If you haven’t experienced what it’s like to watch a movie streaming out of a DVD projector and onto your wall, then you haven’t really experienced home theater. In this age of big screen TV’s, a lot of people don’t realize the power that is available through a simple projector. They also don’t realize that these units have come a long way since we used to have to watch educational videos on our classroom’s pull-down white screen. Obviously, DVD’s themselves are a modern creation. But when they are run through a DVD player projector it is a whole different story.

In this article we will take a look at some of the more popular DVD projectors available for home use. These include Optoma, Zoombox, and even the R2D2 DVD projector. Which ones have performed best in tests? Which ones get the best rave reviews? How big of a picture do they cast on the wall? All these questions will be covered in your quest to bring your home theater to a whole new dimension.

First of all, projectors in general are typically classified as either “film” or “digital”. Since we are dealing with DVD’s here, we will only be looking at the digital type. In this case you will often have a choice of an all-included one or else just a simpler version. The “everything” package means that the player itself will play sound, different media, etc. You will also want to consider if you are going to want to mount your DVD projector up on the ceiling in a hanging fashion or to simply stand it up on a table or stand. Obviously, the ceiling is the less intrusive way to go.

The Optoma H31 is one of the best projectors out there today. Most reviews will back this up. It creates a great video picture all the way up to about four feet away from the wall. (This is impressive.) This is a white or silver unit that is very sleek in design and it is also discreet. It will certainly not disturb the present design of any room.

In terms of price, this Optoma goes for about $500 from what I have seen. That may sound steep but when you realize that it is projecting “as good a picture as a plasma” according to a lot of people, then it starts to look like a much better deal.

The Zoombox DVD projector is another big player in this field. They may, in fact, be the most well known name here. One of their projectors will typically cast a 60 inch (diagonal) video picture on the wall from only eight feet away. If you want, you can make use of the headphone jack too. But I honestly don’t know who would want to go all out projecting a movie onto the wall and then listen to it on headphones. It seems to sort of defeat the purpose to me.

And of course any discussion of DVD projectors would be remiss without a mention of the limited edition R2D2 projector. This thing was put out by game maker Activision and features among other things, a Millennium Falcon remote control. Since it is a limited edition product I’m not sure that it can actually be bought new anymore. But it’s worth mentioning for the novelty effect. It’s very cool, I must say. (Even if you are not a real big Star Wars fan.)