I'm in the process of designing a (basement) home theater. I'd like to use front projection. I was doing just fine until I started reading here. After reading reviews and "owners posts" here I am convinced that all projectors <$12000 are horrible, there are dust problems, convergence problems, rainbows, motion blur, bulbs that drastically drop in output 10 seconds after you turn them on, inability to achieve reasonable brightness any screen sizes bigger than you can get with a plasma, etc.

I know this can't be the case, but you people are scaring the heck out of me. That said I want to push forward with some sort of home theater. Here's my setup/room design. After that I have some specific questions.

The room is in the basement. It is quite large in one dimension; the room dimensions are ~13' by 31'. The positive is that I have a large variation in how far I can mount the projector from the screen. The negative is that there is no back wall to the theater--I'm not going to be adding a wall to cut down the 31' dimension. So I'm 99% certain a ceiling mount is the choice for me.

There are a few windows in the basement but I'm confident I can turn the room into a bat cave and completely control the light.

There are two warts to the room layout. One, the ceiling is ~7'8" high for most of the room. The right side has a bump down to conceal what I assume are pipes and duct work and is only 7' high. Additionally along the right wall are three doors leading to other rooms.

I'd like to go with as large a screen as is feasible in such a room; the point of going FP for me is a large screen. If I wanted a small screen, I'd get a plasma/LCD flat panel and not deal with all the headaches that come with FP.

Given that above information, I'm deciding between three projectors. Any and all comments as to why one of the following is a great choice or wouldn't work with my room would be greatly appreciated.

Epson 1080UB Home. The reviews raving about the great black levels have me interested in this unit. I have two concerns:

-- Convergence. The owner's thread makes it sound like 50%+ of the units have to be sent back because the convergence is horrible. How much should I worry about this? If I order it online, it seems like it would be a horrible pain to ship back multiple units in hopes of getting one with good convergence.

-- Noise. People say it the fan is somewhat loud and that the iris is way loud. I'm thinking I might be ceiling mounting it about the same distance from the screen as my primary seats. Given a 7'8" room height, it might "close" to peoples heads when they are sitting below it. Bad choice because of noise?

Panasonic AE2000U. Supposedly whisper quiet, which is attractive to me. Most reviews have it with slightly poorer image quality than the Epson, except this review http://magazine.playbackmag.net/playback/200804/?u1=texterity where they liked the Panny better. Concern here:

-- Dust. Again the owner's thread make it sound like you will be vacuuming the projector between every movie. They also suggest adding vacuum cleaner HEPA filters to the unit. There's no way I'd do that--HEPA filters are quite restrictive in terms of air flow and the unit was not designed to have such a restriction. How bad is the dust problem, really?

BenQ 5000. I like the idea of DLP. I've never seen rainbows on a rear-projection DLP so I assume I wouldn't with front projection. Review of this unit are quite positive. Concerns:

-- Image noise. All reviews say image noise is pretty bad. However there are posts here that say the latest firmware fixes this problem. Thoughts?

-- Discontinued? There are posts saying this model is discontinued which I don't understand as it just started shipping a few months ago?

-- Distance from the screen. DLPs can't zoom as much, so must be father from the screen. I'm worried about brightness on a 110-120" screen?

I know that is a lot of questions but I thought a conversation might be helpful to people in the same position as me--relatively technically savvy but new to the world of front projection.

Thanks.

I was doing just fine until I started reading here. After reading reviews and "owners posts" here I am convinced that all projectors <$12000 are horrible, there are dust problems, convergence problems, rainbows, motion blur, bulbs that drastically drop in output 10 seconds after you turn them on, inability to achieve reasonable brightness any screen sizes bigger than you can get with a plasma, etc.

I know this can't be the case, but you people are scaring the heck out of me. That said I want to push forward with some sort of home theater. Here's my setup/room design. After that I have some specific questions.

Don't be scared - people around here are super ultra anal about this stuff. Fact is, most all projectors sold these days are pretty damn good - light years ahead of my first LCD projector 10 years ago. And as far as I'm concerned, most of us are splitting hairs. It's like wine geeks arguing over which $ 150 bottle of 95 rated cabernet is best.

What is your budget?

I considered all those. Even tried (many) Epson 1080UBs - horrible QC, *major* issues on every one they sent me. Pathetic.

So I sucked it up and spent the extra coin on a JVC RS1x. Waaay (almost 2x) brighter, best native contrast (no iris), great lens shift, sealed light path, much better pixel fill (LcoS) and relatively quiet in low lamp mode. Plus the glossy black paint job is gorgeous and matches my Pioneer Elite 510 exactly.

I know I'll be happy with the RS1x for many years to come, whereas with some of those you listed I might have been looking to replace them for one reason or another in 2-3 years time.

JMHO, good luck whatever you choose.

What is your budget?

For the projector, something that is available street in the <$3000 range. By that I mean I expect to pay $2500-$3000. (I'm posting in this forum because all 3 of the projectors MSRP for >$3K. I know I can get them less than that on the street, but that's not something I can discuss in detail on the AVS forums.)

For the screen, I am behind on my research. $500-1000 for a screen?

I already have 7.1 speakers (Paradigm). I have a PS3 for Blu-ray media. My AVR is nice (Onkyo 801) but doesn't have any HDMI capabilities. So I will likely do HDMI video directly from PS3 to projector, and use optical outs for audio to the Onkyo. I realize that this won't give me the lossless audio. I'm probably going to wait until the 806 is out to upgrade the receiver. Or I might pick up a 805 cheap when the 806 comes out. Depends on how many issues the 806 fixes.

And of course I have to budget cables, drywall work, painting, etc.

Basically I already had a home theater setup in my old house with the Onkyo 801, Paradigm 7.1 speakers and RPTV (Toshiba 57" cinema CRT). I'm interested in making the jump to 1080p technology, blu-ray, etc so I sold the TV. If FP doesn't cut it I'll consider big flat-panels or maybe RP DLP. But if my screen size is >100" I would like that a lot more than a nice 50" plasma, I think. I already have a 42" Plasma upstairs for general TV viewing. The idea here is to make a real "theater" room.

Is that enough info?

i'm purchasing a sony VPL-VW60 soon. works for me. it's a bit more than $3000 street though.