I’ve been looking for a projector and this new Acer P5260i looks like it might be just the ticket. The projector itself is fairly middle-of-the-road spec-wise, with 1080i/720p HD support, DLP, a 2000:1 contrast ratio, and standard digital inputs like HDMI and DVI.
What’s remarkable about it is the integrated WiFi with built-in MPEG decoding. We’re guessing it mounts like AppleTV does in iTunes and you can drag a file (MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, WMV9, AVI, DivX, XviD, ASF or VOB) to its icon and it just starts playing.
You’d want to take the audio out for your surround system, but this could be a really great home theater projector, even though it’s aimed at the pro market. We’ll try to get our hands on one and see if it’s as cool as it sounds.
This might solve a big issue with installation of front projectors: installing a big, expensive video cable. On the other hand, many of the new video download devices like AppleTV, Vudu and Roku all require HDMI (with HDCP). I wonder how (or if) the WiFi connection will do this?