[matblack]

Recieved my Sanyo Z5 yesterday and thought I would give you guys my thoughts.

First off initial impressions before I plugged it in were very good, the packaging is well done and much more substantial than the old AE700 I had, the manual is short and sweet but there is a more in depth CD with a full manual in PDF format, the kit also includes a tool for cleaning the dust from the LCDs (accessable through a flap on the underside of the unit) and a small but solid and well laid out remote (again an improvment on the AE700, just from a 'feel' point of view). The cleaning aspect was a selling point for me, if I get dust blobs I'll be able to perform a basic clean without the need to send the projector unit away. I have only the AE700 to compare to so I hope Panasonic owners won't feel too picked on by my review as that is my benchmark.

A little background; the AE700 was the first serious projector I had and bought this is 2005 when we tanked and converted our cellar to a dedicated AV room. The room requires a shortish throw 270cm from lens to screen (seating distance is about 300cm) and I am using a Beemax manual screen.

The Panasonic died just over a week ago from a slowly failing LCD and although it had had its problems; eating bulbs and flickering bulb syndrome it was a bright unit with good clarity and when it was working a good picture. Apart from the issues noted my only regret in getting it was the mesely 1 yr warranty. The major things which effected my choice of the Sanyo were the 3 yr warranty and the reportedly good blacks and quiet fan, I was also impressed with the automatic sliding lens cover, I never bothered to put the lens cover on the AE700 as it knocked out the focus and the zoom everytime, so the auto one is a big bonus. The Z5 also came with a lens voucher (well it should have done but the supplier are sorting that out for me).

Back to unpacking the unit, the packaging was good and suited to the harsh shipping that UK units can undergo, the delivery was almost instant, when I say I ordered the unit from AV Partsmaster at 4.45pm on Friday and it arrived at 10am on Monday you'll understand what I mean. AVPartsmaster also handled the poorly AE700 and I found all their staff helpful and friendly, they arranged to pick up the AE700 and look at it/ service it etc and didn't charge me a penny, their agreement is that if the quote for fixing is too high and you want to trash the unit they keep it for spares and you walk away from it without paying a penny, their prices were also pretty much the best for the Sanyo so they got my business on that too! . The AE700 was going to need a new LCD unit and was prohibatively expensive to fix, more than a new unit, so the decision was made for me

Back to the Z5

After some adjustment of my ceiling mount the Z5 was fitted, one small downside here is that the Z5 only has 3 mounting points, one at the back and two to the sides, this makes it a bit front heavy and it may slip a little on the ball and socket fitting I have on the mount even with the brake full on, only time will tell on this one but its worth noting, the holes are also of a larger size than the AE700 mounting holes (handy because I left the Panasonic fixings in the old unit

Once up I connected the Z5 to Component via my Denon 2805, S-Vid (for backup) and also VGA from my HTPC. The DVD source is a Pioneer 959 with progressive scan on. PC is feeding 1280x720 at 60Hz, all cables are 10m runs through ceiling above and back down. I plan an HD feed via HDMI at a later date.

After discarding all the foam locking the lens in place I switched the unit on and manually aligned the picture using the blue 'no input' screen, leveling the unit and then adding lens shift. The side mounted individiual controls for hoz and vert shift are an improvment on the AE700's joystick IMHO but are not totally isolated from one another and using vert for example can cause some hoz movement, this proved quite frustrating but I got a match eventually and the unit is now pretty much spot on with only a setting of 1 on the keystone needed for correction. All the mounting settings for this unit have masses of flexibility, lens shift, zoom and keystone are all very adjustable for pretty much any setting, compared with the HD70 I was considering which would have required me to move my ceiling mount this was a doddle

Once the unit was on and positioned despite what I had heard I was impressed by the brightness and immediately switched to a eco (although the difference is hardly noticeable in comparison to the AE700 where output drops significantly). Next job was to flip the image as it was upside down and I was dispointed although not totally suprised to note that like to AE700 the fan increases in this position presumably because rooms are warmer at ceiling height.

Entering the menu system to do this really shows the quality and flexibility of the Z5, it took me a few minutes to find the adjustment (I never RTFM until I have to). The menu is lovely, it fades in and out and can be put in any corner of the screen, its well laid out and has more options than a BMW salesmans pricelist, everything is adjustable. My first move was to close down the blub iris and lower the brightness, our room is fully blacked out and the thing was blinding me, then I added a source, in this case the HTPC.

Oh dear! The screen was half lost despite being well aligned and it took me a few moments to realise it was overscaning to hell and the dot clocks needed a fiddle, odd that they shouldn't default to 0 and might surprise a first time user, also despite appartently having an auto setting for the PC input this did not appear to work for me. I 'think' that outputing 1280x720 was fooling the unit into thinking it wasn't a PC doing the input. No matter once adjusted the screen was spot on, in fact better than I had ever had it before.

First impressions of the image were mixed, being used to Panasonic Smoothscreen tech the Z5 does have a more noticeable pixel structure, this is especially evident which looking at the internet for example BUT the image is increadably precise. If you look at the Z5 review thread there are some example of close ups of the screen and yes the AE700 is smooth but detail is lost, the Z5 is detail city, the smallest font can be read without straining the eyes and thinking you need new glasses. Now I've used it for a few hours I prefer this, others my not.

Colour

Oh Dear

Sanyo seem to have employed a colourblind monkey to set up the default settings, the reds are off on all the settings and the generally a bit of fiddling will improve the colours ten fold, really if you can't be arsed to fiddle with the settings then this unit may well not be for you, that said if you have even a slight grasp of calibration you can make it shine in seconds.

Black levels

Wow, this this can do black, right now even with a very new bulb you can see that the blacks will be inky but still hold detail, watching an episode of Babylon 5 (great series, lousey film stock used to film it) where the AE700 would have had a lot of noisey black the Z5 was inky and still whilst still holding details in the dark. I really need to run Star Wars on and check out the space/ spaceship contrast and make sure you can still see loads of stars but I don't think it will disapoint. I did try the first few minutes of Constantine to make sure my speakers were still working after moving my AV reciever and when the guy reaches into the hole to pull out the spear of destiny you can see detail in the bottom of the hole that I never realised was there!

Noise

The Z5 is quiet, despite ramping its fans where I hung it upside down the unit is still very quite and I realise the I need to replace the HSF on my HTPC.

Extras

I LOVE the auto lens cover, it looks really really swish when you turn off the unit and it slides across, you cn demo it in the menu too!

Thats about it for now, when I have watched a few more movies and tried the XBox360 I'll report back again

MB

[matblack]

This is definately the fiddlers PJ :D

I've been playing with some settings and the colour and contrast are starting to look really good.

With regard to the comment I made earlier about pixel structure, I now have the unit on a par with the AE700 with smoothscreen, there is no SDE and no visible pixel structure.

I'm very pleased

MB

[Fangorn]

How did you lose the sde?

[avnutter]

Originally Posted by matblack

This is definately the fiddlers PJ :D

I've been playing with some settings and the colour and contrast are starting to look really good.

With regard to the comment I made earlier about pixel structure, I now have the unit on a par with the AE700 with smoothscreen, there is no SDE and no visible pixel structure.

I'm very pleased

MB

could you share your settings with us?

[Donnacha]

Good for you Matblack - sounds great! I recently upgraded from a AE100 to a Hitachi Tx300 and I'm having great fun with all the new settings and HD loveliness.

Have many years of blissful viewing!!

[matblack]

Originally Posted by avnutter

could you share your settings with us?

Sure

The SDE wasn't really SDE it was that I have a sharpness and Transient Improvement set too aggressively. Once that was out of the way there really isn't any visible SDE unless you are too close to the screen.

My settings are pretty similar to the 'natural' setting on the unit, just a few tweaks


Brightness/ Contrast etc all 0 except Red -3
Sharpness 0
Lamp Eco
Gamma 0
Iris -35
Colour Mid
Iris Open
Auto Black L1
Contrast Improvement L1
Transient Improvement Off
Colour Management Left Untouched
Colour List 0
Dynamic Gamma off

Looks good to me, although I'll be fiddling a lot more

MB

[matblack]

Watched Capote on this last night and was really suprised, the film is quite dark but the projector coped really well, the camera flashes from photographers were particularly impressive; I've never noticed this happen before but I was actually recoiling from the brightness of the flash going off in Capote's face!

Played some Dead Rising on the Xbox 360, this seemed to perform better using the 'natural' setting on the pj, not sure why this was but it just seemed more vibrant.

MB

[Ade51]

Hi Matblack,

I've read your imformative comments with much interest as I too have decided its time for the AE700 to go. I've had it over 18 months and have 2200 hours on the same bulb that it came with. My only issue I have had with this is dust. I had to send it back to Panasonic last April due to dust build up ond the Red LCD and it needs it again now (and now doubt a new bulb).

I have been quoted that to clean the projector again would be 2 hours at £50 per hour + VAT + carriage. Together with a new bulb (c £250) I may as well cut my losses and put this amount to new PJ.

So I looked at quite a few in the £1000 bracket and came up with the Hitachi TX300 and the Sanyo PLV-Z5

The Sanyo seems to have these advantages over the AE 700
10,000:1 contrast ratio against 2000:1
3 year warranty against 1 year
Being offered at the moment with a free replacement bulb
Ability to clean the LCD panels yourself without expensive returns

The only downside I found was SDE but you have now put my mind at rest.

I have my AE700 ceiling mounted using a gyrolock wit an adaptor plate. What did you have change with your mount to fit the Sanyo or was a universal mount.

Donnacha - are you able to clean the LCD panels on you Hitachi TX300?

Ade

[matblack]

Originally Posted by Ade51

Hi Matblack,

I've read your imformative comments with much interest as I too have decided its time for the AE700 to go. I've had it over 18 months and have 2200 hours on the same bulb that it came with. My only issue I have had with this is dust. I had to send it back to Panasonic last April due to dust build up ond the Red LCD and it needs it again now (and now doubt a new bulb).

I have been quoted that to clean the projector again would be 2 hours at £50 per hour + VAT + carriage. Together with a new bulb (c £250) I may as well cut my losses and put this amount to new PJ.

So I looked at quite a few in the £1000 bracket and came up with the Hitachi TX300 and the Sanyo PLV-Z5

The Sanyo seems to have these advantages over the AE 700
10,000:1 contrast ratio against 2000:1
3 year warranty against 1 year
Being offered at the moment with a free replacement bulb
Ability to clean the LCD panels yourself without expensive returns

The only downside I found was SDE but you have now put my mind at rest.

I have my AE700 ceiling mounted using a gyrolock wit an adaptor plate. What did you have change with your mount to fit the Sanyo or was a universal mount.

Donnacha - are you able to clean the LCD panels on you Hitachi TX300?

Ade

Its a universal mount with arms you can move about so i just adjusted it.

TX300 is a faf to clean there's a thread about it somewhere

MB

[norm]

Matblack from Overclockers UK?

I remember following your thread on the refit of your basement. Any new pics?

[matblack]

Originally Posted by norm

Matblack from Overclockers UK?

I remember following your thread on the refit of your basement. Any new pics?

Aye that's me, although I am no longer on OcUK, after a brief stint as an underboss I kind of fell out with the management, although that's all in the past now.

There aren't any new pics with the Sanyo yet but I have these

MB

[phillfyspoon]

Nice, thats a messy load of dvd's there

[sapkan]

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...=591989&page=2

This a Z4 tweak topic. There is some interesting reading. I dont know how much the Z4 settings apply to the Z5. I got the Z5 recently and I am very interested to try out some settings that have been tried and tested. I've not yet seen such on this forum.