Acer H7531D

Acer H7531D

If you're looking for a home theater or home entertainment projector and you're on a tight budget, the Acer H7531D ($1,029 list) is a more than reasonable possibility. Built around a DLP chip, the H7531D offers 1080p resolution and a 2,000 lumen rating, making it bright enough not just for theater dark lighting, but for a family room or living room with typical ambient light. More important, the projector offers good enough image quality to pass muster for most casual use. The H7531D is directly competitive with the Optoma HD20 ($1,000 street, 3.5 stars) and the ViewSonic Pro8200 ($900 street, 3 stars), two other inexpensive 1080p, DLP-based projectors. All three are relatively small and lightweight—6.9 pounds for the H7531D—which means you can easily store them away when you're not using them if you don't have room to set them up permanently, and you can use them as portables, to take to a friend's house for example. One of the H7531D's claims to being a home theater projector is that it offers two HDMI ports on the back. With two ports, you can plug in two HD video sources, like a Blu-ray player and a cable box or the equivalent, or of course, you can use one for a computer.