From the largest auditoriums to a small town church, adding projection can aid in the viewing of the scripture, help your parishioners follow along with the service and add personal elements to the service.

For each space — main worship hall, meeting rooms, auditoriums, outdoor, or child care area — your projector choice and price will probably be different. Your installer will have a variety of projectors, screens, and control options for each installation; listen to them. Installers are trained by the manufacturers and if they understand your needs, they can help determine which pieces are the best fit for the room and your budget and resolution requirements. There are times you will want to splurge on technology and there are times when you can find a solution that will be less costly, but effective.

First we break down some technical lingo and then we’ll give examples of how projectors are used within a house of worship environment and some of the minimum projector requirements for each application. Below are a few technical descriptions you will hear when deciding on a projector.

Technical Terms

Lumens: Lumens refers to the measurement of light output from the projector, or you can think of it as the brightness of a projector. The higher the number of lumens, the brighter the projector – the brighter the room, the more lumens you need. If you are in a bright, sunlit room, you need a projector with thousands of lumens. If you have a lower lumen projector, you can use a screen with a different gain to up the brightness, too. Lumens is sometimes stated as ANSI lumens. ANSI (which stands for the American National Standards Institute), sets the brightness standard.

Contrast Ratio: The depth of color is measured in contrast ratio. You may see a contrast ratio of 1000:1 or 100,000:1 — or anywhere in between. The higher the ratio, the greater the depth of color. The “best” contrast ratio is based on what you can afford and the application.

Resolution: The number of pixels in a projector, horizontally and vertically. There are several different projector resolutions. Typically, the higher the resolution, the higher the price. Your

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About the author

Cindy Davis

Cindy Davis has had a passion for A/V and technology since taking apart her first transistor radio. She found it fun to write macros in DOS while at Lotus, but really loves her countless Apple products. Between 2000 and 2008 Davis was the editor-in-chief of Electronic House magazine. In 2011 she helped bring life to TechDecisions Media as editor-in-chief.