BENQ GS2

In the vast majority of Australian homes, the television delivers entertainment — be it broadcast, recorded, streaming or gaming — to the lounge. And televisions are getting ever larger, with 75-inchers currently being touted as “the new normal”. In this they are eating slowly into the realm of the home AV projector, hitherto the solution if you wanted real big-screen entertainment.

But projectors are fighting back. A key development is the addition of smart interfaces, so that instead of being dumb display devices, projectors can be used more like TVs, streaming via their own connection to the internet, even having a built-in TV tuner onboard. Increasing numbers of projectors now have their own sound system as well, often of a fairly basic quality, but certainly handy to have as an emergency audio solution when a better sound system is not available.

A third area where some projectors can score significantly over a television is portability. Anyone who has installed a 75-inch television in their lounge will know that it’s not something you’d be wanting to shift around on a whim, or to load into the car to take on holiday. A small projector, on the other hand, can be moved from room to room, or popped into a carrycase