Ok, So Ive been looking at upgrading my home entertainment system. And Ive been looking at the tvs and projectors. Im sorta leaning towards the projector but I am a little leary. I am looking for a nice size screen but not something that will take up the whole family room -> which is why i was liking the projector setup, I can roll up the screen and noone is none the wiser... but then I run into the abient room light and lumens and LCD vrs. DLP and so forth. I stopped by both tweeter and circuit city and both were practically useless. Tweeter wouldnt even talk to me cause my budget was less that $5000... assholes.... I have been looking online and reading reviews. I figure I can get a decent set up for about $2000 with the projector, screen and all the goodies. If anyone is using a set up or can let me have their opinions. Ive leaning towards the LCD setups becasue of the light out put available. ANyone have any good/bad experiences? Also, Circuit city has the "Infocus" brand. They run from $700-$1000, which is cheap for this setup... anyone know anything about them? Im leanignn towards them obviously cause they are cheaper but i do not want to buy something that i will not be happy with. The screen size will not be huge as far as the projector world goes so I do not need anything HUGE. I will be projecting about 14 feet onto a wall which will give me aboout an 84 inch diagnol screen. let me know guys... youve never steered me wrong

 

My boss has an infocus and loves it. I've been over to his house and the picture on a plain wall, not even the screen, looked great. He was showing me HD Cable and a regular DVD. The HD Cable picture looked much better.

His unit is about a year or so old so the newer ones are smaller and more quiet. Beware that depending on where you place the unit, you may get "fan noise." He had the unit in his apartment at first and placed the sucker on one wall facing the other wall. This setup was far from the couch so he didn't notice any fan noise. Once he moved the unit to his new house and his "screening" room, the unit sat right behind the couch. He did notice quite a bit of noise.

Also, note that he uses the projector for viewing mostly movies and not day-to-day TV. These projectors have bulbs that burn out faster than LCD/Plasma/DLP, etc. You should think about this as a factor in your decision making as these bulbs supposedly cost dollars when replacement is required. The only cool thing is that technology changes all the time so by the time you need to replace the bulb, you were probably going to replace the unit.

 

I currently have an Infocus X1 which I have been the happy owner of for over 2 years. I have it set up in the front room of a house where the 3 windows have room darkening shades. There are 2 other openings into the room but they don't allow for light to hit the wall im using to project against directly. This setup has worked fine for me and I can even turn the room lights on as long as I'm not worried about the picture getting that washed out look. My brother has the Infocus 4805 which he picked up shortly after I demo'd my setup for him . Both of us are very happy with the picture that they give being only 480p native products.
I recently heard of some issues that the X1 had which was causing me much concern. Evidently the problem affected a lot of users and Infocus was not very helpful because the units affected were outside the warranty period. I started researching new projectors last week with the intention of selling my X1 before I experienced the problem. I went in with the intention of upgrading to 720p. It seemed their were 3 projectors that stood out in that area. Sanyo Z4 (lcd), Panasonic AE-900U (lcd), and Benq 7700 (dlp). Well after much research it seemed that Panasonic was the best option but also the most costly.
Luckily I spent enough time researching to negate my impulse to upgrade and saved myself a bunch of money. I have seen enough in my short ownership to know that if my X1 can hang on for a couple more years I may be able to buy a 1080p dlp for the price I paid for my X1. I will cross my fingers and hope. If it dies before then I will just get whatever 750 dollars will buy because that seems to be the lower limit and while it doesn't go down the offerings get better each year.
DLP vs LCD good article can be found on projectorcentral.com. Some think that the reviews there are not critical enough so if you decide to go the projector route check out avsforums.com there is enough info there on projectors in your price range to drown in.

About the bulbs, generally they last between 2000-4000 hours and it differs how much they cost based on the projector. Generally around 300-400. Some vendors are now giving away 1 bulb with purchase of new projector as an incentive. But like ebelen said you may find yourself with the bug to upgrade by the time the bulb goes out .

 

Which Tweeter did you go to? I worked for Tweeter for 6.5 years & my roommate still does. Thats not right do you remember the person you talked to? As for the $5000 Tweeter for the most part sales higher end items then Circuit & Best Buy so the prices are higher but your getting a better product.