What to Know Before Building 4K Home Theater? (2021 Update)

There are many components to building your own home theater system, we’ll start with a projector first. For a picture like you see at the cinema you’ll need to get one that’s capable of true 4K resolution. When we talk about 4K for projectors there are generally 2 specs: 3840x2160 or 4096x2160 pixels. The more pixels, the more vivid the picture contents are. Other than resolution, the technology that’s used inside your projector to produce the picture is important too. DLP is the leading projection display technology on the market. The DLP chip inside BenQ’s 4K projectors uses a technology called pixel-shifting, which can achieve true 4K resolution with 8.3 million distinct pixels.

Another key piece to your home theater experience is the source, or what you’re watching. The best picture right now comes from 4K Blu-ray discs using a 4K Blu-ray player. While you may be familiar with Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray discs have started making their way on the market and offer improved picture quality if you have the right setup to take advantage of it, meaning, a projector capable of 4K, a Blu-ray player capable of playing 4K, and a 4K Blu-ray disc. And so does streaming 4K. We’ve put together a few questions to help you pick out the right 4K DLP projector. These can get a bit technical so feel free to get out your tech acronym dictionary.

Although both True 4K Technology for DLP projectors and 4K-Enhancement Technology for other projector mechanisms are pixel-shifting technologies, the results they produce are completely different.

• True 4K DLP Technology produces 8.3 million distinct pixels regardless of the DMD chip’s number of native pixels. In addition to doubling the 0.66” DMD’s 2716x1528 pixels, 4K DLP also perfectly quadruples the 0.47” DMD chip’s 1920x1080 pixels to generate true 4K 8.3 million pixels with lightning-fast pixel shifting speed.

• 4K-Enhancement Technology can only produce 4.1 million pixels by doubling the native 1920x1080 pixel resolution, achieving less than half of the required 8.3 million pixels for true 4K resolution.

• 4K Blu-ray player

• BenQ 4K HDR projector

• 4K movies or 4K videos

• HDMI 2.0 cable connected to HDMI 1 port

HDCP 2.2 is a copy protection file format, and all standard Blu-ray discs are protected by HDCP 2.2. For those who want to enjoy a smooth Blu-ray disc viewing experience without any hindrance, all associated disc players, amplifiers, projectors, and HDMI cables should be checked for compatibility with HDCP 2.2 decryption, so as to ensure the Blu-ray discs can play properly.

Yes. However, as explained in the question above, since 4K Netflix files are also protected by HDCP 2.2, meaning that for all the Netflix packages you’ve subscribed to, the audiovisual system, the projector, and the HDMI cables used must be compatible with HDCP 2.2. Also, an internet connection speed of at least 25 megabits per second is strongly recommended for an optimal 4K streaming experience. Furthermore, for 4K 60fps video contents, a 4K 60Hz-compatible HDMI cable is also required. (Please refer to the question “Which HDMI Cables Are Needed for 4K HDR?”). For more information regarding Netflix, please refer to their website.