Dr Gadget - Sanyo PLV-1080HD High Definition 1080p LCD Home Theater Projector

	List Price: $1,599.99 Our Price: $1,599.99 Your Save: $ ( % ) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Manufacturer: SANYO
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Binding: Electronics Brand: Sanyo EAN: 0086483072659 Feature: Full 1920 x 1080 HD resolution with TopazRealā„¢ technology Label: SANYO Manufacturer: SANYO Model: PLV-1080HD Publisher: SANYO Release Date: 2008-11-01 Studio: SANYO
Features Full 1920 x 1080 HD resolution with TopazRealā„¢ technology 10,000:1 contrast ratio for rich colors and deep blacks Four HD inputs including two HDMI version 1.3b and 2 component Easy DIY installation due to advanced lens shifting. Virtually silent fan design with low fan noise of 21 dB
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Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: best priced 1080p projector with great performance Comment: ive owned it for about 2-3 weeks now. ive got it about 10 feet from the wall and the image size is over 80 inches. the image is perfect, it looks like a plasma screeen covering my entire wall. every friend i have shown it off to has been thoroughly impressed. and so have i. cons: its an over the top item, when they sell decent projectors for under 1000, yet this beauty is 1600. i have compared it to one other projector; and mine is noticibly sharper image... but then i paid 3 times as much as he did. i would recommend it but only if u really want to pay 1600 for a really really great item, when many people would be very happy with a cheaper item, i demanded 1080p and i got it for a price... Customer Rating: Summary: BEWARE! Reduced Warranty! Comment: What on earth is a PLV-1080HD?? If you are looking for a Sanyo PLV-Z700, the 1080HD is the exact same thing with one big difference; a REDUCED WARRANTY. I had to call Sanyo to figure this out. All the specs are the same as the Z700, except that the 1080HD has a black faceplate instead of grey. The Sanyo rep told me that Amazon wanted their own model number for marketing purposes, so they rebadged the Z700 as the 1080HD exclusively for Amazon. Only one difference I could find: the Z700 has a 3 year warranty and the 1080HD has a 2 year warranty. Bummer! I didn't find this out until I received the 1080HD. Amazon doesn't exactly brag about the reduced warranty. It would have been a hassle sending it back, so I just kept it. On the upside, Amazon sells the 1080HD for $1600. Everyone else sells the Z700 for $1800 with a $200 rebate to bring it down to $1600. If you hate rebates like I hate rebates, it's nice to not have to deal with it. As long as my 1080HD doesn't break down in the third year, I'm happy. I'm thrilled with the picture and performance of the 1080HD. Anyone who complains about the picture is either ridiculously picky or they have it set up poorly (or it's defective). I did have one huge complaint that took me a while to figure out. The Variable Iris is AWFUL! In order to increase the contrast spec for marketing purposes, they have a mechanical barn door mechanism that opens and closes to automatically make dark scenes darker and bright scenes brighter. How can any videophile think that is a good thing? The pumping of the brightness is very obvious and very distracting. It has the exact same effect as overly compressed audio. It makes dark scenes too dark. I say let the filmmaker decide how it should look without the projector second-guessing him 60 times per second. The good news, the Variable Iris can be shut off. Set the Iris Mode to "Fixed" in the Advanced Menu. The problem I had was that it would only stay shut off until I turned off the projector. The next time I watched, the Variable Iris would be on again. It took me awhile to realize I had to turn it off, and then Store that and all my other preferences as one of the 5 available User Image modes. Now I'm thrilled to death with the projector. I've been wanting to make the jump to 1080 for years, and I'm so glad I could jump in for only $1600. I doubt very strongly that the 1080 projectors that are selling in the $2500 range have any significant advantage. Customer Rating: Summary: Outstanding Performance & Value Comment: We had been holding off buying a home theater projector since technology was improving and prices were coming down. I revisited the market this fall, doing some extensive research both online and at the local stores. I came across this Sanyo 1080p projector that seemed promising in its initial reviews -- and certainly was an attractive price point at $1,599. We have a large living room (29' by 16') that we intended to maintain as a multi-purpose living room/home theater. The room has one wall that has floor to ceiling glass with vertical blinds, which allows us to darken the room during daylight but certainly not to pure theater levels. For our situation our local retailers were promoting projectors that would cost $5,000 -- to be coupled with sound system, screen and installation that would push the cost to $10,000 or more. After researching the options, we bit the bullet and ordered this Sanyo 1080p projector from Amazon -- figuring it was cheap enough now that if it turned out to be a mistake we would just live with it for a few years until technology improved and prices came down further. In preparation for its arrival, we had our local cable company upgrade our service to digital which gave us access to their HD programming through their set-top box. I am delighted to report that we could not be more pleased or impressed with this purchase. We had it up and working within 10 minutes of its arrival, using our white wall for our initial screen. I have to tell you that it looked so good that we decided to make the wall our permanent screen. The up-down and left-right lens shifting allowed us to place the projector about anywhere we wanted -- so my son and I designed a permanent installation with a wall mount near the ceiling. We added a $250 Sony "home theater in a box" for sound, concealed the wires, rearranged the living room furniture and have a complete home theater system for less than $2,000. And the picture quality? Oustanding! We've set the picture size to the maximum for our room, which provides a picture that is over 6' tall with a 13' diagonal picture size. David Letterman is larger than life, and football games allow you to see the blades of grass and faces in the stands even on wide shots. With the 1080p HD, the "screen door" pixels are very sharp and clear at the wall but are virtually invisible when more than 3' away. The picture is as bright and clear as anything we saw in the local retailer home theater demo rooms -- maybe even better. Ambient light is no more of a problem than it would be with any TV in the room, and we find that we are using this as our primary TV. The setup and operating instructions were clear, setup was simple, the on-screen menus are easy to use, we don't hear the fan, and for our purposes, we can't think of a single thing we would change. If we have a concern, it's that we'll use it so much we'll have to buy that replacement lamp a lot sooner than we would like (3,000 hours they estimate) -- but we're beginning to consider that $300 cost a bargain compared to the entertainment value we're getting. Customer Rating: Summary: Very good projector Comment: I got mine today and hooked it up. Easy to setup, 5 stars there. The menu on the remote is a bit funky, not much though. It just needs a couple extra minutes to adjust to it. After that, it's easy sailing. Picture Quality, contrast etc? I don't have a TV in the room so I really have no point of reference other than what I understand to be a good picture based on the couple of plasmas and lcd's I have upstairs. The picture is decent. I projected it onto a light yellow wall and the image was as good as my LCD. Projected onto a screen, this is a very good image. It wasn't cristal clear because I was running Oceans 12 at 480P, still very clear. 5 stars there. I have 20 pot lights downstairs, with half of them on (see my uploaded pic with Halo 3 http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B001GCUIK8/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_all) the picture is still clear - not sure what the fuss is about poor image quality there. To me, the movie was easy to take in with half the lights on. With the lights dimmed, it's that much more beautiful. It's bigger than I thought it would be. There's no way this will blend into a ceiling, won't happen. Get used to it. I'm not bothered by it because, how many people stare at your ceiling anway? 3 stars. I didn't get a co-ax plug-in. Bummer. Still, there's ample s-video, component and hdmi to keep me occupied. 5 stars. This projector runs hot. I spent a few hours installing it into the ceiling and I can tell it needs to be well ventilated. However, the fan is not loud enough to be noticeably. 4 stars The problem. This thing has no key stone (sp?) correction - at least that is what the tech support guy said it was. The projector must sit horizontal. If it is not, the projected image follows the angle so you end up with a projected angle that doesn't fit square into the frame of the projector screen. That bothered me because I could see black edges on the image before the black images on the projector frame. Tech support didn't know how to fix it. What I had to do, which worked really well, was to set the projector plumb horizontal and use the lenses shift to move the image down and across to fit the screen. I played with the zoom (contrast was already spot on) until the image fit perfectly into the projector frame. That fiddling took about 2 hours to be honest. I couldn't drop the project lower down from the ceiling beccause of space issues - that would have worked as well. 3 stars. All in all? If I had 2 grand, I'd buy it again without even thinking about it. It's that good. The issues I ran into had work-arounds - except one which turned out to be really nasty. X-box 360 has a black level setting. The extended black option setting caused the component 1 input to cast nasty green lines. And it just would not go away. I finally figured out that it was the black level setting. After reverting to normal setting, the image came back. At this point, I wouldn't drop money on a 720 projector, it's a bad investment giving the rate at which technology is moving. I wouldn't spend more money than 2 grand on a projector either because I don't edit movies for living and I don't work in a movie studio so I don't need a ferarri projector - not many of us do. This projector works for me because I can run my computer through it and work on a 120 inch screen without fuzzy fonts, I can watch movies in all their splendor when I am bored, and the rest of the time, Xbox puts it to plenty of use. Customer Rating: Summary: Low-End 1080P projector Comment: I bought this projector as soon as it came out. Was dissapointed as soon as I powerd it up. Contrast levels are poor, color accuracy, even after calibration is so so, the menues are designed in a way that makes it very complicated to tune the picture. Brightness is also an issue if your room is not pitch black. Overall, it generates a good picture when playing Blueray DVD with bright scenes but any dark content, especially standard definition DVD movies will look as good as a $700 SD projector. Another thing that bothered me is that for some reason, perhaps for seperation from the official PLV-Z700 model (which is identical), the front panel is black. The Sanyo PLV-Z700 and the PLV-Z2000 were beutifuly desgined with an all-white enclosure that merged very nice with the ceiling when mounted but this model that is exculisvily sold by Amazon and Best Buy has a black front which makes it intrusive to the room. An unfortunate decision. Bottom line - If you can afford the few extra hundreds of dollars skip this projector and go for a unit that will not cause you to plan your next upgrade after the first day you watch a movie with a new purchase. More Reviews
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