Projectory Goodness

Ahhh... after much hoo-ha, faffing around, and a trek across town to the ParcelFarce depot, it's finally in place! My shiny new Benq W100 projector began it's (hopefully long) service of movie showing last night, with a screening of Star Wars (A New Hope you fool, not The Phantom Menace). Sure it took a little "refinement" of the living room layout, and not all the furniture has a home anymore, but that's a minor side effect of undertaking the erection of your own cinema. Room shuffling aside, setup of the projector was effortless; a crystal clear picture right out of the box. No need for a screen, no twiddling and tuning (other than to get it in focus); just point at the wall and switch on for a bright, clear and frankly enormous picture. How much does such cinematic ecstasy cost I hear you ask? PixMania. 385 English pounds. If that's not the the AV deal of the year you people are impossible to please. As Ferris said, "If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up".

Now to the screening. I've seen Star Wars a countless number of times, yet only once on the big screen (during the summer re-releases of '97; a fine Summer it was too). I can not emphasis the difference it makes to see something like this projected several feet wide onto your living room wall. It's all consuming, like dropping out of the real world and being immersed into some long forgotten childhood dream. Thanks to this delightful gadget, I was reacquainted with something years of home DVD viewing had taken from me. The spectacle of cinema.

Sure, we can all watch our favourite movies at home in the intimate atmosphere engendered by the TV; but watching it on a projector? It's a different feeling entirely. It reminds you how "big" cinema can be. The broad strokes of escapist story telling can only really be at home on a broad canvas. The opening shot of the star destroyer and ensuing gun battle, watching the Millennium Falcon blast out of Moss Eisley, Darth Vader striking down Obi-Wan, to the climactic trench run on the surface of the Death Star... all these moments loose something when trapped on the confines of the small screen.

But no more! Finally I have the means to set them free, a gateway into the imaginations of countless filmmakers, past and present. Time to go through my DVD collection again, seeing everything as it was intended.