Hi Fog,
Price was indeed a factor.
Plus the fact I like to tweak so it was a chance to experiement as well. The Sims have superior image processing and colour accuracy IMHO, but can also be prone to similar failings of other DLP projectors, so with the chance to tweak and at a good price, I was sold.
The other advantage of the Sim2 range, is that the firmware is constantly being updated and they seem to be on top of DLP developement. They were the first with the ND2+ DC3 chip and the first with it in a 3 chipper.
Like I say though, the problems that initialy put me off of it aren't there any more, so the more I watch it, the happier I am. The new firmware is likely to be the main reason for that, and although some in the US complain of panning artefacts, I have to say that I've not seen them except in Collateral (very briefly), and I think that was down to the Hi Def cameras having trouble with low lighting, and not an H77 problem.
I think the HT1000 has a smoother image, but the H77 has 60% more resolution for Hi Def, and 30% more real contrast which is noticable in the extra shadow detail that I can see. I often use Final Flight of the Osiris because that has good colours at the beginning, and lots of shadows from halfway (it's only a 15minute movie from The Animatrix). I prefer an image that is dimmer as it keeps image noise down such as mpg artefacts and DLP dither. The HT1000 is giving around 10.5ft lamberts reflected light (with an fl-day filter), and the H77 13.6 (with 2 filters), so that's one reason why the HT1000 looks smoother. The other might be because I have the H77 in pixel to pixel mode (sharper), whereas the HT1000 wasn't, so some extra smoothing may have been going on. To me it looked more filmlike yet still detailed. The H77 is very close to NEC now in many respects, and of course has the added resolution and extra contrast, so like I say, I'm quite happy now.
That's not to say that I don't think that an 8 segment colour wheel is necessarily a good thing. More segments means more spoke time and less brightness compared to 6 segments, plus some possible issues with less time for the DMD to do it's thing (posterisation, reduced colour gamut and panning artefacts), but even so, visualy I can't confirm that these are present.
Gary.