Hi Vic, welcome aboard
I considered buying a proj in the US and felt it too risky because in the event of a problem under warranty I would probably have to send it back to the US which would be costly and perhaps also risky (if watching my suit cases being loaded in Miami was anything to go by).
However you brought a proj in to the UK remember it is eligible for import tax and VAT (or something like that)
A few years ago I bought an iScan pro on a power buy from a well known US forum and had probs, fortunately "Silicon Image" turned out to be a very honourable and friendly company and let me return it to their UK distributor having made it very clear they needn't have.
Also watch out for warranty periods, my Optoma H30 has a three year hot swap warranty in the UK but only two years in the US (I think the X1 might be the same so check)
When I havent been able to personally demo something I have in the past gone with the overwhelming opinions and informed comments from forums such as this and havent gone wrong yet.
However that is only my own personal experience based on the logic that a great deal of people can't be that far wrong, WARNING though it's no substitute for demoing.
When you demo try to be sure that it is done on as level a playing field as possible, you know compare apples with apples and all that.
Take into consideration ambient light, the source equipment, screen, interconnects etc etc and preferably take along your own DVD's as the ones they demo will probably be the ones which give the greatest effect, you can't blame them they are trying to sell you a proj after all.
Spend as much time with the projector as they will let you and get them to set it up for your likes.
Irrespective of what you read or are told, decide what is important for you, if you want good blacks, contrast and what is generally accepted as a slightly better film like picture then DLP may be the way to go, if you need a higher resolution projector because you want something which you can also use for presentations then LCD will possibly be better (CRT is still king but not by nearly as much as it used to be and also I'm assuming you arent considering this as it's your first proj and you also mention a budget proj).
You could do worse than trawl through the projectorcentral web site and read their independant projector reviews, you should find that a damned good start.
Hope this helps and good luck with your search, MikeD