Panasonic PT-AX200U 720p 3LCD Home Theater Projector

I'd been shopping around for a new gaming display for Wii, PS3, Laptop through DVI, and movies, for a very long time, to replace my monster 36" 300lb CRT. First I went with a 46" LCD that just had too much lag, GHOSTING, grayish blacks, banding on the image, all these problems, and ended up returning it. Then a friend recommended I try the projector route. I was at first skeptical but eventually read a bunch of very helpful reviews on projectorreviews.com, and decided to go with this one, as it is marketed by Panasonic as a "gaming projector"

4 months of owning it and now I would never go back to anything else. Ever. Every one of my friends who sees this thing in action says the same thing - even one who has a massive 1080p 70" Sony rear projection set. This thing is just stellar, the image is sharp, very bright - even in a dimly lit room, and vibrant with great contrast and colors, no lag or ghosting, perfectly complements the high gain 100" gray glass beaded screen I bought for it (I recommend these over a plain white any day - see pictures)
There is no rainbow effect since it is a 3LCD projector, it is fairly quiet and does not have any sort of screen door effect, and ghosting is very very minimal - no more than a CRT or any other display. It also has a crazy amount of advanced image tweaking options that I've never seen on even the most expensive sony XBR LCD's.

The short throw lens is very flexible and can easily fill a 100" screen from less than 24 feet. I place mine in front of the viewers, on a table, angled slightly up with its adjustable feet, and found it gave a better picture than putting it behind and high above viewers. The viewing angle is very good - much better than the LCD it replaced, and is best achieved by placing it with the lens closer to the level of your head. The lens can be shifted all over the place with the little joystick and locked into place by twisting it, and the focal and zoom rings are very precise and have a nice feel.

Sure, it's not 1080p, and I wrestled with this issue a lot before buying it, but now I see that it really wouldn't matter unless i was trying to push this thing past maybe 150" or more. Also, most ps3 games only support 720p anyway, and the wii is only 480p - and taking into account the great value to performance ratio of this thing, I don't miss 1080p at all.

Even taking into account the bulb replacement costs (about $250 for each ~2000 hour bulb), I still feel it's worth it and cannot stress how much I love this thing. I beat Metal Gear Solid 4 on it and it was a transcendental experience to play through it on such a huge and beautiful display.

The only bad thing I can think of about this projector is that the lens cap is manual - you have to clip it on when you're done. I would have preferred a nice automatic one that shuts over the lens when you switch it off.

One final note - this projector is MADE IN JAPAN! How often do you see that any more? All the LCDs and Plasmas I looked at were all made in china, taiwan, mexico and all these other places that I feel have much much lower quality control standards than Japan. Made me feel very good about this product.

best projector under [...] hands down.

I was looking for a projector that would be able to play nice with my Mac via a digital connection, do HD, be able to hook up an HDMI source, as well as an SD source and haven't been disappointed at all!

NOTE: Not all DVD players are created equal and if you think your image looks kind of crappy, consider the source, I played a DVD through my PS2 onto this thing and it looked like crap, I could literally count the pixels, then I played a DVD through my Mac and I felt like I was sitting in a freaking theatre, it was pristine and clear and the colors were amazing.

I have mine hooked up to a receiver that up-converts my SD TV signal to 1080 and it looks alright (but what can you expect when you blow a 720x480 pixel image up to 92"!), though some channels I've noticed are better than others, it really shines when you play an HD source through it.

Sometimes you have to fiddle with the color/luminance options, but the good news is it has a ton options to tweak, and you can save profiles, so you basically tweak it once and load up different settings for different sources.

I play DVD's out of my Mac into the pt-ax200u onto a 92" screen via a cheap DVI-HDMI cable and it's like being at the movies. Playing HD content off of fox.com is even better than what you see at the theater no joke! You seriously have to see it to believe it. And it works as nice big monitor, even though it's native 1280x720, it'll do 1920x1080 which is actually more than my regular flat screen monitor. I do video production and I can't use it to accurately monitor the color and luminance levels of my photoshop projects and video projects, but it's nice when you want to just sit back on the couch and get the work done that doesn't involve tweaking colors or brightness/contrast levels.


A COUPLE OF THINGS TO NOTE:
I tried to the point of almost killing myself to get this thing to work right with a laptop running vista and couldn't get it to do the same thing twice, the problem might be on Vista's end (big surprise) but it's something to be aware of.

Also if you get it you SHOULD NOT ENABLE ECO-MODE RIGHT AWAY.
I did that thinking I'd extend the life of my lamp and after 30 or 40 hours of use and noticed extremely annoying flickering. After searching forums about it I read that your supposed to "burn in" the lamp for like the first 500 hours or something by leaving it in normal mode. I switched it to normal mode and after an hour or so of use the flickering went away and I haven't seen it back since almost 50 hours later.

ALso be aware of the lens shift difference between LCD and DLP projectors, the lens on this thing can move around a decent amount verses a DLP projector which can barely move the lens, if at all.

So bascially it's not a perfect projector, but it works great with everything, really shines with HD content and you can't beat the price.

Picture is outstanding right out of the box... even at 120 plus inches. would be even better if had 12v trigger. Still a great projector

Bought this over a year ago and use it quiet regularly to watch movies on. No complaints, no issue. Operates great, never had any problems. Easy to setup and arrange.

Only the 'energy saving' feature sacrifices quality of picture, but what do you expect for less light to the bulb I suppose...

I searched the internet and spent month deciding and finally bought this PJ. Well all was fine until 60 days in and 230 hrs on the bulb. Now the picture surges in and out. Panasonic tech support is only in for 6 hrs during the day so if you work like most of America you cant reach anyone. If you want a projector that is reliable I would go with a Viewsonic. have had one for 2 yrs and it has been inside outside and it still works great if only I would have know I would have purchased another. I went for the brightness but it wasnt worth the difference. The picture is fuzzy do to image technology in this unit. If you are looking for a crisp picture you wont find it here. Would not reccomend this unit to anyone.