Projector and Screen recommendations

The Mitsubishi HC4900 is the cheapest on the market now. Check out www.projectorcentral.com for reviews on all projectors and comparisons. It is an excellent site to do comparison shopping.

Below is a link to a guy who sells refurbished HC4900's for only $1,395.00! They come with less than 100 hours and a full factory warranty from Mitsubishi.
www.theprojectorplace.com

Also, search on ebay for "Accuscreen". It is a very easy to assemble fixed projector screen that looks great and is very cheap. I paid $217 for a 92" fixed frame screen a while back. Best Buy quoted me for an identical screen $1200.00.

Also, search on ebay for a projector mount for the HC4900 -I bought one for about $50.

I purchased a 30' HDMI cable on ebay for $45 from Rixlabs and am very happy with the quality of the cable.

TOTAL COST for this 1080p setup only ~$1700!

Mounting the screen in front of a window would worry me. Are you going to use blackout shades behind it?

No, I can't use blackout shades. Our HDTV sits there with good results. But we do have good heavy plantation blinds on the windows. If a projection system is not feesable I'm willing to get a plasma TV.

Doesn't appear as though a front projector is right for you.

Another recommendation to consider the Mits 4900. I have one and it is a great 1080 projector for not much money than a 720. It is very bright even in low lamp mode where the bulb will last "stated by the manufacturer" 5000 hours. Kirkus has a great recommendation to look at grey screens, especially if you are looking under 100 inches. My screen is about 13 feet away and 100 inches diagonal and the brightness is great with a 1.0 gain screen. There are quite a few grey screens around that gain and they will give you better blacks. IME the two weaknesses of this projector are the poor on board processing (fixed with a good upscaling dvd player), black levels and the slow iris. The black levels do not bother me that much, but the auto iris is really distracting on some movies. Despite its weaknesses it does everything else great and I am still very happy I chose this projector. With that screen size stated above and at that distance the image would be too bright for me in a dark room even on the dimmest setting, but with a little light I am not sure if it would be better. Maybe someone with more knowledge could say if a low gain screen would be better at that size and distance.