DIY | Entertaining,  Outdoor Living,  Shopping Guides

Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up an Outdoor Movie Night in Your Backyard

March 30, 2020 / 579 Comments

Movie nights at home are so fun for the whole family. But knowing where to start when it comes to shopping for all the supplies necessary can be daunting. There are so many different options out there, and you need certain accessories to make the whole thing work. I have spent hours researching and purchased these items for my home and love them! I wanted to share with you what I use in my home to help you set up outdoor movies quickly – so here are the items you need to host an outdoor movie night at your home!

First, you need a projector. There are so many types of projectors on the market these days it is hard to pick just the right one. I love this projector because of its portability and functionality. It works at home and is easy to take camping or to a friends house. The picture is great and it even has built-in sound if you forget your portable speaker. I recommend getting this case to go with is, though technically its a case for a video game console it fits this projector perfectly, including all the accessories!

As for a projector screen, again, there are many options to choose from. What I found works the best is a pull down screen. The weight on the bottom is nice because in a light breeze it wont move much, and the corners stay flay and don’t curl. I hang ours from our pergola and just pull it down when we need it. The screen is not a widescreen but you can open it so that it appears widescreen, or just project onto it and ignore the white space around the picture.

To play content on your projector, you will need to decide what environment you are in and what you have available to you. If you are somewhere with good wi-fi (at home) you can stream through a USB stick like a ROKU stick. Ours works really well at home and lets us play everything we need that we can stream.

If you do not have good wi-fi, consider a USB drive with content downloaded on it, or you can connect your projector to a portable DVD player with this additional AV to HDMI converter because most portable DVD players do not have HDMI out. We do this when we are camping and it works great! All-though when camping you will need a power source with this method because you have to plug in the converter in for it to work.

And lastly, all-though the projector has built-in sound it is not super loud and especially if you have a crowd or are more than a few feet away, I highly recommend a portable speaker that has AUX in since that is the only way to connect to the projector.

Now that you know what you need, you can start shopping and plan your next outdoor movie night at home! Here is a link to how I have my set up in my backyard!

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