I have a cheapo $200 dollar projector that I use on the side of my garage. Movies can’t start until about 30 minutes after sunset but once it’s dark it looks great at about 15 foot wide. Add in a bluetooth amplifier with some speakers in front and behind the viewers and it’s a great drive in experience. It was a great option with covid.
My garage has plywood siding with vertical channels to simulate separate boards painted very light blue.
I’m looking at a several hundred dollar projector so we can start the show a little earlier. The brighter the bulb the more money they cost but we can overcome the sunset and start earlier.
Way back in 2002 I set up a presentation for a high school musical that would be shown on the 65 foot wide theater curtain. The curtain was a classic dark orange rust color made out of some sort of heavy velvet with lots of large pleats. I borrowed a projector from a doctors office and set it up in the balcony. That projector had no problem overcoming the dark curtain and filling the 65 foot width. Of course the projector was worth several thousand dollars.
Point is, with the proper investment a projector can be a nice addition to any home theater and you don’t necessarily need a fancy screen. A white wall or pull down shade would do the job. It will definitely be a different experience but if someone wants a really big screen, a projector is the way to go.
Because some “smart” TVs (Vizio especially) have been caught sending samples of the video being displayed on screen back to the mothership. They send the contents of just a few specific pixels every few seconds— not enough to reconstruct the image, but enough to compare it to previously-examined content.
For marketing purposes it’s enough to tell what show you’re watching, and what commercials you’re watching. For copyright enforcement purposes it would likely be enough to identify a particular rip or torrent. If you live in a place with a repressive government, it would likely be enough to tell if you’re watching The Official News of the Supreme Leader, or The Subversive Propaganda of the West.
If you’re “never using” the features, it’s best to go into the “terms and conditions” page, and uncheck every box that says “I agree” (I assume you no longer agree.) Then, disable the network. Finally, you can always change your Wi-Fi password if it refuses to cooperate.
The only drawback I’ve encountered with this is on a TCL/Roku TV. The TV blinks the logo badge annoyingly when it doesn’t have a Wi-Fi connection. I connected its Wi-Fi to an old access point that isn’t hooked to the internet, and that stopped the blinking. (If I ever have absolutely nothing else to do, I may open it up and black tape those damn LED chips.)
EDIT: Here are the technical details of exactly how the Avast researchers pwned their Visio TV and viewed the data being transmitted to a Cognitive Networks server for analysis:
I had to drill a hole in my TV to cover an LED that turns on when you turn off the TV. They put it next to the remote receiver behind a translucent plastic panel so the light is diffused over a wider area and if you try to cover it with anything that effectively blocks light, the remote won’t work.
If you want to read about it courtesy of people who think it’s a virtue the term is “Automatic Content Recognition”. Apparently it enables compelling synchronized consumer experiences and rich metrics and stuff.
