Tim Walbridge doesn’t do ordinary. When envisioning the showroom he would build to show off the customized cars he and his team at 503 Motoring in Portland, OR were creating, he saw much more than a glossy cement floor with sexy cars parked on it. What Walbridge imagined was an event and entertainment space that would not only impress and inform his clients, but also dazzle friends, family, and business associates.
To do this, Walbridge planned out a multi-channel audio system comprising 70-volt Sonance speakers and amplifiers, an Integra A/V receiver, multiple Apple TV boxes, wireless HDMI system, and two very impressive projectors and screens to round out the install.
When it came time to pick the projectors, Tim reached out to Digital Trends for some advice. He would need high-brightness projectors capable of doing battle with some intense shop lights, but he also wanted theater-quality images for watching movies and TV when the lights were low. Oh, and he didn’t want to blow up his budget, either.
Having spent many hours testing projectors from several manufacturers, and considering the specific needs for this installation, we decided to partner with BenQ, which provided us with one SH915 projector, and one HC1200 projector.
Bright ambient light would not be the only challenge for this installation. We needed one projector to provide a fairly large image from a short distance, and the other to provide a huge image from almost 45-feet away without the picture falling apart entirely. It turned out that the HC1200 handled the former, and the SH915 the latter, perfectly.
With 4000 lumens of total brightness, the SH915 not only keeps the image looking crisp at the very large format, but does so at an affordable $1100. The HC1200 is the real showpiece for movie watching, though, and at $1300 offers outstanding contrast and color, plus large images from a short throw distance.
Watch our video above to see how BenQ’s projectors filled out the space, and how Tim Walbridge feels about the final installation.
SH915 Projector HC1200 Projector
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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