Of course, we all must choose our compromises that best suit us. Calling it "truly scammy" seems a bit extreme and unnecessary though.
What's the point? Well, some of us do want the large screen immersion that you simply won't get w/ self emissives anytime soon... unless you're a loner or something and choose to sit extremely close to your direct-view now, which involves its own set of compromises (including being possibly bad for your eyes in the long run). And some of us also actually find FP to look more like theatrical movies should than direct-views... and honestly, I'm not sure the pursuit of extremely bright HDR really helps that at all -- no theaters actually offer that AFAIK (and no, I wasn't quite that impressed w/ Dolby Cinema here in NYC), so it's not just HT FP.
And if going w/ FP setup anyway, each of us may feel a certain amount of improvement is worth a certain amount of $... and that may also depend on factors relatively unique to each of us (like our age, funds for discretionary spending, other priorities, etc). Life is short afterall...
It's a bit like how people choose the cars they own and drive me thinks. I don't actually drive myself, and honestly, don't see nearly enough point to spend more than say $40K for any vehicle -- at one point, I might've capped that at $20-30K (or even less perhaps), but raised that to include moderately priced SUVs like the upper-end Subaru Outbacks. But I'm not gonna call BMW or Mercedes scammy or anything like that just because some folks who probably shouldn't really try to afford them do get sold some -- well, maybe most of the "sleasepeople" industrywide (as another HTFer calls them) might indeed deserve to be called scammy though, LOL.
You're inevitably gonna be paying for diminishing returns w/ just about everything you might want near enough the best, and everyone has his/her own priorities, angles/degrees/levels of enjoyment/appreciation, ability to afford, etc.
You clearly still want some kind of FP setup for qualities that you can't get from direct-views. You mentioned owning/using an Optoma 25e. That's basically an entry level, 1080p DLP PJ from almost a decade ago -- yes, it was one of the best in that range back then (and I've had its comparably inexpensive BenQ competition myself), but still entry level w/ the usual limitations of such... although maybe those limitations don't matter nearly enough to you... just as somethings wouldn't matter nearly enough to me re: cars (or smartphones, gaming hardware, some pro level cameras and lenses, even PJs that cost over say $5K, etc).
I'd say though upgrading from that old, entry level Optoma, especially laser PJs drop in price, isn't only about the incremental upgrade in PQ. There are other aspects that go into the higher pricing (much like w/ other products), eg. lens system and memory and such features. It's like do you really wanna go back to an old, albeit very reliable, car w/out power steering, cruise control, power windows, power anything, etc? A few luddites might indeed, but probably just a few... and that (very) old reliable won't actually last forever... even though the absolute perfect car will never come and certainly not at a price you can afford (just as the pipedream, absolute perfect PJ won't either).
As they say, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good... but of course, that's not to say you need to go w/ someone else's choices for that "good" involving whatever compromises...
_Man_
. if BMW for example goes from 0-60 in a full minute, then yeah, is that not a scam? what else would you call it, right? but they don't they actually deliver. if 4k hdr projectors will give me the nits, i'll stop calling them scams.
