Need Tablet Device for LCD projector

[brassburnz]

Office Depot has 7" HP Stream tablets with Windows 8 on them right now, brand new, for $99.

It's full Windows 8, incidentally, not RT.

I'll keep it in mind if the Surface 2 doesn't work out.

[brassburnz]

I finally have all of the components for my outdoor theater working. A Microsoft Surface 2 tablet, an old Sharp LCD projector, rear projection screen material, and a Beebop Arduro Bluetooth speaker. I can watch Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime without any problems.

The Sharp is huge and heavy so I leave it outside under the patio awning and cover it with a towel after it cools down. I take the tablet and speaker inside. They usually need to be charged. I usually leave the screen up, although it's raining cats and dogs today, so I took it down. It's a stretchy spandex type piece of cloth that lets the image pass through to the other side.

When it stops raining I'll set it up again and take some pics. I enjoy sitting outside watching movies and baseball on the big screen. I can light up a cigar and my wife doesn't complain. I enjoy looking up at the stars and the moon and being outside.

My friend that works in television stopped by for a beer the other night. He was amazed at the clarity of the rear-projection picture. The screen is advertised as 4 X 6 feet, but I think it's smaller than that. I set it up so TV shows and baseball games take up the entire height but not the entire height. I set up movies to take up the entire width, but the height still has a lot of space left. TV and movies have different aspect ratios, so the projected image is different.

The projection screens come in different sizes depending upon the aspect ratio. 16:9 is the aspect ratio for HD TV's. 4:3 is for most laptop screens. 2.35:1 is the ratio for movie theaters. Since my media choices vary so much, I need to just get the biggest screen I can find that fits the dimensions of my yard. I don't think I can go much larger than 9 feet wide and keep the projector under the awning of my patio and hang the screen from the awning.