Total Novice

[Royalnelly]

Hi

I am looking for some advice and this looks like a friendly place to seek it.

I have borrowed a Sanyo Z4 and have set it up in my lounge and am currently using for a mxture of TV Mainly Sports (Sky Sports SD & BBC FA Cup & 6 Nations HD), Gaming XBOX360 and DVD using a cheap low end Samsung DVD player. So far I have to say that I am surprised at how good it all appears.

I have the option to purchase this projector for £500, it has about 100 hours on the clock.

So my questions are is that a good price for the projector? If it is and I go ahead does anyone have any tips on how to setup, configure and calibrate the Projector in order to get the best out of it. I particularly would like to avoid the black lines that appear at the top and bottom on some DVD's (sorry not sure of the techincal term).

Probably will have lots of other questions leading on from this.

Thanks in advance for any help and advice

[Anim]

The Z4 is a good projector and one thats often mentioned in here. Its a 1280x720 native widescreen model so you shouldnt be getting any black lines at the top/bottom of the display...check that you havent got it in 4:3 mode using the menus.

As for £500 for just 100 hours on the clock, thats not a bad deal and I would guess its at the good end of a deal rather than the bad end.

Check it hasnt got any dead pixels by projecting a solid colour image and looking for brightly lit single pixels that shouldnt be there. The Z4 also had a free lamp voucher with it (as far as I remember), is this the new lamp in there now?

Edit: As for calibration look for Avia or Digital Video Essentials calibration DVD's to do it yourself.

Anim