Planning a birthday party outdoors for my daughter and 12 friends and would like to find a projector that would enable us to project movies from an IPhone, IPad, or Mac laptop. We are hoping for one below $200. Nothing fancy but works to watch movies on disc or in the movie app native to IOS. Anyone experienced with these that can steer me in the right direction? Thanks in advance.

You are planning on using it at night right?

There's this thing called AppleTV that might do what you want , have to couple it to a video projector, big screen, etc. The AppleTV "talks" to the Mac/iPod/etc. via WiFi and connects to the projector/TV via HDMI.

Alternatively, there are any number of miniDisplayPort-HDMI dongles that will mirror a Mac's display to an HDMI device, some of these have a wireless sender/receiver in lieu of a cable to the display device.

If you have a big TV screen, you don't even need Apple TV, although that's great. An HDMI adapter from your Mac and an HDMI cable to the TV would do it. I'v got one right now because I had mislaid the remote on my Apple TV.

You might want to check with a rental store, I did a projector and screen for under $200 a few years ago. They would also give you better sound setup.

Some projectors will only supply the video and not the audio or will have audio outputs but no speakers.

quote:

Originally posted by mkueffer:
You might want to check with a rental store, I did a projector and screen for under $200 a few years ago. They would also give you better sound setup.

Some projectors will only supply the video and not the audio or will have audio outputs but no speakers.

After confirming that he wants it to be at night, this is what I was going to suggest. There are a lot off companies who rent projectors and screens and even the laptop and front end equipment needed to run them.

Check with local home theater companies in your area. I know a few here that have outdoor setups.

Yes, we plan to use it at night with a white sheet for a screen. That’s the idea anyway. We will have 13 or so 10 year old girls doing a backyard camp out birthday party. We have a outdoor area with trampoline, fire pit, stone patio, etc. Thought it might be something we could use in the future on our patio. Searches online show quite a few under $200 but I’ve never really had any experience with projectors.

There's no shortage of Airplay/WiFi enabled LED projectors on Amazon. You can get a little portable one that has an audio 3.5mm output that you can hook up to a portable Bluetooth speaker for pretty cheap. I've seen it done at campgrounds.

For a little kid's birthday, it might be enough for a 70-120" screen size, depending on how dark it is out.

Cool. you would be surprised at how many people want to do something like that during the day.

Unless you plan on using the projector a lot I would still check with local rental places. While you don't get to keep the gear you do can get a much nicer setup.