If you’ve been looking for a projector that you can use to highlight your sales pitch to potential customers, or to present reports to managements, it's likely that you've encountered a dizzying array of features, acronyms, and options that make choosing your ideal projector a bewildering experience. Most quality projectors don’t come cheap, and making a mistake in deciding could result in either wasting a lot of money, or getting stuck with the wrong projector for many years to come. In this article we make this task much easier by outlining the key factors to consider in making this important decision.

• Room lighting – Whereas a dark room is usually preferred, in most business settings some lights need to be on in order to take notes and audience interaction. The more lights that need to be turned on, the brighter the projector you’ll need.
• Room size – In a large room with many people, the image needs to be larger and the projector further from the screen. The larger the room and image, the brighter the projector needs to be.
• Usage – Projectors used for training and working groups, where much detail needs to be seen, need to be brighter than those used for graphics and video, which are more likely to be seen in a dark room.
• Projection Screen – A high-quality projection screen provides substantial light reflection, enhancing even a low-brightness projector’s image.  

More on Choosing a Projector – Which is Right for You?

You want to make a splash with your latest sales presentation masterpiece, but you need a projector, so you start looking around at the available alternatives. As soon as you do, your head starts spinning with the technical jargon and myriad options available. What does this all mean?  Choosing the right projector depends on your specific needs, and the options sort themselves out as you understand the technology better.  Let us take a look at some of these options and the terms associated with the projector industry. 

• LCD Projectors - Liquid Crystal Display projectors. Also known as LCD projectors, create images by light projection through transparent LCD panels. They usually have three separate panels for red, green and blue colors. However, single-panel models are in production that are more portable and less expensive. However, the contrast and resolution in these models is lusually lower. In general, LCD projectors produce high contrasts and good colors that result in a good image quality even in dimly lit or partially lit rooms. However, since light is projected through small pixels, the resulting picture can look blocky or pixilated; this effect is known as the “screen door” effect. The number of pixels in a chip of the LCD determines the image resolution of the LCD Projector. 
• DLP Projectors - A Digital Light Processing, or DLP projector, creates images by the projection of light through a transparent chip into a minute mirror. This results in high definition and high quality images. They are great for both home theater and office use. And unlike LCD projectors, they do not produce a screen door effect. DLP projectors produce very high quality pictures and images with high contrast and vivid colors while at the same time using very little energy. 
• Native resolution - This is the measure of the standard image in pixels that is projected on the screen. Higher resolution results in higher detail in displaying pictures, but projectors featuring high resolution is significantly more expensive. When you select a projector you have to take into account requirements such as live feeds, full motion video or standard PowerPoint slides. To find out how your presentation will look at a certain resolution, use your computer monitor to get a rough idea of the level of detail that can be displayed. The most common resolutions available in modern projectors are: SVGA (800 x 600) and XGA (1,024 x 768). These resolutions should suffice for most types of business presentations. 
• ANSI lumens - This is the common scale that is used to determine the brightness of a projector. 1,000 lumens is the minimum amount of brightness for a small meeting room with the lights on. 2, 000 or higher lumens is better suited for presentation venues that are comparatively smaller, and lumens more than 3,500 is good for rooms that are larger. 
• Video Format Capability - The video format of a digital projector determines the kind of video data it can accept. Normally, most projectors on the market offer all three kinds of video formatting, namely NTSC, PAL and SECAM.

Now that we've defined these terms, we'll explain how to choose a projector for your particular situation in the next article in the series.