What kind of room do you plan to have the projector in?, do you plan to have it ceiling mounted?, how far do you plan to sit from the screen?, how big will your screen be?, do you plan to use a consumer DVD player or a HTPC to drive your projector?.
The CX1 is a business projector, the AE100 is a home cinema projector which is a lot newer.
AE100
Is being discontinued after a year? on sale, has generally had a few problems with reliabilty/uniformity. Still with anything you buy you get good and bad apples. Although the AE100 has had its good fair share of them. Audi have a good name with cars but dont ask my brother about them!. Does anyone know who makes the AE100 panels btw? However if you do get a completely reliable unit then its a solid performer, its bright, good colours, pretty quiet for a projector, pretty good svideo/comp inputs, short throw distance, native widescreen panel (848x484 pixels), long 4000+ bulb life, ceiling or desktop mountable and it came 17th in the 37 projector shootout in Greece. Also if your sitting within 9 feet of the screen then screendoor may be an issue for some people, defocusing & minimum zoom helps along with a grey screen. Measured contrast ratio is around 200:1 to 250:1.
CX1
Has been discontinued for over a year as its an old model, its been overall reliable as far as most projectors go but its designed for business and not home cinema use. Screendoor is a lot less on this projector compared to the AE100 thanks to XGA resolution at minimum zoom. If you plan to only watch 16:9 material you will need to buy some velvet to mask the screen so lightspill isnt an issue. Not as bright as the AE100, good colours and uniformity, very loud (36db) compared to the AE100, poor svideo inputs imho, long throw distance, 2000 hour bulb life, desktop mountable only (no ceiling mount option), very good picture quality from a HTPC at 1024x768 4:3 native resolution. The factory/service menu lets you tweak this projector a lot, out of the box the picture vibrancy & dark scenes suck. Most business projectors are not setup for watching movies. If you use a DIY very light grey screen then blacks are better than most budget DLP projectors thanks to factory menu tweaks and 550 lumen output, but DLP has much much higher contrast ratio than LCD. Measured contrast ratio is 200:1 on the CX1.
I would personally demo the projectors, everyones opinion is different. My advice would be to sit tight and see what the AE200 & HS2 offer. You should also demo the Sanyo PLV30 which is now £1300 too. That came 6th out of 37 projectors in the greek shootout 9 months ago. Again hear/see it yourself as for some people anything >32db is too loud for home cinema.
I know how everyone says that if you wait for new projectors to arrive then you will never end up taking the plunge, but the AE100 isnt going to shoot up in price, the CX1 if its brand new from a shop? might still be available, and you will have the choice of the AE200/HS2 to demo. If anything you will probably see more budget projectors in the classifieds because quite a few people will no doubt be upgrading to the AE300 or HS10 when they arrive in the coming months.
/James
