We tend to think of home theater as a suburban thing, logically enough.  Unless you have more space than what city dwellers designate a “one-bedroom,” then it’s unlikely you’ll be able to devote an entire room for that purpose.  When I moved into my current apartment, I realized that I didn’t actually need a so-called “living room,” and thus I decided to use the second room in my apartment – the one that was not my bedroom – as a combination of office and home theater.

But because this room, relatively large as it is, has to serve two purposes, this leads to a rather obvious problem.  Two of the walls are covered floor to ceiling with bookshelves, a third wall essentially houses my office – my MacBook and desk – and the fourth has windows gazing out upon Hamilton Heights. Naturally, my first instinct was to get one of those ultra-large flat screen smart TVs – which have been diminishing in price even as they expand in screen size – but there was simply no place to put it.  Unless I wanted to lose the only window in the room, I had run out of walls.

The solution: a projector and a pull-down screen.  That way, during the daytime, I can have my sunny room with a view, but, come showtime, I just lower the screen, fire up the projector, and start microwaving the popcorn.  Up to now, I have generally connected the projector to either a DVD player or my MacBook, running the highly recommended media player app VLC, and I ran the audio through my regular stereo system.

Essentially, it has worked out fine.  Yet every time I visited a friend with a newish TV, especially with Blu-ray or 4K resolution, I would seethe with jealousy.  Images from a standard projector from ten years ago looked flat and lifeless compared to the depth you could get on virtually any screen TV manufactured recently.

Finally, I decided to take the plunge and invest in a high resolution digital projector.  These are much more expensive than standard projectors – the kind you see in schools and board meetings.  

My choice was the XGIMI Horizon Ultra, which cost me about $1700 on Amazon, and it was worth every penny.  The Dolby-enhanced picture is unbelievably rich and vibrant, at least as good as any high-resolution flat screen TV.  To watch “Seinfeld” is to feel like Jerry and George and Kramer are sitting on your couch right next to you.

At first I was using the Horizon Ultra the same way I had my old projector, playing on the MacBook and inputting via the HDMI port.  But gradually I became aware that the Horizon has full-on Smart TV functions and, unlike the older projectors, is a mini-PC unto itself with an Android operating system.  Alas, it wasn’t until I had watched all three installments of Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” trilogy that it dawned on me that the Horizon had its own VLC player built into its software. Using the internal VLC app produces an image that’s highly superior.

Also, the XGIMI Horizon can play directly from all the streaming services, which are also installed as internal apps on the Android OS.  Anything and everything from Netflix or Amazon Prime, for example, video looks amazing.  In fact, I rewatched the entire first season of “Rings of Power” just because it looks so much better on the Horizon than the first time I saw it.

XGIMI recently released the newest edition of the Horizon, and it’s even better than its predecessor.  The Horizon S is their answer to IMAX and the picture is spectacular – at least as good as anything you’ll see in a theater.  The screen in my living room is about 110 inches, bigger than almost any flat screen TV, although now I wish I had an even bigger screen with which to test it.

The “S,” interestingly, doesn’t have an ethernet port – although there are two HDMI ports – but as with the previous model, it connects directly to wi-fi, and you can play a file from any drive connected to your home network.  I tested it with the 2019 “Joker,” which I wanted to re-watch before I saw the (disappointing) sequel, and it made all the gritty and grimy shots of the urban blight of Gotham City look incredibly real. Then, I switched to the other extreme, the 1999 film of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” because I wanted to revel in all of its splashy, kitschy, over-the-top visual glory.  The images were spectacular and the wi-fi was more than robust enough to play Blu-ray files from a NAS.

The S model has another major and very welcome improvement: it’s mounted on a swivel case.  Up to now, I have had to prop up every previous projector I’ve used in rather bush-league fashion – often I adjust it to just the right angle by sticking a CD case or maybe a paperback book under it.  The new swivel fixes that, one just has to point the unit in the right direction, and keystoning, to get the right image no matter what angle you are projecting from, is a snap.

The Horizon units also have the capacity for 3D viewing, which requires the additional purchase of special active shutter glasses, about $29 each, which have to be charged. In general the side-by-side approach to 3D works better on home projectors than the top-and-bottom method. Even so, the new S machine does a much better job with both 3D modes – it’s the best 3D I’ve seen on any consumer system.  At some point I may upgrade to a sound bar or some external audio device – it outputs via the HDMI-eARC port – but the built-in Harman-Kardon speakers are highly satisfactory.

The Horizon projector, the new model S especially, is one of the most satisfying pieces of hardware I’ve ever owned.  It’s a bit more expensive than a comparable flat screen TV, but considerably cheaper than finding a two bedroom apartment in Manhattan.