I'm leaving for college in the fall and am interested in purchasing a projector for my dorm room. My family and I are on somewhat of a budget ($1200ish...$1500 max), and we are totally clueless about what brands to look into or where to buy from. Can anyone provide any suggestions for products in this price range? I'm looking for something that has a built in DVD player and is able to display cable TV (and possibly a computer, MacBook Pro) as well. I might be a bit lofty considering what I'm able to spend. Any advice is welcome.

How big is the room? What is the projector going to be used for, movies or data?

For that price you could get a nice Panasonic plasma and call it a day.

Yeah, all the projectors I've seen that include a dvd player are 480p.
All, or most, of the projectors in that price range have connections for cable TV and a computer.

Have you seen the room where you are going to use the projector? Setting up a projector is not as easy as setting up a TV. A TV you know you can set it up in any room.
Also, you need to take in consideration speakers position, receiver, cable length, etc.

Oh and I have a Panasonic PT-AX200u projector. It has all the inputs you want. Its price was $1300 last December, I haven't checked prices lately. I really recommend that projector.

Epson MovieMate 72 is, I think, the only high def one with a built-in DVD Player.

The big things are this, though:
1) Do you have a sound system of some sort? If not, you will need built-in speakers on the projector, which is not only rare but are of generally poor quality. That said, the aforementioned MovieMate does have speakers built in.

2) How do you plan on hooking the cable into it? Directly or with a cable box? If you have a cable box, you can use component or composite (RCA) cables to plug it into the projector, if not you will need a Projector with coax input - which I personally haven't seen - or will need to buy an adapter (or just rent a box from the cable company)

3) What kind of dimensions are your room/setup? LCD/LCoS are capable of bigger images in smaller spaces, lower end DLP ones are nicer imo but aren't as flexible with placement.

That's about it really, string up a piece of blackout cloth and you're good to go. Most projectors have VGA and HDMI inputs on them.

My setup ->
Mitsubishi HD1000U DLP Projector ($850 when I bought it last July)
Onkyo (refurb'd Home Theater in a Box, $130 about 3 years ago) receiver w/ 5.1 surround
Blackout Cloth ($17), projected on at around 94".
PS3 ($350 for a used 60gb a while back) for DVDs/Blus/Divx/Xvid...
Cables ($50 for 50' optical cable, couple hdmi, a bunch of component/composite and a switcher from monoprice)
Using the Cable Box Component -> Proj for TV.

So in all, around $1400 for that makeshift setup.

Forget the built-in DVD, that's just asking for trouble. It's a 10 second thing to just plug in your stand alone $30 DVD player (or, better yet, your PS3 for DVD, Blu-Ray AND gaming).

Don't forget the bulb. It's not a problem now, but in a couple of years, it's something to think about.

Nah...bulb for most projectors is penny's a day, if that. It is less then your daily paper, way less then your Starbucks couple times a week, less then your coke a day....

And considering a decent HD 65" TV will be much more then a decent HD projector. You'd probably have to go two bulbs or so before you started saving money by going the 65" TV. And don't forget some of those larger TV's take their own bulbs.