Each time that I share images of my lounge, and our family film nights on Instagram stories I get asked questions about our projector set up.

I have been promising for too long to create a blog post with all the information you could possibly need about our set up, and how we make this work with everyday life. Kids cartoons- do I need to say more? And why I prefer to use a projector instead of the more traditional television set up.

So here it is, let me know what you think, and if this blog has changed your perspective on your media set up.

Projector VS Television

There are definitely ways for a traditional TV set up to look beautiful and not too dominating. There are ways of styling your lounge so that the TV is not the main focal point, and most importantly does not act as an object that draws natural light away from your room.

Stand by for another blog post on this subject!

I prefer to use a projector as it means I don’t have to manage a large plastic black box in my space. To me this is not conducive to our clutter-free way of living, and our desire for our family to not watch tooooo much TV (we all still watch a fairly decent amount!)

Our set up

Firstly, our set up is not particularly fancy, we were given our projector by Daves aunt about 2 years ago.

The projector is an Acer. Using a HDMI cable from the projector means you can then connect any internet TV service to it. We use Apple TV which means we have access to the below services.

• Youtube

• BBC Iplayer and other terrestrial catch up services.

• Netflix (subscription)

Apple TV means we can use Airplay to watch anything we want from our phones, Wirelessly. So we also watch Disney Plus, Channel 4 etc.

For sound, we use an Anker speaker (really good sound quality). It’s plugged directly into the HDMI cable. We keep a plug and a mini USB charger plugged into the extension cabinet inside the apple crate tech box, so it can be plugged in to charge whenever we need it.

Picture quality

We get pretty great picture quality with the projector, especially when the room is dark. Although it’s probably not as good as a traditional TV. It works fine in the day time too, we don’t need to close the curtains in order to watch. I have tried to capture this on my phone camera but it is notoriously hard to photograph a telly! (And yes, I have watched every episode of Tiny House Nation and basically every single interiors program on Netflix in prep for our house move!)

Storage

We don’t have a screen, we just keep a section of our White wall open for it.

Dave has adapted one of our wooden apple crates by adding a lid so that we can store all of the unsightly extension cables that come with anything techy; HDMI cables, a speaker charging point and our Apple TV box. (There are also some puzzles and games in there, stored in old dust bags and cloth shoppers, which means they take up a fraction of the space. Making use of e very inch of space, always!)

The projector then sits on top of the crate ready to go whenever we want to use it. When it’s not in use the crate is small enough to sit nicely at the bottom of our bookshelf, we’ve found this is a much more useful and an aesthetically pleasing way of storing the bits and bobs that come with the projector.

Do we watch less TV?

In short, yes. Although a lot more than I originally intended when my kids were young! The TV is not the centre of our home. We are privileged to (currently) rent a large home so we hang in the kitchen mostly, which is a separate room. Dave and I only watch ‘occasion TV’- like for films together or a favourite series, rather than it being on in the background a lot, so I think those factors combined mean that the kids watch it a little less. They both watch at least 2 hours of telly a day, especially during Lockdown, though! Having the big screen feels like more of an event when we do watch telly together. Our family film nights every weekend night are a highlight for all of us.

I hope this blog has been helpful for those considering moving away from the traditional television set up.If you have any questions or comments you can add a comment below.