;-)

 

[Goldberg]

Haha! Or in your case fill your holes with squirty cream!

 

[Mick]

@Goldberg lmao... a £50 projector, for what you are doing it looks ideal pal!!!

I can't even believe they can make a projector for that money let alone sell one.

Mick

 

[Goldberg]

I'm going to bite the bullet and get one next week. I'll post a mini review

 

[Mick]

I'm going to bite the bullet and get one next week. I'll post a mini review

I will be making sure you do lol, this is interesting mate.

I cannot imagine getting one, but it would be good to know what a £50 projector is like.

Mick

 

[Goldberg]

For the Raspberry Pi project I aim to put it in the nursery as a projector onto the ceiling but then I am curious to see how good the SNES looks hooked upto it. I imagine it will look pretty decent, certainly better than the up scaling effort of a HD TV.

 

[Goldberg]

OK went for it. £50 from a UK seller on ebay and will hopefully have some report to you all next week

 

[Goldberg]

Picked it up from the post office today so will hopefully get to play this week

 

[Rumpelstiltskin.]

Sounds interesting for the price mate.
Looking forward to seeing the review.

 

[HappyH]

Picked it up from the post office today so will hopefully get to play this week

Get it out & hooked up FFS mate we're all on tenterhooks here roud:
Hope it's worth it mate, think there's a few might be interested if it's half-decent at that price.
Good luck with it,
HH.

 

[Goldberg]

Just a quick update on this. Not had much play time with it, but what little I have I have been quite impressed.

It's pretty small and quiet enough (some people might say it is too noisy). You must be in a dark room to use it, any lights on will make it unusable but I only intend to play in a dark room with maybe a table lamp on in another corner.
I have tested it with Golden Tee TV game which has the similar resolution to a SNES and it was absolutely fine! I managed to get a 60-70" screen clear as day from about 3 meters with nice colours.

Has many modes, 4:3 and 16:9 with zoom etc.. but for old skool stuff all you need is the default 4:3.
The speaker is OK but I intend to plug it into an external source.

For TV/Movies? I am not sure I would ever use it for that. Maybe I will try with the Footy at some point but I don't think it will cut the mustard for Movies.
I used the SD card function which was fine. I downloaded some YouTube videos (at 320p resolution using a Firefox Plugin) to MP4 format, put them on the card and they play fine with no stuttering and all Audio in place.

So for the £50 I really recommend it, if you go in with 'You get what you pay for' then your going to be OK.
I will add photo's and a more comprehensive review soon.

 

[AJT]

Hi mate.I used to have a couple of these projectors as i would play movies for the kids.I sort of brought cheap and worked my way up.
The main problem i found with the cheap and sometimes the expensive projectors was over heating..i would very rarely get through a whole film without it locking up due to over heating.I ended up rigging up a small fan to blow onto the projector to help keep it cool.
I did buy one like the one you posted and as i remember it was okay for a bit then suffered the same with heat..They are great for a short time but any more than a hour they froze on me.

 

[Goldberg]

I have tested for 10 mins so far and I half expect the overheating to be an issue...
Will look at some modification I can make if it does