[bones`]

I was in a shop in Bolton yesterday and the salesman was demonstrating the Panasonic projector to a customer. I wasn't there to buy a Proj so didn't take much notice till I overheard the price at around £1200ish. WOW Pretty damn big and nice quality image for the price. Never even considered this before because I thought I couldn't afford one but hey you are on this planet only once so what the heck.

My questions..
1. The unit would be some 4mtrs from the screen in my room. Would this be OK and would I be able to shrink the image because 60" would be fine.

2. Are these things suitable for general TV viewing?

3. Bearing in mind No.2, would it be feasable to take a 5yr warranty to cover the cost of the bulbs?

4. Thanks for any help

[Greg]

1.
I have got a 72" screen and I have to have my projector about 3.5 metres away to fill the screen correctly. This is with no zoom.

I think as your screen is smaller at 60" and you want it at 4 metres away, you may not be able to get the image small enough to fit the screen.

Although if I am wrong about this I would be very interested to know how you can increase the projector - screen distance as my projector is not entirely where I would like it to be in my room. It would be great if I could move it back about a metre or so.

2.

I would say these are suitable for general TV viewing. I don't use mine all the time for the TV viewing, just when football or a good programme is on but the picture quality is good enough.

3.

I'm not too sure on the warranty. Are bulbs actually covered? Probably if it fails before the stated lamp time then maybe, but would it be covered if the bulb fails after this.

Greg

[Winnie]

The AE100 is blessed/cursed (delete as appropriate) with a short throw lens. This means that from 4mtrs away you would be looking at an image between 2.7 & 3.4 mtrs diagonal (2.4 - 3.0mtrs horizontal).

To obtain a 60inch horizontal image you would look at placing the projector about 2.5mtrs away.

Use this link for more accurate calculations :

http://www.projectorcentral.com/projection_calc.cfm

Cheers
Paul

[bones`]

So basically the further away I move the unit the larger the image becomes? And is there no way of adjusting this? If not and I could find a way of getting the unit say 2.5 mtrs from the screen, would it have to be roughly pointing level or could I stand it on a table firing slightly upwards? Forgive me I know nothing about these things yet

[snelly]

Hi bones,

I have an AE100 at the moment and went through some f the issues you have now.

Bottom line is

1) as already stated it has a short throw lens - i.e. you get a relatively big image when th pj is close to the screen (compared to a long throw lens)

2) The lens can not be changed on this model - big £££ on a pj before this is possible

3) The image size is not completely fixed at a given distance because there is a degree of "zoom". Thus at say 4m from the screen you have about 10% of shrinking/enlarging depending on how you look at it. This is handy to really fine tune your image to fitll your screen. So at a given distance you have a fixe "range" of sizes. - as you correctly say further away = bigger though.

4) If you table mount and fire up at an angle you will get a trapezoidal image - as lots of ppl will do this most pj manufacturers put in "keystone" correction to counter this. This can be achieved in a few ways but on most budget pjs it is done by projectting a distorted image from the pj to compensate - the effect of this is that when it hits the screen you have nice paralell sides. Thsi works well *but* you will not be using the full resolution of the panel and you will be asking the pj to do some real-time scaling and squishing. This is detrimental to the image - although prob perfectly watchable as a one off.

I personally have ceiling mounted with a DIY mount because

I think it is less obtrusive, safer, less noise distraction, able to have the pj perfectly aligned so as not to use keystone and fianlly I hid all my cables in the ceiling cavity.

They are great fun and I woul definitely recommend you seriously consider going for it.

Hope that helps
Tim

[bones`]

Thanks for the help. I really fancy one of these and its looking like a trip to the local dealer is in order. I was hoping to have the unit behind me on a high shelf to keep it level and firing across the room. Ceiling mounting is out because I live in a terrace with the original ceiling, plaster rose and covings etc. I went to great lengths to keep these intact when renovating the property My only other option is to have the unit on a table closer to the screen firing upwards slightly, the drawbacks with this are the visible cabling and the fact that the unit will be pointing upwards. I'll see what the dealer, probably practical hi-fi in Preston, suggests and maybe try it at 4 mtrs in the shop.

[RichardH]

One thing re TV viewing - you'll need some sort of TV tuner to pass the signal to the PJ - if you're looking at terrestrial channels only, consider the ProV, which has a built in tuner. Also remember that you'll need some sort of light control - daytime TV is not really an option!!
I cannot believe that bulbs would be covered in a warranty - they are a consumable.

One other thing - how are you intending to feed it? If you're intending to use your DVD player - certainly the simplest option - what outputs do you have? In increasing order of quality:

Composite
S-Video
Component
Prog Scan Component

The ProV apparently does a good job of improving the S-Video signal, so another reason to consider this £120 gizmo.

HTH!