Projector / Blu Ray / Sound - how to connect it all up ?

[Pot Odds]

Self confessed caveman coming out of the stoneage so go easy.......

I have recently purchased an Epson TW650 projector for presentations and am after a bit of advice to get it hooked up for occasional home cinema use.

By way of background i already have a ceiling mounted NEC VT460 which has served us well for home cinema / Nintendo wii for the last 15 or more years. 15 years ago this was installed with RCA video feed through the ceiling and wall to a DVD player with the RCA audio output running to an old Technics HiFi. I have a ceiling mounted pull down screen. Its all very basic and old stuff but has worked well for us. The downside is obviously a woeful resolution and a bulb seriously lacking in brightness - amazingly we are still on the original bulb.

I am now keen to ceiling mount the Epson as its significantly brighter and much better resolution - I don't mind having to whip it down for occasional presentation duties. I have noticed that the quality is a bit compromised when playing DVD's on it - is this due to the projector having to upscale the image ? It plays 1080 videos from youtube or amazon prime just fine and looks really good so i know its not the 10m worth of HDMI cable thats causing the loss of quality (it looks grainy).

I'm minded that I will need a blu ray player to take full advantage of the projector (shame as I have so many DVD's) and get the best picture quality. I am therefore trying to work out how to connect a bluray player to both the projector and an external sound source (projector does have inbuilt sound but its obviously not up to much). It seems bluray players typically come with a single HDMI so how do you connect this to separate audio and video devices (bluray players don't appear to have RCA anymore). Im guessing I may need something like a soundbar to replace the current HiFi arrangement if there is no RCA on blu ray players anymore ?

Blu Ray player would be within approx 1.5m of any audio equipment and about 9m from ceiling mounted projector

Budget is non existent so ill be buying a cheap blu ray player and audio solution - thinking £2-300

Apologies for the ramble and as always, any advice is very much appreciated

Pot Odds

Edited by Pot Odds on Monday 20th August 20:09

[Pot Odds]

Thanks for the replies

So it looks like 2 options...

1. An all in one home theatre with something like this being the cheaper end

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertai...

and something like this being a little more expensive

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/tv-and-home-entertai...

2. An AV amp at about £300 (looking at the one highlighted in above posts) but still needing to buy a bluray player and speakers unless using my existing ones (think i only have the front 3 and might have binned the rears).

Option 1 appeals to me as the whole lot comes integrated and im working to a budget - the upgrade to 1080 on the projector is awesome enough (as tested via youtube/streaming).

My question is though where am i likely to find the best upscaling ? Presumably my current set up of playing dvds from a hard drive via a WDTV box or direct from my laptop DVD drive is leaving the projector to currently upscale the image (which is a bit grainy) ??? If i purchase a blurray player will it be upscaling any old DVDs I play on it or will this still leave the projector to do this ? I'm happy to pay a little more to get the setup (home theatre or AV Amp) which is most likely to upscale DVDs best as I have a large collection. Once i have the new hardware I will of course be buying Bluray in future.

Any advice as always appreciated

Pot Odds