BIG TVs are all well and good, but for that true home cinema effect, you really need a projector. This will allow your entire living room wall to become the TV, and makes watching films a really cinematic experience. They are dropping in price all the time, and many will even show HD pictures. Set them up correctly, and the image quality is breathtaking - if you have a living room big enough.
Fake Chanel WatchesOf course, if you're setting up a projector, it is also well worth investing in a decent surround-sound system. Here, the team at Stuff magazine choose their top projectors...
MARANTZ VP-12S4 Pounds 9,000 It's not as pretty as the SIM2 but the VP-12S4 still deserves your attention. Like the HT300E, the Marantz packs in an HD2 DC3 chipset but it trumps its Italian rival with not one but two HDMI video inputs, and fully-automatic colour calibration. marantz.co.uk
OPTOMA DV10 Pounds 850 Vaguely reminiscent of R2D2, the DV10 has all the wee robot's resourcefulness but none of its bimblyness. It has a built-in DVD player, for one thing, which means a nice neat signal path from source to image.
And that image is handled by DLP tech, so it's good.
optoma.co.uk
BENQ PE7700 Pounds 1,400 Cool as a cucumber, this BenQ has sauntered into the projector arena and won itself plaudits from all the square-eyed critics.
Brilliant visuals for its price, and HDMI, HD-ready kit onboard, too. Hooray!
benq.co.uk
INFOCUS SCREENPLAY 4805 Pounds 750 The ScreenPlay toyed with its opposition before snatching the "Hot Buy" crown in our affordable projectors super-test.
Frankly, it produces a performance comparable to some five- figure competitors with rich colours, deep blacks and an extensive socket fit.
infocus.com
SIM2 MULTIMEDIA HT300E Pounds 8,000 Ah, SIM2, Italian purveyor of all things cinematic and beautiful, here providing living proof that you don't have to sacrifice aesthetics in the name of high performance. We agree completely.
The company's HT series of projectors has long married curvaceous cabinetry to technical excellence, meeting and often exceeding the best efforts of plainer, more apparently "hardcore" rivals along the way.
sim2.it
EPSON EMP-TWD1 Pounds 900 Brilliant - if you like your projectors big, noisy and flawed - but it does have a slotloading DVD drive and JVC speakers built in.
It's user-friendly too. Critically, though, it's not HD-ready, so buy with caution.
epson.co.uk
INFOCUS SCREENPLAY 5700 Pounds 1,400 The least expensive projector so far to feature the cutting-edge Texas Instruments ED2 Matterhorn Digital Light Projector chip. The widescreen aspect ratio perfectly fits our British PAL signals without reformatting. Good input sockets and internal prog scan, too.
infocus.com
SIM2 MULTIMEDIA DOMINO 20H Pounds 3,500 Projectors and style aren't easy bedfellows but there's no reason for your home-cinema Cyclops to be butt ugly. Take this kid brother of our main picture, available in black or white, and not just a pretty face: the widescreen Matterhorn chipset produces a good picture. sim2.com
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LG AN110 Pounds 2,000 It looks more like a flat-screen telly - but this is the first wall-mountable projector. It can be used in rooms p
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