Understanding Home Theater Projectors Projectors have recently become the preferred choice for people who want to experience the thrill offered by the huge projector screens of cinema in their living rooms. Besides being used as home theater projector, projectors are also extremely useful in office presentations where you want to connect with a large group of audience. However, with plenty of types and brands of projectors to choose from, you can easily get confused and might even end up spending precious money on a device that is not meant for the desired use. It is, therefore, highly recommended to research the various available options and understand their features like lumens, contrast ratio and resolution etc. What is projector ANSI lumens and what does ANSI mean? Home Projector - The brightness of a projector is measured in ANSI (American National Standards Institute) lumens or
just lumens. The higher the projector lumens rating, the brighter the light wave intensity will be and the brighter the projection screen. Although lumens is not directly related to the size of the projected image, a larger image will need to be brighter because the projector needs to be further away from the screen and will need more lumens. The projectors available nowadays generally range between 500 and 10,000 lumens. If there is ambient light in a room, owning a projector with more lumens will make the image more defined. Light in a theater room will make an image with 1000 ANSI lumens seem washed out and harder to see. In the same room with the same amount of light, a projector with 1800 ANSI lumens will be much easier to see. It is important to make sure that the projector lumens rating is measured in ANSI. Some manufacturers use different lumens rating standards just to make their numbers look higher when they are actually not. How many lumens do I need? The number of projector lumens depends on the machine's intended use. The higher the lumens, the more the projector tends to cost. Therefore, it is essential to determine the number of projector lumens you require to avoid a situation where you end up wasting precious money because you bought an expensive projector with way too many lumens.