Delirious About My New Projector

So I'm probably the only person ever to be delighted when the tv broke, as regular readers will know I don't have a tv in the conventional sense, just a tv set used to watch DVDs on, which in Ireland means you still have to pay for a tv license, even though it's not actually connected to anything that will show tv! I'll explain this for non-Irish readers, in Ireland you have to pay the government €160 per year, per tv(in theory, but nobody buys multiple ones) for owning a working television. I've been using my parents old tv for years to watch movies under the mistaken understanding that I did not need a licence for this. But eventually I 'got caught' last year(we have endless shameful ads to reminds us to pay the tv license using the 'what will the neighbours think' to guilt the nation into coughing up). I made some phone calls and it turned out that I had to pay the €160, this was early last year and I knew it was going to expire soon, but I was totally unwilling to pay it again. Hence my delight when my tv broke over Christmas.

But I hate watching films on my computer, not only is the screen too small but it's just not cozy enough, and I like to watch lots of films. I used thes deceased tv as an excuse to buy myself a projector, I figure between the cost of buying a new tv plus the cost of a tv licence I could pick up a projector instead. Not only do you get the loveliness of a large, the cinema experience at home, but also it meant that I could get rid of the butt ugly tv in the corner. On top of that because it's not a tv I don't need a tv licence!

After some research online I came up with this option on Projectorsite, I wasn't 100% sure of all the factors I should be looking at but the main decider was price as I'm pretty strapped for cash. This supports HD, Bluray, PC, Wii, PS3, DVD, and it comes with a 30,000 bulb life(approx 20 yrs!), all of which seemed to be the best in it's price range. It's small enough, about the size of a shoe box, and once the movie is playing you can't hear the fan at all. If any of you decide to go for this model you will need to get external speakers as the internal ones are rotten, but that is to be expected. I'd say in a few weeks I might get a cinema sound system, nothing too posh, but I should pick something up for less than €100. After some tweaking with the brightness and contrast the picture quality came up great. What I'm doing at the moment is running a dvd on the laptop and using the external speakers to get a better sound quality. As the opening credits of Inception started I got a 'I can't believe I really own this' feeling, it was very exciting.

Ps: The screen in the picture above looks very bright as we had to turn on the light so you could see my delirious expression.
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