Turned on my Panasonic PT-AE700U yesterday, and realized that the picture was about 50% of its normal brightness - maybe even less. The change occurred suddenly, not gradually over time. My question is: could this be caused by anything besides a dying bulb? The bulb has only about 1100 hours on it, and I've always run it in "low power" mode (it's supposed to last 3000 hours in HIGH power mode). I'm reluctant to spend $350 to replace the bulb only to find out that it doesn't solve the problem.

The projector is four years old and out of warranty. I should probably note that this is the second bulb that has died on me prematurely: the first one (included with the projector) also died after about 1000 hours in low power mode, when I switched "lamp mode" from low power to high power. (I mean immediately - it was like a trigger.)

I'm thinking at this stage that it would be best to just sell the projector and get something else - but I can't even do that because I am not sure the projector itself isn't faulty.

Set the projector to run on High Power for a few hours...then put it back down to low. If that doesn't fix it, odds are your bulb is at the end of the road. If that's the case, sell the unit (sans bulb) and put the few hundred towards a new PJ. I think a lot of us AE700 owners are getting ready to take the next step (if we haven't already.) I'm just bummed to hear that there will likely be no AX300 this year. Maybe it's time to go 1080p?

Actually I just realized I was giving you the answer for the flickering bulb problem that sometimes occurs on these units. I'm not sure there is a cure for a dim bulb...other than replacing it.

I didn't realize that the flicker problem was, well, a problem. When I saw that I figured it was caused by the dynamic iris making adjustments (not that this made it any less annoying). I am a bit reluctant to try changing the lamp mode to high brightness because doing that killed the bulb last time - but I guess at this point I have nothing to lose.

Thanks for the response. Yes, I'm afraid that the AE700 is getting long in the tooth - an upgrade was in order sooner or later. But if it's a dead bulb, I'm still pretty annoyed that both of my bulbs died after 1000 hours. And unfortunately, it doesn't look like anyone's paying more than $200 for an AE700 on ebay, so a replacement would hardly be cheaper at all.

Well, my bulb popped today. I guess that answers my question about whether anything else could've caused the dimness.

Does the pop mean my bulb actually exploded? I've heard about that happening and it would be a pain to pick up all the glass shards, etc. I'm rather annoyed that I never even got a bulb replacement warning before things suddenly went to hell.

I'm rather annoyed that I never even got a bulb replacement warning before things suddenly went to hell.
Its near impossible to tell when a lamp will go. So manufacturers just test the lamps, create an average lifetime number from those tests, and call that the life of the lamp. So, the best thing projector's can do, is keep track of how many hours you have on the lamp and warn you when the average life number is getting reached. But lamps can die at any time, so even this timer may not give out a warning before a lamp dies. Personally i think the whole "lamp timer" thing is a useless, and only serves as a warning to those in the mass market/general user range who feel some warning should be given, even though it is useless. A lamp could die before the timer goes off, or the timer could go off and the lamp could last a 1,000 more hours... its impossible to tell.