Hi,

I work (voluntarily) at a small independent movie theater (50 seats). We had a BenQ SP890 which just completely died after only 3 years of use. The thing is fried, and we are asked half of its retail price for repair with only 6 months additional warranty, which is not an option in our opinion.

Like I said it is a movie theater, we are in a basement (old wine cellar) more or less fully dark room, and we show movies about 3-4 times a week. The projecting distance is about 14 meters (46ft. / 15.3yd).

What options are out there? We are not really specialists in the matter. We know the movies but not the equipment We could go up to 6000/8000USD probably. Due to the recent experience, we are not very enthusiast to go with a BenQ again. OTOH, if there is nothing else... The thing is, looing at specs of the SP890 (4000 lumen, 100000:1 contrast), there ain't much else with those.. but I guess specs aren't everything?

The only thing we know for sure is that we need 1920x1080, and if possible a "monitor out" that could be used to check what the movie is doing before starting it (e.g configuring languages, subtitles, etc). The SP890 has a PC out, but it only works in conjunction with the PC IN, so you can't go out the PC out if the input source is HDMI...

We screen from either blu-ray or dvd, and the projector is not completely in the middle of the screen (so there is a need for slight trapeze adjustment). And we don't do 3D.

Thanks in advance, and don't hesitate to ask me if you need clarification!

Thanks a lot for reply. The screen would be about 196"" wide and 118" high (5 x 3 m / 16.4 x 9.84 ft)

When I say not in the middle it's slightly to the right of the screen, but theres maybe a 5°-10° angle from the middle. Height-wise it's also a little higher than the middle, maybe 10°-15°.

I would say that the BenQ gave satisfactory results, except that it died after only 3 years. We are aware we can't get a super high-end model due to our budget, so we're looking at the best thing possible within that $ range...