Is your Z4 really that quiet? Mine is quiet but I can still hear it when there are no other sounds in the room or when there is a quiet scene in a movie. It is a LOT quieter than my 4805 was, but it is still not silent to the point that I can't tell its running. I'm really curious to know if you are maybe exaggerrating a little bit, because if not, then I can't help but think that something may be wrong with the fan on mine.

I certainly wasn't trying to "exaggerate". I guess the primary comparison that I was using is the 4805 for noise, but the specs and the other reviews do indicate how quiet it is. I have a PC running in the same room that I have gotten used to ignoring as background noise, and I never heard the projector compared to it for example.

I wouldn't think anything is wrong with yours.

Well, count me as one of those people highly impressed. My new Z4 arrived today, and WOW!

Nice review bcatwilly :)

1) Can you please tell me which cable box you are using? I want to get a Z4 and rent a HD cable box from Comcast.

2) Have you tried connecting your PC to Z4? How does it look and what is the screen resolution?

Thanks,

1) Can you please tell me which cable box you are using? I want to get a Z4 and rent a HD cable box from Comcast.

2) Have you tried connecting your PC to Z4? How does it look and what is the screen resolution?

Thanks,

I have Adelphia cable (soon to be Comcast for me I think), and my cable box is the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD DVR model. I have not tried connecting my PC yet, that is on my list of fun things to do :)

I HATE MY Z4 - IT'S WAY TOO EXPENSIVE!!!! :rolleyes:

Yesterday, I watched Star Wars III and I was awestruck by the picture quality - such a great transfer, not a single sign of compression artifacts (I have an Oppo 971H and also use its upscaling features to 720p over HDMI).

Then I thought, it would be fun watching another DVD from my collection, so I pulled out THE FIFTH ELEMENT (PAL version). I did not trust my eyes and could not continue to watch it - it's underscanned, badly transferred, compression artifacts all over the picture - even parts of the picture MOVED around (for example, the nose of the priest, who tries to poison the scientist and his assisant in the opening sequence seemed to "swim" around on his face). There's not single well transferred scene in the whole movie.
Same with one of my favourites: BLADE RUNNER. Underunderunderscanned, huge borders even on the left and right side, which additionally are extremly jagged, a blurry & noisy transfer. Just could not bear looking at it.
Same with other, older DVDs that I pulled from the shelves. And TV-movies on DVD: yak!

So: the Z4 is way too expensive - in regards to the follow up costs it produces. I just am not able to estimate at the moment, how much money I would need to buy up-to-date, newly and better transferred, "revised", "extended", "collectors" or whatever versions of those movies I own to ensure a better picture&transfer quality (if there are any at all - Blade runner just seems not to be available in a good transfer at all).

Had I known this, I would never have bought this projector, but invested in a portable DVD-player with a small 4" screen and nice collection of red wine, crawl into my bed and watch movies there with glass or two. Resolution & bad transfers on that kind of screen would never have been an issue and the good red wine would have added just another nice enjoyment.

So everybody: beware!!

A piece of gear like the Z4 is unforgiving in every aspect of visual quality for you out there, who collected movies on DVD from the beginning. Stay with your old, small TVs!!!!

;) ;) ;)

Joerg

P.S.: But if you happen to have great transfers in your DVD collection, or if you even are able to watch Windows-HD-Media from your computer or can receive HDTV-TV - you will not want to miss a single chance to sit in front of your projection-screen...... :)

Is this ununiformity acceptable? I watch a lot of ice hockey and red on the left and right of screen bothers me. I think the panels are misaligned and there are no setting tweaks to fix it. I liked this projector's sharp picture and lack of VB or FPN but I do not want to send it for repair and then keep it because it is not for my screen size(120'' diagonal) and 12 feet viewing distance. Yes, It looks good at my second raw at about 16 feet but I got used to watching close with my old pain 700. So with 20 feet ceiling mount from screen and not willing to spend 8-10 Gs my only choice is exchanging Z4 for 900 and praying for no VB and/or FPN.

see attached pictures if you will be watching hockey or yahoo front page or typing a word document. :D Do not worry even if you have the same problem, it does not show if you only watch movies.

DrA

convegence problems also?
see picture
DrA

As for the convergence, there are two issues

1.) misalignement of the panels. I have spoken to german support when my Z4 arrived, since I have 1 pixel off-convergence with blue - that's within spec, was their answer. So I will have to live with it.

2.) Chromatic aberration. The lens is good, but not perfect. The more lens-shift (main cause) and/or zoom (less problematic) you apply, the more aberration you get - in short terms, that is blurryness combined with convergence-problems, since different colours are "shifted" differently. For example, a prism, that splits colours into a rainbow, uses this effect on purpose.

To me, at first glance, it looks like the red and the blue panel are misaligned 1 pixel, so that may be within spec and you cannot complain officialy. Maybe your dealer will be so kind and exchange the unit?
Is the misalignement different in different parts of the screen (with my Z4, the left upper corner seems to be ok, whilst in the middle and on the right, I get this 1pixel offset - panels must not be shifted only, but also slightly twisted)

The other problem seems to be shading. How much of that you must "endure" I cannot say - only your dealer can by viewing it directly.

Hope, that helps

Joerg

Thanks for convergence info
I am curious how do you correct shading of white screen?

DrA

as far as I understood, there is no way of correcting the shading, this is supposed to be an inherent problem of LCD-projectors. So all comes down to the quality of the panels and how much they are selected.
I read in a german forum, that one Z4-user brought his Z4 back to Sanyo Germany and their engineers exchanged it immediately to a new unit they had sitting in their demo-room without any sign of shading....
So speak to your dealer!
Joerg

I looked very hard at convergence right off the bat also while playing with the edge enhancement close up to the screen. I think I have blue off by a pixel or less. Blue is the least distracting to me of the three colors since I'm use to cooler temperatures on my PC LCD screens.

Now it does look like the panels are slightly misaligned which may be in spec but I doubt two colors off would be. The red(uniformity problem) though on the right and left of the screen would definitely bother me. First I would make sure to plug in multiple sources and see how it looks, DVD player etc. Video cards vary in quality of output even with the higher end cards. If it's pushing red then maybe that's the cause. As mentioned the Z4 is going to point out problems with your source system or material pretty easily.

Next thing I would do is take the projector to another room on a white wall and see if it looks any different. Having done alot of statistical work in my day I never ever assume that my environment is not the cause. Make it look "bad" in another room with different sources before pinpointing the projector as the culprit no matter how "obvious" it may seem beforehand. For example it may be the amount of lens shift you're using. I'm not suggesting the projector is not the cause but taking the objective scientific point of view it makes sense to add another trial with different variables to see if the outcome is consistent with your original environment.

Okay guys I just got my projector in but I have a problem. I connected it using component cables from my DVD player. Now for some reason after I enable progressive output on my DVD player (There is a menu option and then also the button). When I press progressive out button on the panny DVD player the picture get realy screwed up and then I get a blue screen as if there was no signal. (And I gte that 5 minutes countdown timer).
Now when I disable it the picture comes back. Do I have a defective projector?

The DVD player is the Panasonic DVD RP62. Also when I press that button I can see the image getting MUCH sharper for a second, and then I quickly get the blue screen from the projector. I would really appreciate some help.


Also which "Image" mode should I be using, the natural Wide 1?

I looked very hard at convergence right off the bat also while playing with the edge enhancement close up to the screen. I think I have blue off by a pixel or less. Blue is the least distracting to me of the three colors since I'm use to cooler temperatures on my PC LCD screens.

Now it does look like the panels are slightly misaligned which may be in spec but I doubt two colors off would be. The red(uniformity problem) though on the right and left of the screen would definitely bother me. First I would make sure to plug in multiple sources and see how it looks, DVD player etc. Video cards vary in quality of output even with the higher end cards. If it's pushing red then maybe that's the cause. As mentioned the Z4 is going to point out problems with your source system or material pretty easily.

Next thing I would do is take the projector to another room on a white wall and see if it looks any different. Having done alot of statistical work in my day I never ever assume that my environment is not the cause. Make it look "bad" in another room with different sources before pinpointing the projector as the culprit no matter how "obvious" it may seem beforehand. For example it may be the amount of lens shift you're using. I'm not suggesting the projector is not the cause but taking the objective scientific point of view it makes sense to add another trial with different variables to see if the outcome is consistent with your original environment.

Pics I took is after I took down the Z4 from ceiling in ceiling mode and put it on a stepladder facing the center of the screen in the normal position on its legs so before I had most red on the upper right corner of the white screen and today on the lower left corner so that eliminates lense shift theory. Hockey game or directv sports schedule's white screen on hdmi vs. HTPC on component eliminates source theory. Pluging to ceiling using Monster Clean Power and then today on a wall plugs coming from different fuses in the outside fusebox eliminates power theory.
The only fact is that Sanyo quality control is letting some bad units come on the market betting average consumer will be mesmerized by colorful movies and not know any better. How many percent will watch hockey and what percent of that number will be sober to notice color non uniformity. Or what percent will use HTPC to surf the net and read on white background. The only people that will feel being shafted are people like on this forum
Attached is a picture of Z 4 waiting to be shipped out.

Attached is a picture of Z 4 waiting to be shipped out.
A picture of a cardboard box. Oh joy! Never seen that before. Just curious what value that adds to your post...

Greetings,

More on the Z4, etc. I will be updating the Z4 review this weekend, with some comments regarding what, after watching quite a few hours of DVD's this week, has become a noticable effect of the Auto Lamp Iris. Basically, once I started noticing the lamp dimming during some scenes, and when the projector switches from a bright scene to a darker one.

Ultimately, once I started noticing it, it became somewhat annoying. Myself, I finally shut off the feature, although that does limit some of the black level/contrast enhancing properties of the projector.

Also, I will attempt to post my Z4 vs AE900u comparison by Sunday night.

Lastly, for those still on the fence, I just received (30 minute ago) an Epson Cinema 550 for review. I will attempt to get a preliminary review up late Sunday night, but no promises. My wife advises that we have a busy weekend planned. (she hasn't told me what, but I do have to trust her on that!) -art

Pics I took is after I took down the Z4 from ceiling in ceiling mode and put it on a stepladder facing the center of the screen in the normal position on its legs so before I had most red on the upper right corner of the white screen and today on the lower left corner so that eliminates lense shift theory. Hockey game or directv sports schedule's white screen on hdmi vs. HTPC on component eliminates source theory. Pluging to ceiling using Monster Clean Power and then today on a wall plugs coming from different fuses in the outside fusebox eliminates power theory.
The only fact is that Sanyo quality control is letting some bad units come on the market betting average consumer will be mesmerized by colorful movies and not know any better. How many percent will watch hockey and what percent of that number will be sober to notice color non uniformity. Or what percent will use HTPC to surf the net and read on white background. The only people that will feel being shafted are people like on this forum
Attached is a picture of Z 4 waiting to be shipped out.

Good luck on getting one of the AE900's with no VB and the not so blurry smoothscreen.

Greetings,

More on the Z4, etc. I will be updating the Z4 review this weekend, with some comments regarding what, after watching quite a few hours of DVD's this week, has become a noticable effect of the Auto Lamp Iris. Basically, once I started noticing the lamp dimming during some scenes, and when the projector switches from a bright scene to a darker one.

-art

After 7-8 DVDs and many hours of HD Directv viewing, I have yet to notice this effect on my Z4. It may be there, but I don't see it. My custom settings are only slightly changed from the Creative Cinema presets. I do open the lens iris to 22 as I have a high contrast screen.

The only iris issue I note is when changing from one hdmi source to another I sometimes have to cycle to another image setting and back to the saved setting to get the auto lamp to move away from full brightness. After that, it's a very nice image.

Pics I took is after I took down the Z4 from ceiling in ceiling mode and put it on a stepladder facing the center of the screen in the normal position on its legs so before I had most red on the upper right corner of the white screen and today on the lower left corner so that eliminates lense shift theory. Hockey game or directv sports schedule's white screen on hdmi vs. HTPC on component eliminates source theory. Pluging to ceiling using Monster Clean Power and then today on a wall plugs coming from different fuses in the outside fusebox eliminates power theory.
The only fact is that Sanyo quality control is letting some bad units come on the market betting average consumer will be mesmerized by colorful movies and not know any better. How many percent will watch hockey and what percent of that number will be sober to notice color non uniformity. Or what percent will use HTPC to surf the net and read on white background. The only people that will feel being shafted are people like on this forum
Attached is a picture of Z 4 waiting to be shipped out.
I'm sure the color shift would also be quite noticeable on B&W films (of which I watch many)

I'm sure the color shift would also be quite noticeable on B&W films (of which I watch many)

yes horrible specially snow seens B&W in my case is B&W&R

Pics I took is after I took down the Z4 from ceiling in ceiling mode and put it on a stepladder facing the center of the screen in the normal position on its legs so before I had most red on the upper right corner of the white screen and today on the lower left corner so that eliminates lense shift theory. Hockey game or directv sports schedule's white screen on hdmi vs. HTPC on component eliminates source theory. Pluging to ceiling using Monster Clean Power and then today on a wall plugs coming from different fuses in the outside fusebox eliminates power theory.
The only fact is that Sanyo quality control is letting some bad units come on the market betting average consumer will be mesmerized by colorful movies and not know any better. How many percent will watch hockey and what percent of that number will be sober to notice color non uniformity. Or what percent will use HTPC to surf the net and read on white background. The only people that will feel being shafted are people like on this forum
Attached is a picture of Z 4 waiting to be shipped out.

Might you also be able to attribute some of this to possible jostling during shipment? Honestly it may have nothing to do with Sanyo quality control or the like. I understand that you're upset but making statements that you only think to be fact may unnecessarily deter people from taking a look at this projector. I doubt that there is a single projector line on the market that doesn't face some problems with a few units. The only fact out there is that we have a report from you about a bad unit. There are many more on here that have received good working Z4's and have run them through their paces to find no such issues as you describe. I only hope that when/if you move on to the AE900 that you don't receive a VB laden one with extra blurry smoothscreen as both are completely unadjustable as well.

ROne,

Have you seen or been bothered by the auto iris causing the picture to dim/brighten too slowly as Art has just reported?

Art's settings, based on the initial review he posted, were the use of Creative Cinema, Full lamp power and -28 lens iris. Your tweaked settings, based on the Living preset, differ greatly from this.

What so you think might be the most important factor (setting) that makes the auto iris more noticeable? I suspect it might be using Full lamp power as opposed to the Low, 1 or 2 settings.

Shelly

Guys please can someone help me out. When I push the progressive scan on the DVD player thats connected through component the Z4 displayes a picture thats half cut for a second and then goes into the blue screen and the countdown to no signal. I just got a different DVD player to test it with and still the same problem. Am I doing something wrong or is this a efective projector? I only have an hour left to use it before I can return it. Can someone please help me out.

*edit* The HDMI seems to worth with Progessive 480, 720 no problem. But component doesnt work! Welp!

Might you also be able to attribute some of this to possible jostling during shipment? Honestly it may have nothing to do with Sanyo quality control or the like. I understand that you're upset but making statements that you only think to be fact may unnecessarily deter people from taking a look at this projector. I doubt that there is a single projector line on the market that doesn't face some problems with a few units. The only fact out there is that we have a report from you about a bad unit. There are many more on here that have received good working Z4's and have run them through their paces to find no such issues as you describe. I only hope that when/if you move on to the AE900 that you don't receive a VB laden one with extra blurry smoothscreen as both are completely unadjustable as well.

From what I read, there is some adjustment for VB on the AE900 in the service menu. VB on the AE900 even when not completely eliminated by that adjustment doesn't seem nearly as bad as what it may have been on previous models.
Can you elaborate on the "extra blurry smoothscreen" ? There have been a number of posts and reviews to confirm that the the "perceived" sharpness of the Z4 seems is likely due to the SDE and image processing (edge enhancement, scaling, ...), image processing which does little difference with HD content (or externally upscaled SD content)
The smoothscreen does not make pixels overlap so it should not blur the image.

Guys please can someone help me out. When I push the progressive scan on the DVD player thats connected through component the Z4 displayes a picture thats half cut for a second and then goes into the blue screen and the countdown to no signal. I just got a different DVD player to test it with and still the same problem. Am I doing something wrong or is this a efective projector? I only have an hour left to use it before I can return it. Can someone please help me out.

*edit* The HDMI seems to worth with Progessive 480, 720 no problem. But component doesnt work! Welp!

This may be too simple but since there are 2 component inputs, do you have the projector set for the correct input that you're connected to?

Or are you saying that when the Panasonic dvd player sends a 480i signal, there is also no picture?

Shelly

maxse, on my z2, the Component hook ups are Input 1 on the projector, and the HDMI/DVI is considered Input2. Most likely your not changing the Input on the projector to receive the Component signal, and still using the HDMI cable I'm guessing. You also don't say anything about what DVD player your using, but I assume since you mention HDMI, it must be one of the upconverting DVD Players. What do you have the DVD setup menus configured. On my Panny S97S, I have the HDMI capable settings on 720p and Component on 480p. I don't mess with the DVD player, I just hit the Input button on the Projector remote to switch back and forth. Also, on the projector for each input, you want it set to Auto mode to sense the incoming resolution automatically.

Has anyone confirmed yet that the Z4 will vertically stretch 2.35 material over the HDMI 720p or 1080i connection using the Zoom feature, which is a prereq for a anamorphic lens setup. According to the manual it does. My Z2 will achieve this only via 480p over component. Can someone please try this, it will make everything look stretched(skinny) because it only stretches vertically.

Thanks, Randy

Thanks Sirquack but each input is labeled appropriately on the Z4. I cycled thrgouh all of them without any luck. Again the Component works when the signal is interlaced but once I hit the progressive scan on the dvd player I quickly see a split screen (like the picture moving when tracking was way off in the old days but this is horizontally) and then Iget the blue no signal screen.

One of the DVD players is the Toshiba SDK 850 and the other player I tried was the Pannasonic DVD -RP62.
I just cant believe that I got a new epensive projector and something as important as this already doesb't work from day one.

I stopped by a Sanyo distributor today. The salesman took out a Z4 out of its box and connected a DVD player with a DVI/HDMI cable to it and starts showing me the DVD movie.

The picture quality (480P) was great and I couldn’t hear the unit sitting few feet away. He was using a 8’ wide screen and he even used the zoom to show that the quality doesn’t go down much by zooming (I think the width was 20’). I will be looking for a sale and buy the unit in the next two months.

yht HDMI works fine its both of the component inputs that cant get the progressive signal. ITs basically what ahppens when u tru to feed an old TV progessive material. Well its the same here but the opposite. For some reason the Z4 is looking for an interlaced signal do deinterlace so when i give it progressive it gets confused I guess, Guys help do I have to return this thing because if I use one more hour I will not be able to since the projector oes not display minutes just says 3 hours I am getting a little nervous.l

yht HDMI works fine its both of the component inputs that cant get the progressive signal. ITs basically what ahppens when u tru to feed an old TV progessive material. Well its the same here but the opposite. For some reason the Z4 is looking for an interlaced signal do deinterlace so when i give it progressive it gets confused I guess, Guys help do I have to return this thing because if I use one more hour I will not be able to since the projector oes not display minutes just says 3 hours I am getting a little nervous.l

If you read this review

http://www.hdtvexpert.com/pages/plvz4.htm

you'll see that he uses the Panasonic RP56 and has no problem sending the 480p signal to the Z4.

I suggest that you have your unit replaced with another.

Shelly

wow thanks shelly. I guess this is a defective unit. I cant believe it. I just dont understand why 480i works but 480p doesnt on component but works fine over hdmi. It sucks that its friday and everything is closed for the weekend. sO this is def. my projector??? Am I the only one with this problem on a Z4?

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=602150

Guys so there is def. something wrong with my Z4 right? Perhaps I am just missing a setting somewhere?

i've also posted a comparison sheet of ae900, z4, tx200, tw600, pe7700 and hc3000 in the main forum, don't want to link it here too as i think that would be cross posting??

Anyway, go take a look, its in english too :D

Anim

My apologies.
Deleted the post.

maxse

Greetings, Keep us posted about how Sanyo handles your problem, or whether your dealer just swaps it out. My experience in the past is that Sanyo will repair, not replace, even if the unit is DOA. For that reason most dealers won't replace. Best of luck. -art

Does anyone in Edmonton (Alberta) have a Z4 that I can look at. I am seriously considering this or the 900, but since I only view HD, I am thinking that the Z4 may be a better choice because of its sharper image.

maxse

Greetings, Keep us posted about how Sanyo handles your problem, or whether your dealer just swaps it out. My experience in the past is that Sanyo will repair, not replace, even if the unit is DOA. For that reason most dealers won't replace. Best of luck. -art

Unfortunately that seems to be the cost of getting a projector with 3 year warranty.

Does anyone in Edmonton (Alberta) have a Z4 that I can look at. I am seriously considering this or the 900, but since I only view HD, I am thinking that the Z4 may be a better choice because of its sharper image.

What makes you think that the Z4 would be sharper than the AE900 for HD ? The increased sharpness seems to be more with SD sources. Here is what Art had to say about it:
"When, however, I switched to Hi-Def sources (Hawaiian Tropic tape, and Over America), the difference vanished, in fact in images shot side by side between the same two projectors, I found the differences to be not that of sharpness but other aspects of the images".
There have been other reviews and posts saying the same thing.

Hi all,

I just bought a Z4, and love everything about it. However, I think the lens is slowly moving by itself. I put the lens on the lock position. Is there any way to tighten this on my own? I can exchange it, but do not want to go through the process of sending this out to get it fixed. it is brand new. Any feedback would be great. THANK YOU.

Steve

What makes you think that the Z4 would be sharper than the AE900 for HD ? The increased sharpness seems to be more with SD sources. Here is what Art had to say about it:
"When, however, I switched to Hi-Def sources (Hawaiian Tropic tape, and Over America), the difference vanished, in fact in images shot side by side between the same two projectors, I found the differences to be not that of sharpness but other aspects of the images".
There have been other reviews and posts saying the same thing.

Thanks chayto. We seem to be getting different opinions about sharpness. While the above review from www.projectorreviews.com suggests that there is not much difference for HD, another review (I can't find it) suggests that for 1080i content, the Z4 is sharper, due perhaps to the internal scaler.

I think the only way to tell is to actually see it. I will be seeing the 900 tonight, and I am hoping to see a Z4 before making my final decision.

Art is working on a comparision review of the the Z4 and AE900 and it should be up very soon. I know that the questions above will be answered in Art's comparision.

www. projectorreviews.com

Art is working on a comparision review of the the Z4 and AE900 and it should be up very soon. I know that the questions above will be answered in Art's comparision.

www. projectorreviews.com

I would like for Art to use ROne's Z4 tweaked settings in the Living mode, settings which according to him, greatly reduce the visibility of the auto iris movement and provide increased blacks and conrast ratio as well.

One of the problems with comparative reviews is measuring apples to apples. With so many available choices of settings, this is very problematic with these new projectors.

Shelly

I would like for Art to use ROne's Z4 tweaked settings in the Living mode, settings which according to him, greatly reduce the visibility of the auto iris movement and provide increased blacks and conrast ratio as well.
At least as a starting point as those values will differ based on sources and the projectors themselves, not to mention the screen material. But I agree that both units should be formally calibrated to an accepted standard otherwise any comparisons are pretty much a waste (notwithstanding Art's accurate assessment of the general buyer tending to stick with out of the box settings, which is fair discussion but ultimately not the best comparison of true performance).

ProjectorReviews posted the follow up.

http://www.projectorreviews.com/comparison/z4ae900u/index.asp

Looks like the Panasonic comes out ahead in his review. And some of the other important things that are making people think twice about one over the other (such as sharpness) seems to be so slightly different that it shouldnt matter. I have been sliding back and forth between the z4 and the 900u for some time now. This just keeps getting harder and harder. I wish one was like a million times cheaper or something.

you can have it further above the screen (by about a foot) than the Panasonic. This may be a slight advantage in most rooms, but if you have a high ceiling you may really like this advantage. For example, if you have a 12 foot ceiling and the top of your screen surface is at 8 feet, then the Panasonic would have to hang down slightly more than 3 feet, while the Sanyo would only have to be mounted about 2 feet from the ceiling,
The difference will be screen size dependent. Panasonic allows for 13% of screen height above the edge of the screen, vs. 50% of height for the Z4 (63% and 100% respectively from neutral position at screen center). So for an 87" screen, which is 49" high, the Panasonic allows 6 1/3" above the screen vs. 24 3/4" or a difference of a foot and a half. Plus from what has been posted thus far on the net the Z4 seems to have more of this as useful range, whereas the Panasonic begins to noticeably bow well before that end is reached so the difference may actually be greater. These measurements assume no horizontal shift is used, which reduces the vertical range.

The Z4 has more of an installation advantage then this comparison suggests. Frankly, if the 900 did the same thing I would likely opt for it instead for its color accuracy and, to a lesser extent, lack of pixelization (have yet to determine if SDE will be noticable for me at 1.5x which seems to be the threshold). But the ability to have the Sanyo on the ceiling out of the way is very compelling, particularly if with careful calibration it will closely meet the 900's performance standards. I disagree with this review's comment that calibration should not be expected at this price point. Proper calibration is important to get the best out of any projection system, although the 900 by all accounts will be more easily adjusted.

Looks like the Panasonic comes out ahead in his review. And some of the other important things that are making people think twice about one over the other (such as sharpness) seems to be so slightly different that it shouldnt matter. I have been sliding back and forth between the z4 and the 900u for some time now. This just keeps getting harder and harder. I wish one was like a million times cheaper or something.

Maybe the AE900 can produce a more spot on picture "out of the box" than my Z4, but I have done no tweaking and find the picture incredible. Let me say that my picture without any tweaking looks nothing like those dreary looking shots in that comparison. I will not question the reviewer's integrity, but a careful reading of the comparison demonstrates an initial bias to the Panasonic model (I think that I read where the reviewer is associated with a vendor that sells this and not the Sanyo).

For instance the fact that the sharpness is greater on DVDs is downplayed, but my own side by side comparison against an Infocus 4805 for DVD content really demonstrated this. And the Projectorcentral review of the Z4 commented that the sharpness advantage owned by the Z4 was there for all content, DVD, HD etc. Stating that when the new HD formats for movies are available will probably remove any Z4 advantage for DVDs doesn't mean much when these formats are very unlikely to be very relevant in a projector owner's collection during the lifetime of either projector given where the format battle etc. stands.

Of course we all have our own biases/preferences with things, and now I am on here singing the praises of the Z4 :) Read the reviews on Projectorcentral and the comparison between the two models and then the comparisons between them and the DLP models to form a complete opinion.

Question RE: Z4 lens shift

If I have the Z4 ceiling mounted about 1 inch above the screen then how much horizontal shift can be used before degradating the picture? How far over can I move it?
The screen will be 117.5" x 50" (2.35 CIH).

Looks like the Panasonic comes out ahead in his review. And some of the other important things that are making people think twice about one over the other (such as sharpness) seems to be so slightly different that it shouldnt matter. I have been sliding back and forth between the z4 and the 900u for some time now. This just keeps getting harder and harder. I wish one was like a million times cheaper or something.


I don't have much confidence in this review. Putting screen shots on a webpage is useless and misleading. These are both fine projectors with excellent image quality. Issues other than image quality should be the determining factor in which one better suits your needs.

Question RE: Z4 lens shift

If I have the Z4 ceiling mounted about 1 inch above the screen then how much horizontal shift can be used before degradating the picture? How far over can I move it?
The screen will be 117.5" x 50" (2.35 CIH).
I don't have that spec handy, but conservatively you should expect about 50% of the horizontal shift to be still available; you're using just over 50% of the vertical shift (half the screen to get from neutral to the top edge plus one extra inch). I don't believe the combined shift ranges work on this 1:1 basis but it gives you a starting point. There's a great comparison matrix thread in this forum, on which the Z4 has a link to the user manual. Should give you all you need. I'm on a mobile PDA so can't access that right now (way too big a download).

After waffling back and forth between the Z4 and the AE900 I finally decided upon the Z4.

Maybe.

I have heard that the Z4 has a pretty lousy internal deinterlacer, thus being a drawback for those of us without a progressive scan DVD player. Well, I need to get one of those someday anyway. Question is, is it just the deinterlacing that has problems or does the Z4 also have problems upconverting 480p to 720p? Having to purchase a progressive scan upconverting DVD player might affect my decision and might push me back into the AE900 camp.

If anyone has any info, speak up. Thanks.

I don't have much confidence in this review. Putting screen shots on a webpage is useless and misleading. These are both fine projectors with excellent image quality. Issues other than image quality should be the determining factor in which one better suits your needs.

I agree, I am trying not to be too hard on the poor guy. But I just had the feeling when reading through the wording used in many places that any "wins" for the Panasonic were stated more strongly (even though he did admit that some "tweaking" would likely remove almost all advantage), whereas any "wins" for the Z4 for more grudgingly given and with caveats. Just my 2 cents.

My overall take from even this comparison and certainly other reviews such as Projectorcentral is that the Panasonic may have a slightly better picture "out of the box" than the Z4, which I am glad that I did not have to see because I went with the Z4 and have loved it even "untweaked". However, it appears that the Z4 can be "tweaked" in a zillion ways to remove almost all AE900 advantages if the user cares to mess with that (I may not for instance). But the Z4 advantages of sharpness, more flexible installation and a big one for me in the 3 year warranty cannot be "tweaked" away by the Panny folks :)

After waffling back and forth between the Z4 and the AE900 I finally decided upon the Z4.

Maybe.

I have heard that the Z4 has a pretty lousy internal deinterlacer, thus being a drawback for those of us without a progressive scan DVD player. Well, I need to get one of those someday anyway. Question is, is it just the deinterlacing that has problems or does the Z4 also have problems upconverting 480p to 720p? Having to purchase a progressive scan upconverting DVD player might affect my decision and might push me back into the AE900 camp.

If anyone has any info, speak up. Thanks.

I have an old Sony progressive scan DVD player (not an upconverting player mind you) outputting 480p through component cable to my Z4, and it looks absolutely stunning IMO. In fact I had an Infocus 4805 (rave reviews for DVD) side by side during installation and found nothing better on the 4805 picture IMO, but the Z4 had that same sharpness advantage on DVD that is mentioned in the reviews.

You should love it if you choose to buy one.

After waffling back and forth between the Z4 and the AE900 I finally decided upon the Z4.

Maybe.

I have heard that the Z4 has a pretty lousy internal deinterlacer, thus being a drawback for those of us without a progressive scan DVD player. Well, I need to get one of those someday anyway. Question is, is it just the deinterlacing that has problems or does the Z4 also have problems upconverting 480p to 720p? Having to purchase a progressive scan upconverting DVD player might affect my decision and might push me back into the AE900 camp.

If anyone has any info, speak up. Thanks.

Are you using a really nice but old reference DVD player or something? Or maybe a DVD jukebox? I would never consider pushing an interlaced signal through the projector unless it was extremely cost prohibitive to do otherwise. Go HDMI. Don't waste your time or viewing hours with an interlaced signal on the Z4 or any other projector.

The 480i deinterlacing is the only thing that is problematic. Any other conversions seem spot on.

When I read this post back on 11/02, my reaction was that the reviewer had not even received his Z4 yet but already thought the Panasonic was better. I did not know at the time that he had a web site with reviews or that he was associated with a retailer. I am not suggesting that he he has ulterior motives and is slanting the review one way. I just think he likes the Panasonic. I just bought the Z4 and it is very hard to be objective after you have made a decision.


Greetings All,

Thought I'd toss in some prelim comments on Alan's points, but first, good news.

Sanyo has confirmed at last, that my Z4 evaluation unit has shipped and tracking says I have it Thursday. That means I'll be reviewing most of the Weekend.

I will try to put up a useful prelim review and some images, with more info and insight the following week, since so many are on the fence.

But to Alan's points:

The Z4 does have greater range on lens shift, and this may be a plus for a few people, but it doesn't look to be that big a difference (without checking charts - about a foot difference on a 100" screen, if I recall - and that depends on how the zoom is set.. If you need the extreme, you should find that there will be more bowing of the image (curvature along the bottom of the image if you are ceiling mounting). If table mounting low, this could be a plus for the Z4.

Vertical banding, while I have seen some reports on the threads, Panasonic, and one of their large dealers is telling me that they are not hearing of problems (perhaps one here/ one there. The Dealer in question has shipped over 100 units now and not one of their customers have called about it, of course we are pickier than the average consumer.

Screen Door. I'll take issue. Many people do want to sit closer than the recommended, afterall they want the movie theater effect, and that really isn't the equivilent of sitting in the last 5 rows of a movie theater either. So, I at least consider the Panny's LCD panels a real plus. (Hey, I am now sitting 11 feet back from a 128" firehawk with the BenQ 8720 I am reviewing. At that distance and screen size, the old Z3 and most other LCD HT projectors have pixels that are obviously visible.

Sharpness - I tend to suspect based on the Z3/Panny700 that much is the result of the pixels being more visible, and if not normally noticeable, the brain knows....

However I am looking forward to playing with that Transient something or other that another reviewer said enhanced sharpness.

Color, the Panny is excellent - better than a BenQ 7700, and most other more expensive projectors out of the box. A touch too much yellow, but easily correctable. I'm a fanatic for good fleshtones, so color accuracy I rank as particularly important - when I find colors off, that aggrevates me.

Dust inside. Sanyo Z1, Z2, and Z3 (biz models too) have been prone to letting dust get in the light path. I don't recall this being a problem I have read about with the older Panasonics. Apparently the Sanyo blower does work pretty well, but this is normally not a problem for most projectors.

Lastly Warranty. Sanyo has the 3 years, Panny dealers typically the 2 extra years for $200. (So that's why the $200 rebate is there?).

However, there has been much bitching on the threads about Sanyo's customer support and service, and apparently many frustrated consumers. Check it out, I am a believer that we are entitled to good follow up support. As I recall there may be a thread on AVS dedicated to that subject but I haven't looked.

On the other hand, I haven't heard similar about Panasonic's support, just the short warranty.

So it probably will come down to a rematch of last year. The two new models will grab the lion's share of the market, and which wins overall will be more of specific requirements of users, and dealer recommendations.

And just to muddy up everyone's life, supposedly the $2499 selling price Epson Cinema 550 ships next week. It's only claiming 3000:1 contrast, but most of what's over 1500:1 on LCD products is done wth "smoke and mirrors" AI, etc. When you see an LCD with a 5000:1 contrast ratio, dont even expect blacks to be as dark as any 4000:1 DLP.

So good luck. I'll drop back to let everyone know when I have the prelim Z4 review up on my site. Meantime those looking at the 900u, can read what I have on it. (PS, I write mostly for average consumers, and do not get into the extremely technical aspects) - ie. what percentage of buyers of a $2000 projector own a light meter for calibration, or will pay $500 or so to have a pro do one...

Good hunting -art

"...conservatively you should expect about 50% of the horizontal shift to be still available; you're using just over 50% of the vertical shift (half the screen to get from neutral to the top edge plus one extra inch). I don't believe the combined shift ranges work on this 1:1 basis but it gives you a starting point." -Jay Mitchosky

Thanks for the response Jay, I appreciate it.

Does anyone know of the mathematical formula that will get me the exact answer I'm looking for??

Here is my qustion posted earlier...
Question RE: Z4 lens shift
If I have the Z4 ceiling mounted about 1 inch above the screen then how much horizontal shift can be used before degradating the picture? How far over can I move it?
The screen will be 117.5" x 50" (2.35 CIH).

[QUOTE=dusk]Are you using a really nice but old reference DVD player or something? Or maybe a DVD jukebox? I would never consider pushing an interlaced signal through the projector unless it was extremely cost prohibitive to do otherwise. Go HDMI. Don't waste your time or viewing hours with an interlaced signal on the Z4 or any other projector.QUOTE]

Just a 5 year old non-progressive scan DVD player. I was just trying to determine whether I could get away with the much cheaper progressive scan or whether I would need an upconverting DVD player to get a nice picture. The upconverting might be a little cost prohibitive, but if I can get a good picture without aftifacts from a progressive scan then I'll be set with that. Then hopefully in another couple years some sort of high-def DVD player will be available for a decent price and I will be able to start building my DVD collection up again.

Thanks for the input, looks like I will be fine with a cheaper progressive scan DVD player.

Can someone please post some pics of a 480i standard cable or vhs image running on the z4 for us to take a look at? Everyone says the z4 standard 480i is garbage, and i've yet to see an actual picture to back this up. I'm just curious what "terrible" means in some people's eyes"

Thanks

I agree, I am trying not to be too hard on the poor guy. But I just had the feeling when reading through the wording used in many places that any "wins" for the Panasonic were stated more strongly (even though he did admit that some "tweaking" would likely remove almost all advantage), whereas any "wins" for the Z4 for more grudgingly given and with caveats. Just my 2 cents.

My overall take from even this comparison and certainly other reviews such as Projectorcentral is that the Panasonic may have a slightly better picture "out of the box" than the Z4, which I am glad that I did not have to see because I went with the Z4 and have loved it even "untweaked". However, it appears that the Z4 can be "tweaked" in a zillion ways to remove almost all AE900 advantages if the user cares to mess with that (I may not for instance). But the Z4 advantages of sharpness, more flexible installation and a big one for me in the 3 year warranty cannot be "tweaked" away by the Panny folks :)

Art states at the very beginning of his review "that neither is a clear cut winner over the other, although I have determined my definite preference, it isn't necessarily for everyone." Why are you guys bashing him?

Art states at the very beginning of his review "that neither is a clear cut winner over the other, although I have determined my definite preference, it isn't necessarily for everyone." Why are you guys bashing him?

Jumpy, there is a technique known as "damning with faint praise". Art may have been totally even-handed, but his previous posts indicate that his mind was made up before the review.

Art states at the very beginning of his review "that neither is a clear cut winner over the other, although I have determined my definite preference, it isn't necessarily for everyone." Why are you guys bashing him?

I apologize to Art if I was coming across as "bashing" him, that was certainly not my intent. You are correct that he said that. He does have a preference as we all do, and maybe I should not have decided to so vigorously defend the Z4 against the competition. The Z4 is clearly a great projector by most accounts (as is the AE900), so I guess that I should just continue to enjoy my purchase. Spider Man 2, Superbit version, looked incredible on there when we watched it this weekend. And Sunday night football in HD really has to be seen to be believed, everyone has been shocked at how amazingly clear and sharp a 116" image can be on my wall :)

Jumpy, there is a technique known as "damning with faint praise". Art may have been totally even-handed, but his previous posts indicate that his mind was made up before the review.

I agree that it seemed as though he was calling the win beforehand but that doesn't bother me. My problem with his whole review was how dim his review pics were. That's the only thing you can tell is that the Z4 pics were dimmer. And that's very interesting considering others that have said, calibrated, the Z4 is brighter overall. And I love when a reviewer says, oh yeah I'm looking at out of the box uncalibrated setup and that alot of users don't want to change settings. That may be true of typical Best Buy flat panel customers but with projectors you're generally looking at a much more DIY style crowd simply due to the amount of setup involved.

Additionally for most of you mainly non-tweakers out there you're probably hanging around the tweak threads looking for other users' best settings. While you may not have done the initial work you're still applying tweaks. Given the affects of environment on picture quality most users will be looking to optimize for their rooms.

I agree, I am trying not to be too hard on the poor guy. But I just had the feeling when reading through the wording used in many places that any "wins" for the Panasonic were stated more strongly (even though he did admit that some "tweaking" would likely remove almost all advantage), whereas any "wins" for the Z4 for more grudgingly given and with caveats. Just my 2 cents.

My overall take from even this comparison and certainly other reviews such as Projectorcentral is that the Panasonic may have a slightly better picture "out of the box" than the Z4, which I am glad that I did not have to see because I went with the Z4 and have loved it even "untweaked". However, it appears that the Z4 can be "tweaked" in a zillion ways to remove almost all AE900 advantages if the user cares to mess with that (I may not for instance). But the Z4 advantages of sharpness, more flexible installation and a big one for me in the 3 year warranty cannot be "tweaked" away by the Panny folks :)


Some of the "wins" like screen door deserve to be stated loudly by Art because they are facts like this one. .
"You like to sit fairly close - to really get the "theater effect": a big win for the Panasonic AE-900u projector, as it lets you sit much closer with(out) suffering from screen door effect and visible pixelization"
I can not comment about other wins because I really liked the picture of Z4 but again I have not seen 900 yet. We need some Hi res pictures from Art and generally from everyone who talk about picture quality on this forum to really see the differences in two projectors

I liked the Z4 but returned it for the same reason (among other "minor" :rolleyes: issues).http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=6513342#post6513342
My seat is 11 feet from 9 feet wide screen and I had to move back to second row at 16 feet to enjoy the nice, sharp
picture of Z4. My old projector was AE-700 and I never saw sde from 11 feet at (1.2Xwidth).
In certain situations You can't make a new theater, make your screen smaller or simply change you viewing distance just because you got a new HZ4.
Please be gentle :DA Seriously. Let everyone get the the right projector for his/her own needs. Blind Sanyo loyalists like previous owner of a a Sanyo tricycle need not apply.
OT I got an RMA # and a promise to exchange with 900. Am I out of the woods or I will be slapped with restocking charge?

Z-4 sharpness
Troytn was kind enough to demo his Z-4 on a 128" Carada brillant white screen, in a light controlled room. At 1.4 screen widths, I could barely see SDE in the white lettering on the bottom of the screen. I did not notice SDE while watching movie content. With nothing to compare it to, except memory of some "high end" DLP projectors a couple months ago, this Z-4 looked great! (It had been calibrated, using AVIA, I think.
I have been a "fence sitter" for well over a year, but I think now is the time to purchase a Z-4.

I apologize to Art if I was coming across as "bashing" him
I don't know if Art is being bashed, just some aspects of the review being challenged as one would expect on this type of forum.

My seat is 11 feet from 9 feet wide screen and I had to move back to second row at 16 feet to enjoy the nice, sharp
picture of Z4. My old projector was AE-700 and I never saw sde from 11 feet at (1.2Xwidth).
In certain situations You can't make a new theater, make your screen smaller or simply change you viewing distance just because you got a new HZ4.
Please be gentle :DA Seriously. Let everyone get the the right projector for his/her own needs. Blind Sanyo loyalists like previous owner of a a Sanyo tricycle need not apply.
OT I got an RMA # and a promise to exchange with 900. Am I out of the woods or I will be slapped with restocking charge?

1.2x is very close to the screen. Knowing the AE900 was going to be about the same as the 700 with smoothscreen why did you purchase a projector that was most likely going to show some SDE at that distance? Reading the end of your post makes me say, what on earth were you thinking?

I think smoothscreen is definitely an advantage when it comes to sitting close to the screen. Since it was in the spec coming in and not new I don't see where addressing that with much emphasis was necessary. The fact that Art likes sitting close can make him giddy about that feature but I think he's in the minority using that seating distance. However given the nonadjustability of it and the inherant lack of sharpness smoothscreen feels mostly like a defocus to me.

I don't think anyone would suggest that you should have to redo your whole theater for a projector. That's up to you. I will suggest that you should do a better job beforehand understanding what projector fits in your theater and your close in seating distance. If you'd have told me your viewing environment beforehand the only projector I would suggest is the AE900. But you have to pick your poison with the VB concerns. It seems there was something you must not have liked about the 700 to have switched to Sanyo.

Some of the "wins" like screen door deserve to be stated loudly by Art because they are facts like this one. .
"You like to sit fairly close - to really get the "theater effect": a big win for the Panasonic AE-900u projector, as it lets you sit much closer with(out) suffering from screen door effect and visible pixelization"
I can not comment about other wins because I really liked the picture of Z4 but again I have not seen 900 yet. We need some Hi res pictures from Art and generally from everyone who talk about picture quality on this forum to really see the differences in two projectors

I liked the Z4 but returned it for the same reason (among other "minor" :rolleyes: issues).http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=6513342#post6513342
My seat is 11 feet from 9 feet wide screen and I had to move back to second row at 16 feet to enjoy the nice, sharp
picture of Z4. My old projector was AE-700 and I never saw sde from 11 feet at (1.2Xwidth).
In certain situations You can't make a new theater, make your screen smaller or simply change you viewing distance just because you got a new HZ4.
Please be gentle :DA Seriously. Let everyone get the the right projector for his/her own needs. Blind Sanyo loyalists like previous owner of a a Sanyo tricycle need not apply.
OT I got an RMA # and a promise to exchange with 900. Am I out of the woods or I will be slapped with restocking charge?

I wish that I had your eyes :) Seriously though, I am sure that you will love the 900 since it will resolve any of your concerns with its smoothing technology.

Here are my thoughts when looking for SDE on the Z4 tonight, admittedly for those of us without quite as picky a set of eyes.

I am even happier with my Z4 after assessing any SDE this evening. While I know what SDE is and can certainly see the pixel structure when I get very close, I have Monday Night Football on in HD and am sitting only 8 feet from my 116" diagonal screen being projected on my off white wall (yeah I need a screen at some point). There is some SDE visible around the letters for the score and what not, but the video portion is still plenty watchable from this close. There may be some small amount of SDE visible at times in the video portion, but it still looks VERY good at this extremely close seating distance. My point here is to demonstrate that there is not some horrible pixelized grid, even at seating distances that are definitely too close for that large a screen. I could certainly be okay watching closer than I should at times, much better quality than I thought it would be based on all of the SDE talk and compliments of the Panasonic smoothing. You have to believe that the high resolution of these new panels should remove most of this, particularly from the video portions, at all but the most insanely close distances.

Obviously some people will have no room for any SDE, but that 8 foot seating position is not even 1.0x my screen width (102"). I really think this whole SDE thing is WAY overblown on these forums because I can't imagine many people wanting to or even being able to watch that huge a screen from much closer than the standard 1.5x rule anyway. My primary seating is at 12.5 feet (right about 1.5x), and there is NO visible SDE to me. I suppose there is always the possibility that someone who is really trying to look for it could see some TINY hint in a bright area around some text or something, but I am not even sure about that.

Bottom line is I can't imagine this being a huge issue for the average person at all, and I for one am glad that I have a sharper image instead of "smoothing" that would simply permit me to violate recognized seating distances (including THX standards) without seeing a fleeting moment of "SDE" in some bright text area. Just my opinion, others will have a different preference.

1.2x is very close to the screen. Knowing the AE900 was going to be about the same as the 700 with smoothscreen why did you purchase a projector that was most likely going to show some SDE at that distance? Reading the end of your post makes me say, what on earth were you thinking?

I think smoothscreen is definitely an advantage when it comes to sitting close to the screen. Since it was in the spec coming in and not new I don't see where addressing that with much emphasis was necessary. The fact that Art likes sitting close can make him giddy about that feature but I think he's in the minority using that seating distance. However given the nonadjustability of it and the inherant lack of sharpness smoothscreen feels mostly like a defocus to me.

I don't think anyone would suggest that you should have to redo your whole theater for a projector. That's up to you. I will suggest that you should do a better job beforehand understanding what projector fits in your theater and your close in seating distance. If you'd have told me your viewing environment beforehand the only projector I would suggest is the AE900. But you have to pick your poison with the VB concerns. It seems there was something you must not have liked about the 700 to have switched to Sanyo.

Again, where do you get the "lack of sharpness" about the AE900 smoothscreen !? Smoothscreen is not like a defocus, pixels do not overlap and it doesn't "blur" the image. See the close up shots from some reviews (I can't find that japanese one that showed that really well)
The smoothscreen is more like an IMX lens. Also is has been improved from the AE700.

1.2x is very close to the screen. Knowing the AE900 was going to be about the same as the 700 with smoothscreen why did you purchase a projector that was most likely going to show some SDE at that distance? Reading the end of your post makes me say, what on earth were you thinking?

I think smoothscreen is definitely an advantage when it comes to sitting close to the screen. Since it was in the spec coming in and not new I don't see where addressing that with much emphasis was necessary. The fact that Art likes sitting close can make him giddy about that feature but I think he's in the minority using that seating distance. However given the nonadjustability of it and the inherant lack of sharpness smoothscreen feels mostly like a defocus to me.

I don't think anyone would suggest that you should have to redo your whole theater for a projector. That's up to you. I will suggest that you should do a better job beforehand understanding what projector fits in your theater and your close in seating distance. If you'd have told me your viewing environment beforehand the only projector I would suggest is the AE900. But you have to pick your poison with the VB concerns. It seems there was something you must not have liked about the 700 to have switched to Sanyo.

"Reading the end of your post makes me say, what on earth were you thinking? "
Exactly, I based my decision on this evaluation of Z4 from cine4home when I placed my order.
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cine4home.de%2Ftests%2Fprojekto ren%2FSanyo-Z4-Preview%2FZ4Preview.htm&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools
the pictures of z3 vs z4 SDE really shows improvement but I guess it was not enough for my distance It was my decision and I don't blame anyone. Z3 picture is darker and shows more interpixel distance easyer. It is my mistake to rely on different color and brightness pictures :o

Attached are the pictures of sde of z4 and z3 from the cine4home.website above

"With exact comparison it is to be recognized that with the new variant the pixels are a little more near together. The distances between them are easily reduced, which causes a reduced pixel structure. The progress is to be recognized, even if it not when seriously to be designated is".

"smoothscreen feels mostly like a defocus to me"

I agree it definitely gives less sharpness (tweakable) which can give you perception similar to defocusing. But if you imagine the pixel on lcd as a 3 dimensional object I am sure Panasonic wants the entire tickness be in focus. When you defocus any optical device like a microscope or a photo camera you loose info outside the depth of the focused area.
Certainly there is some light bending by two crystals to make each pixel to appear larger and black frames around them smaller but at the end all the light beams from the pixel must end up paralel to but little appart from each other. As long as some demarkatiion lines exist between pixels human eye should not see blurring or unfocusing effect. Only decreased sharpness effect is present. The sharpness can be increased in the menu if desired. Too much sharpness is not disirable for me anyway. I liked z4 picture when every image enhancment was off and sharpness down to -6.
I am sure you are familiar with bellow explanation of smoothscreen when first z3s came out.
"Then came the PT-L500U, which we first saw at CEDIA (2003), where Panasonic described the double refractive technology of the crystal device used in the 500U’s Smooth Screen Technology. The pixel structure on the screen at CEDIA looked like each pixel had been split into four sub-pixels and thus the apparent grid was essentially four times smaller.
Please see smoothscren closup picture of 900 here"
www.watch.impress.co.jp/av/docs/20051013/dg54m10.jpg"It seems there was something you must not have liked about the 700 to have switched to Sanyo"
Answer- VB

Hi,

Has anyone experienced a high pitched buzzing / humming sound from there Z4? Only when the lamp is on, but not during the cool down process or sleep mode. And it maybe be louder during warm up but then goes away later or not at all but diminished considerably after the first minute? Its not loud loud, you'll need good ears to hear it.

Any input would be really great has this is bit disapointing especially at this price.

Thanks guys.

Clearly we all have our preferences, and I don't mean to diminish anyone's enjoyment of their Z4.

Nevertheless, for people who haven't made up their minds yet, read the review on projectorreviews, and on the 'Summary' page take a good hard look at the picture of Ewan McGregor as shown on the Z4 and the AE900u.

Can you see any detail at all in the right side of his face on the Z4? I can't. This is exactly what I experienced in my home, watching movies that I knew (and I knew to have details I just wasn't seeing). High contrast ratio is fine and good, but this is not the way to acheive it. :cool:

Even if I hadn't been bothered by the SDE (sitting more than 1.5 the screen width away), the loss of detail in darker areas would have convinced me to send this projector back.

If anything, I think the reviewer was generous to the Z4 by not pointing this out. It's a serious problem with this projector, and I'm surprised that it's not getting more attention.

PJreviews had his mind made up already before his "reviews" as his remarks in this forum tell you. His pictures are too small and of too poor quality to allow any conclusions (if screenshots can tell you anything at all). For one, the Z4 is much more sharp than the 900, as all other reviews and users have testified. Yet his photos make the Z4 look blurry compared to the 900.

Furthermore I refuse to take serious "reviews" that don't calibrate each PJ to the same standard and then compare them. His argument that buyers will not tweak PJs but use them out of the box is a rather poor excuse. You may give a PJ a poor score on the way it gets calibrated in the facturey, but you cannot use poor factory calibration as an excuse for a poor review.

For a professional and unbiased review, I suggest you take a look at Cine4home, and don't forget the "tweaking" article for some eyeopening results.

Neko

It would be nice to have someone with a Z4 post a screenshot of that same scene with Ewan McGregor. One picture on a website is not convincing enough for me.

It would be nice to have someone with a Z4 post a screenshot of that same scene with Ewan McGregor. One picture on a website is not convincing enough for me.

I find pictures only mildly interesting due to the MANY variables that can be at play - quality of lighting, screen, camera used etc. However, I will say that I have watched that movie on my Z4 and I too would be disappointed in it if it looked even close to as bad as that picture posted. It looks incredible, and there is a ton of detail in close ups etc.

could anyone with a Z4 please put there ear up to the exaust vent on the projectors right side and see if you hear a high pitched humming sound. not fan related. more like from the bulb. and if so, is that normal? I do and wonder if i need to return it or not. would really help me out.

Thanks

could anyone with a Z4 please put there ear up to the exaust vent on the projectors right side and see if you hear a high pitched humming sound. not fan related. more like from the bulb. and if so, is that normal? I do and wonder if i need to return it or not. would really help me out.

Thanks

I sit right below mine maybe 12 inches from my head and I cannot hear the fan running unless I turn the lamp to wide open. Then the fan runs faster but no high pitched sound. Just a fan. Very quiet even at max lamp brightness.

I had 5 neighbors over to watch Monday night football last night and all were in complete amazement of this projector. Even using a 126" Carada Brilliant white screen which many here feel there is no way one can get a great pic on these projectors over 119". The picture is sharp, clean and vibrant. Believe me even sitting at 1.4x screen width the SDE is hardly there. Now there are those that will nit pic a picture and never truly enjoy a movie. Do you find yourself watching a movie or looking at a movie and every detail and shadow and scrutinizing it?
It all comes down to the quality of image you send the projector. When HD becomes the norm which it almost has in all primetime tv and sports and the advent of HD dvd these projectors will look nothing short of amazing day in and day out. Its until then we have people watching low rez programs and using dvd players that they want to try and get an HD picture out of and complaining these projectors won't project a great image. I can see compression in many Directv channels. Its there with my 65" PTV. This is a great projector with the ability to tweak it to your liking. I had another forum member over (mregis) that posted in this thread his thoughts as well.

As it has been stated here I think the SDE issue has been over blown and this projector as with the Panny will provide you with a great picture. I know there are many techies that will never find the perfect projector. Hey its those guys that help us regular guys get the most out of our toys.

Remember this is a fun hobby. Stop and enjoy the movie once in awhile.

Even if I hadn't been bothered by the SDE (sitting more than 1.5 the screen width away), the loss of detail in darker areas would have convinced me to send this projector back.

If anything, I think the reviewer was generous to the Z4 by not pointing this out. It's a serious problem with this projector, and I'm surprised that it's not getting more attention.

That's out of the box perfromance at ProjectorReviews. Did you happen to try the ROne tweak settings?

Again my beef with that review is how dim he set the Z4 or how big his screen is in combination with the Creative Cinema setting. That's a pretty dim setting to begin with.

I have a Z4 and my picture looks nothing like the blurry detail-less image of Ewan shown in that review. I have tweaked mine using ROne's settings and after upgrading the firmware on my OPPO the image is absolutely wonderful IMO. I watched the Matrix movies, which are very dark, and the detail visible in the dark scenes was excellent. I also looked at Episode 3 and the detail in that was great too. Before upgrading the firmware my blacks were very crushed and I couldn't see any detail.

I grinned to myself several times over the past couple of nights while looking at whole movies and scenes from others. The quality is just amazing to me now. I had a 4805 before which had an amazing DVD picture also. When I first got the Z4 hooked up, I found that I was trying to convince myself that the Z4 looked as good as the 4805, but it really didn't quite match it. After getting the Oppo upgraded I now feel without a shadow of a doubt the the DVD picture is just as good or better. HDTV is obviously much better, but I expected that anyway.

I'm sitting about 14' back from a 106" screen and SDE is not detectable. If I move a few feet closer it becomes barely detectable in bright sky shots or white lettering if you look really hard for it. SDE is simply a non-issue for my seating preference.

I don't know want the Panny looks like and now that I've already bought the Z4 I don't want to know. What I do know is that once you apply ROne's tweaks and make sure your source equipment is setup right, the Z4 will deliver a stunning picture.

Clearly we all have our preferences, and I don't mean to diminish anyone's enjoyment of their Z4.

Nevertheless, for people who haven't made up their minds yet, read the review on projectorreviews, and on the 'Summary' page take a good hard look at the picture of Ewan McGregor as shown on the Z4 and the AE900u.

Can you see any detail at all in the right side of his face on the Z4? I can't. This is exactly what I experienced in my home, watching movies that I knew (and I knew to have details I just wasn't seeing). High contrast ratio is fine and good, but this is not the way to acheive it. :cool:

Even if I hadn't been bothered by the SDE (sitting more than 1.5 the screen width away), the loss of detail in darker areas would have convinced me to send this projector back.

If anything, I think the reviewer was generous to the Z4 by not pointing this out. It's a serious problem with this projector, and I'm surprised that it's not getting more attention.

I can assure anyone considering the Z4 that there is no "serious problem" with the Z4 as suggested above.

scotchfaster may have eyes so sharp as to see SDE at 1.5 but there is simply no inherent lack of detail in the Z4 image when compared to the AE900u.

Again, pictures of full size projected images posted on a website are useless.

I have a Z4 and my picture looks nothing like the blurry detail-less image of Ewan shown in that review. I have tweaked mine using ROne's settings and after upgrading the firmware on my OPPO the image is absolutely wonderful IMO. I watched the Matrix movies, which are very dark, and the detail visible in the dark scenes was excellent. I also looked at Episode 3 and the detail in that was great too. Before upgrading the firmware my blacks were very crushed and I couldn't see any detail.

I grinned to myself several times over the past couple of nights while looking at whole movies and scenes from others. The quality is just amazing to me now. I had a 4805 before which had an amazing DVD picture also. When I first got the Z4 hooked up, I found that I was trying to convince myself that the Z4 looked as good as the 4805, but it really didn't quite match it. After getting the Oppo upgraded I now feel without a shadow of a doubt the the DVD picture is just as good or better. HDTV is obviously much better, but I expected that anyway.

I'm sitting about 14' back from a 106" screen and SDE is not detectable. If I move a few feet closer it becomes barely detectable in bright sky shots or white lettering if you look really hard for it. SDE is simply a non-issue for my seating preference.

I don't know want the Panny looks like and now that I've already bought the Z4 I don't want to know. What I do know is that once you apply ROne's tweaks and make sure your source equipment is setup right, the Z4 will deliver a stunning picture.

Sounds great. My benchmark is an X1 and with the 4805 having a much better image than the X1 and the Z4 at least matching the 4805, I should see a big improvement. I'll have the same size screen as you and plan it to be a gray Da Lite HCCV one.

I am concerned about source quality though. For a long time I have just run component cables from my DVD player and been thrilled with the image. I don't want to buy the Oppo brand projector but don't mind upgrading my two year old Toshiba progressive scan model to another manufacturer's model. What is the best connector-output to use to connect to the Z4 for DVD material?

Greg

Sounds great. My benchmark is an X1 and with the 4805 having a much better image than the X1 and the Z4 at least matching the 4805, I should see a big improvement. I'll have the same size screen as you and plan it to be a gray Da Lite HCCV one.

I am concerned about source quality though. For a long time I have just run component cables from my DVD player and been thrilled with the image. I don't want to buy the Oppo brand projector but don't mind upgrading my two year old Toshiba progressive scan model to another manufacturer's model. What is the best connector-output to use to connect to the Z4 for DVD material?

Greg

I have already flirted with the idea of buying an "upconverting" DVD player, such as the Oppo or one of the $130 ones at Best Buy, and connecting through HDMI. However, I am using a several year old Sony progressive scan DVD player through compononet cables and the picture looks awesome to me. I really wonder how much difference in quality you really see with some of these things everyone touts on here and whether you lose any of the "film like" quality when upconverting to 720p. So who knows, maybe I will just save my cash for now :)

Very satisfied Z4 owner, and that is without any tweaking yet, shame on me I know.

I went from the Z2 to the AE900 and the difference was astounding. The Z2 definitely looks washed out compared to the 900. The 900's color saturation is amazing. I haven't seen the Z4 though... The zoom lens on the 900 is also amazing. Much more flexible than the Z2's zoom range. The lens shift with the 900 is a little tricky though.

I have already flirted with the idea of buying an "upconverting" DVD player, such as the Oppo or one of the $130 ones at Best Buy, and connecting through HDMI. However, I am using a several year old Sony progressive scan DVD player through compononet cables and the picture looks awesome to me. I really wonder how much difference in quality you really see with some of these things everyone touts on here and whether you lose any of the "film like" quality when upconverting to 720p. So who knows, maybe I will just save my cash for now :)

Very satisfied Z4 owner, and that is without any tweaking yet, shame on me I know.


You won't lose any of the "film like" quality, at least I didn't with the Oppo. However the improvement in quality may not be worth the upgrade. My movies look damn good, but they looked damn good on my component connected dvd player also. They do look a little more detailed with the Oppo, but not to a great extent IMO. One of my main reasons for getting the Oppo was because of its multi-region capabilities and the high ratings it received at review sites. If you are looking for a multi-region player that can play anything thrown at it then it is hard to beat the Oppo.

Sounds great. My benchmark is an X1 and with the 4805 having a much better image than the X1 and the Z4 at least matching the 4805, I should see a big improvement. I'll have the same size screen as you and plan it to be a gray Da Lite HCCV one.

I am concerned about source quality though. For a long time I have just run component cables from my DVD player and been thrilled with the image. I don't want to buy the Oppo brand projector but don't mind upgrading my two year old Toshiba progressive scan model to another manufacturer's model. What is the best connector-output to use to connect to the Z4 for DVD material?

Greg

My screen is only a DIY blackout cloth screen, so your gray Da Lite should provide an even more impressive picture.

Let me just say first that my hobby isn't finding faults with projectors. I got the Z4 to watch movies on, not to look for pixels or complain about missing detail in darker scenes. I really wanted to sit back and enjoy the show, but it wasn't possible for me.

If returning the Z4 wasn't an option, I would have learned to live with it and might have even have grown to love it. Who knows? However, I had only a few days (and four hours of lamp usage) before my option to return it expired. I spent virtually all of the four hours trying to tweak the image to my liking, and although I didn't try Rone's settings specifically, I'm sure I hit virtually every possible combination of settings in those four hours. I just don't think getting a good image should be so hard.

I'm using a few years old JVC DVD progressive scan player with component video, which isn't optimal, but my previous projector did a much better job with the same source. What I saw in my home looked just like the image of Ewan - too much contrast and too little detail. This wasn't a subtle effect like the SDE, so I imagine there's more to this than simply different tastes at work.

I am very curious why some are getting a great picture out of their Z4 and others (which appears to be only me and Art) are not. The last poster is using component video and a DVD source with no tweaks. Do we simply have different tastes? It's a bit of a mystery.

Well, I just meant to put my two cents in, but it's more like a dime at this point.

I just placed my order for the Z4. I tried the Panny 700 before this, so I'm hoping this is an improvement over that. I couldn't live with the VB and FPN that I was getting on the Panny I had so I returned it.

I am very curious why some are getting a great picture out of their Z4 and others (which appears to be only me and Art) are not. The last poster is using component video and a DVD source with no tweaks. Do we simply have different tastes? It's a bit of a mystery.

Well, I just meant to put my two cents in, but it's more like a dime at this point.

I imagine that there is a certain amount of "taste" involved when assessing image quality. However, I do wonder if your model was way off somehow. While I questioned some of Art's review, he certainly did not say that the Z4 was not a great picture. In fact I belive that his summary conclusion on black levels/shadow detail was the Panasonic by a "slight margin" in his opinion. So I don't think if he was consistently seeing the kind of crappy images as the one of Ewan from Star Wars that he would have stated that. Just 2 cents :)

Let me just say first that my hobby isn't finding faults with projectors. I got the Z4 to watch movies on, not to look for pixels or complain about missing detail in darker scenes. I really wanted to sit back and enjoy the show, but it wasn't possible for me.

If returning the Z4 wasn't an option, I would have learned to live with it and might have even have grown to love it. Who knows? However, I had only a few days (and four hours of lamp usage) before my option to return it expired. I spent virtually all of the four hours trying to tweak the image to my liking, and although I didn't try Rone's settings specifically, I'm sure I hit virtually every possible combination of settings in those four hours. I just don't think getting a good image should be so hard.

I'm using a few years old JVC DVD progressive scan player with component video, which isn't optimal, but my previous projector did a much better job with the same source. What I saw in my home looked just like the image of Ewan - too much contrast and too little detail. This wasn't a subtle effect like the SDE, so I imagine there's more to this than simply different tastes at work.

I am very curious why some are getting a great picture out of their Z4 and others (which appears to be only me and Art) are not. The last poster is using component video and a DVD source with no tweaks. Do we simply have different tastes? It's a bit of a mystery.

Well, I just meant to put my two cents in, but it's more like a dime at this point.

I'm going along with you on this... I just got a Z4 and I'm taking it back to see another one and possibly to change for something else altogethor. I did try out ROnes settings and to me it made the picture better than I could of setup but still very odd, a strange pasted, painted effect to colours and edges. Very much a soft smudge effect that give lots of black contrast but not detail in the shadows at all.

I'm truely gutted as I was really looking forward to watching EP3, and thats after I demo'd it (it seemed much better in the demo, must of just got caught up in it all) and after showing the missus, the first comments were... it looks no better then the old AE300, probably worse! enough said! :eek: :eek:

back to the drawing board! :( :( :(

I'm sure I hit virtually every possible combination of settings in those four hours.
Given the array of adjustments and the time someone like ROne has spent tweaking I find this unlikely. But I do agree that (based on what has been posted) there seems to be a lot of effort required to optimize the image.

How come everyone in this thread that is denouncing the Z4 has less than 10 posts?? Not accusing anyone of anything, just noting that it's weird...ehhh little chummm?:)

Crazyazz & scotchfaster,

What kind of DVDP are your guys using? Did some of the settings of your DVDP set up to unreasonable range? From a properly collablorated Z4 & AE900 (with the same DVDP), the sharpness & details are very similar (slight edge to Z4). It's only the colour production that separates them (Z4 is a bit red/warm, AE900 more accurate). Do you have the same problem when you play HD broadcast?

Hi

can someone explain to me the following effect - I just can't...

When switching back and forth from fixed iris ("open") to Auto-Iris ("Auto"), we all agreed so far, that Auto-Iris did open more than fixed "open" iris.
But why then does the following happen:

- very dark scenes: Auto-iris picture much brighter than fixed iris
- dark scenes: Auto-iris picture brighter than fixed iris
- normal scenes: Auto-iris picture a bit brighter than fixed iris
- sunny scenes: Auto-iris picture and fixed iris have the same brightness

Am I completely wrong with the following conclusion:
if you consider the above effects, then in dark scenes, auto-iris must have the possibility to open much more than open iris, so open iris-value cannot be open 100%.
But in sunny scenes, open iris has the same brightness as auto-iris, so if open iris is not 100%, then auto-iris can't be either.

Maybe, I am completely getting something wrong in my understanding of the Auto-iris. Can someone explain, please?

Joerg

Joerg I made this obsevation with the AUTO IRIS in one of my earlier posts.

The AUTO LAMP IRIS is both MORE OPEN than the "OPEN" IRIS SETTING and MORE CLOSED than the "CLOSED" IRIS setting - I've measured both.

ROne

Thanks, I know your post - but (don't want to be "anal retentive" ;) ) that is not the question - or maybe, I am getting something completely wrong here or misunderstood your post.

Just try to follow my train of thought once again:

In a normal picture, switching from open to auto, the picture gets brighter(because the auto-iris opens up more).
In a very dark scene, switching from open to auto, the picture gets much brighter compared to "open iris" (the auto-iris opens up even more).
That said, I must draw the conclusion, that "open iris" means, that the iris is always at a fixed value of let's say 50%, so the "auto-iris" still has some "reserve" to open up more.
BUT: in a very sunny, bright scene, there is NO difference between auto and open.
So: in a sunny scene, auto and open both must have the same value of "openness" of the lamp iris - which CANNOT be 100%, since otherwise, the auto-iris could&would not open up more than the "open iris" during darker scenes. If I count in my above mentioned "50% example", that would mean, that the auto-iris in bright scenes is NOT fully open, which does not make sense to me at all.

I always thought, that in dark scenes, the auto-iris closes down to let less light come through and that way reaches a better "black", and in bright scenes opens up completely to let the full light of the lamp result in a bright picture on the screen.

So: how do you get these two things fit together?

As I said, I don't want to be anal - but I just don't get the whole concept of the auto-iris anymore after these observations....

Joerg

Can anyone PM we with the name of any vendors that are willing to check the Z4 for VB, dead pixels, etc. prior to shipping and also has a good return policy? Thanks

See my PM.

Yes, I am new to the forum here, and I am not a projector expert by any means. I have owned (if you count my few days with the Z4) three projectors over the course of three years: an LCD Philips (which I sold), a DLP NEC LT240 (my favorite, but which broke), and the Z4 (which I returned).

I don't have HDTV, and so did not watch the Z4 at its best. My input source is a good (if slightly older) JVC progressive scan DVD player with component input.

All I can say is this:

1. Going from my DLP projector to the Z4, I was very aware of the SDE in the Z4 - not always, but whenever there was a swatch of light solid color. I program computers for a living, so seeing pixels when I'm trying to unwind with a movie is distracting to say the least. I am sure this isn't a problem for other people, but it's just wrong to say that you can't see pixels at 1.5x the screen width away.

2. My old NEC projector did a much better job rendering detail in darker areas of the screen than the Z4 did on any setting that I tried.

I realize that many people love this projector, and I don't mean to harsh on it. There's a lot that I liked about the Z4, in fact, and I may wind up with a Z5 or Z6 one day. However, I never would have bought the Z4 without the reviews that claimed SDE wasn't visible at my seating distance.

Crazyazz & scotchfaster,

What kind of DVDP are your guys using? Did some of the settings of your DVDP set up to unreasonable range? From a properly collablorated Z4 & AE900 (with the same DVDP), the sharpness & details are very similar (slight edge to Z4). It's only the colour production that separates them (Z4 is a bit red/warm, AE900 more accurate). Do you have the same problem when you play HD broadcast?

I was using a Pansonic Progressive DVD player through component and the picture was a strange blurred look. I'm taking it back hopefully to either exchange for one that doesn't exhibt that colour and image processing or try out something different.

From what I've seen, I'm struggling to comprehend how people say its clear and sharp?! maybe its my definition of sharp thats wrong as it most certainly doesn't look clear. Those pics on PJ Reviews really explain more than I could write. Please tell me if you think that Ewan's face is sharp and clear?! as I don't believe it!

I used ROnes settings (which everyone is agreeing to be excellent) and tailored them to me, DVDP and my room. I also just tried the std settings to see if they were any better and no, they were not.

Just my opinion at the end of the day I guess, but I know what I saw!

Come back my AE300!!!! all is forgiven! ;) ;) ;) ;)

Can anyone please PM me somewhere that i can purchase a z4 from the states, that will ship to canada?

Thanks

From what I've seen, I'm struggling to comprehend how people say its clear and sharp?! maybe its my definition of sharp thats wrong as it most certainly doesn't look clear. Those pics on PJ Reviews really explain more than I could write. Please tell me if you think that Ewan's face is sharp and clear?! as I don't believe it!

Your projector must either have some problem or your eyes definitely need checked :) Not only is mine super sharp and detailed, but the reviews on the web by people who look at these things a lot tout the sharpness/detail of the Z4. In fact even your cited review with the comparison to Panasonic AE900 he comments on the Z4 sharpness, saying that it is sharper on DVDs than the Panny. While I and others have issues with those "pictures" used in that review, they were not intended to show a problem with any sharpness/clarity. I don't doubt that the reviewer would have jumped all over the Z4 in his review if he saw what you have described.

Your projector must either have some problem or your eyes definitely need checked :) Not only is mine super sharp and detailed, but the reviews on the web by people who look at these things a lot tout the sharpness/detail of the Z4. In fact even your cited review with the comparison to Panasonic AE900 he comments on the Z4 sharpness, saying that it is sharper on DVDs than the Panny. While I and others have issues with those "pictures" used in that review, they were not intended to show a problem with any sharpness/clarity. I don't doubt that the reviewer would have jumped all over the Z4 in his review if he saw what you have described.

How is heat output on your Z4? I'll need to mount my next PJ on the ceiling where my X1 is and in the summer this room heats up to the high 70's and low 80's. I get the direct sunset in my HT room so I don't do much movie watching in July and August anyway, but if a hot room is bad, I need to take that into consideration. The X1 chugs away just fine.

Greg

How is heat output on your Z4? I'll need to mount my next PJ on the ceiling where my X1 is and in the summer this room heats up to the high 70's and low 80's. I get the direct sunset in my HT room so I don't do much movie watching in July and August anyway, but if a hot room is bad, I need to take that into consideration. The X1 chugs away just fine.

Greg

Of course it gets hot coming out of the exhaust vent (as all projectors would be expected), but I don't think abnormally so. There are some comments about high heat in the Panasonic AE900 thread though :)

Ok, so I've kind of kept a mental tab of what people are saying when the picture lacks depth and seems that alot are using component DVD players. Acegamer mentioned how different his looks with the upgraded Oppo. Perhaps the image with 480P is related to the image you get with 480I, which is poor on the Z4.

Acegamer, first are you using component or HDMI? If you're using HDMI, do you have some component cables you could use and a digital camera to take some comparison pics of the Ewan frame in 480p and 720p?

Maybe we can get to the bottom of this before everyone starts completely crucifying this projector. I'd say however Sanyo deserves a kick in the rear if 480I/P does prove to be really that bad on this projector. Personally I'll be sending 720p exclusively so no worries for me.

Ok, so I've kind of kept a mental tab of what people are saying when the picture lacks depth and seems that alot are using component DVD players. Acegamer mentioned how different his looks with the upgraded Oppo. Perhaps the image with 480P is related to the image you get with 480I, which is poor on the Z4.

Acegamer, first are you using component or HDMI? If you're using HDMI, do you have some component cables you could use and a digital camera to take some comparison pics of the Ewan frame in 480p and 720p?

Maybe we can get to the bottom of this before everyone starts completely crucifying this projector. I'd say however Sanyo deserves a kick in the rear if 480I/P does prove to be really that bad on this projector. Personally I'll be sending 720p exclusively so no worries for me.

There have been enough reports of using 480p component connection with excellent picture that I do not think this is the problem.

One professional report used Panasonic 480p component connction as well.

http://www.hdtvexpert.com/pages/plvz4.htm

Perhaps a defective unit?

Shelly

Your projector must either have some problem or your eyes definitely need checked :) Not only is mine super sharp and detailed, but the reviews on the web by people who look at these things a lot tout the sharpness/detail of the Z4. In fact even your cited review with the comparison to Panasonic AE900 he comments on the Z4 sharpness, saying that it is sharper on DVDs than the Panny. While I and others have issues with those "pictures" used in that review, they were not intended to show a problem with any sharpness/clarity. I don't doubt that the reviewer would have jumped all over the Z4 in his review if he saw what you have described.


So if you take a look at your PJ screen and look at picture, do you see anything like the pictures on the site?! if not then maybe I've got a duff unit, otherwise you'll have to agree thats it not quite right is it!

I'll find out soon when I take it back and view another one, until then there is nothing more I can say.... the picture is not sharp or clear, in fact the opposite!

and thanks, but my eyes are perfectly fine! if they were a bit on the knackered side then I might be saying how wonderful the picture is! :) :p :) or maybe thats just justifying the buy hmmm....

So if you take a look at your PJ screen and look at picture, do you see anything like the pictures on the site?! if not then maybe I've got a duff unit, otherwise you'll have to agree thats it not quite right is it!

I'll find out soon when I take it back and view another one, until then there is nothing more I can say.... the picture is not sharp or clear, in fact the opposite!

and thanks, but my eyes are perfectly fine! if they were a bit on the knackered side then I might be saying how wonderful the picture is! :) :p :) or maybe thats just justifying the buy hmmm....

No my Z4 does not resemble those crappy pictures on that web site, and frankly pictures that anyone posts in a review are basically worthless IMO. Most other reviews that I have seen do not post any pictures, probably due to that concern. You may have a quality issue with your particular projector, and there are those that have bought the Panasonic AE900 who have had some issues of one type or another also.

To think that the guys at Projectorcentral.com and the other review sites, including the one you want to cite by the way said it was a "Hot Buy" etc. could be that far off the mark is really not credible. Plus myself and others love the Z4 picture too. I had an Infocus 4805 side by side with my Z4 during installation and noticed no worse a picture on DVD, which is a big plus IMO considering the rave reviews that the 4805 gets for DVD content. The Z4 picture was just as nice (constrast etc.), and you could tell that it was sharper. Again, as your favorite review even pointed out.

Glad to hear that your eyes are okay, but maybe you forgot to use the focus or something :)

I tried progressive scan both on and off with my DVD player, and couldn't see a difference.

The menus looked absolutely fine, BTW - crisp and rock solid. Every pixel visible. ;)

The reason I pointed out that "worthless" picture of Ewan wasn't to advance my case against the Z4 (I really wanted to like this projector), but because the picture in the review resembled what I saw on my screen watching both Pirates of the Carribean and Dream with the Fishes.

I am willing to believe this was strictly a problem with my setup that would go away if I changed sources (although my source was fine with my previous projector), or even that possibly I had a bad unit - however, the problem was real, and apparently not even unique.

Scotchfaster, I think the issue is that we need to view the projector with multiple sources. The fact that 480p and 480i are the same to you makes me think there are definite problems with non hidef sources. That your source wasn't a problem with your previous projector only makes me wonder if it is the limiting factor here. I'm assuming the Z4 was no better looking than your previous gen.

Wouldn't it make sense for several of us to do a comparison of our own sources and report? Especially those that have HDMI DVD players with component outputs as well. My Z4 has no home yet unfortunately but I'll definitely be running my own comparison of sources to see the differences; Component DVD, HDMI DVD and HTPC.

Perhaps the image with 480P is related to the image you get with 480I, which is poor on the Z4.
Who here is using an iScan HD+ for processing? I will be running, at least for the interim, the interlaced component output from my trusty Toshiba SD-9000 DVD into the iScan for conversion to 720p then out to the projector via DVI. I had already planned on using the iScan for a single video feed to the projector so reports on the average (to poor, depending on the review) deinterlacing and scaling of standard definition sources by the Z4 is of little concern to me.

I'm reasonably sure that the units exhibiting the problems (blurry, color uniformity problems etc..) are defective units.

SANYO quality control is one of the worst that i have seen. Quality of the projectors may differ greatly from unit to unit.
Take my Z2 as an example. I was one of the first to own a Z2 in Canada. Got one of the first 50 units. That PJ was pretty bad. It took me several visits to SANYO HQ and several phone calls before my unit was exchanged to a brand new one at the factory here. What makes this even worse is that SANYO tends to deny that a problem exists. They usually claim that it's "within spec" .

It took me hours of convincing before my issues were resolved.
If I could give grades to PJs, my first Z2 would get a 3, my second one a 9 (out of 10).

My advice: check the PJs out first before buying and buy from a place where they will exchange defective units. The projectors that work as intended are usually awesome. While others are less so.

Sanyo quality control probably is not any worse than other manufacturers :) They offer 3 year warranty with good service (note that good/excellent service may not include USA due to reports in this forum). They are not serviced by sanyo here where i live.

I'm reasonably sure that the units exhibiting the problems (blurry, color uniformity problems etc..) are defective units.

SANYO quality control is one of the worst that i have seen. Quality of the projectors may differ greatly from unit to unit.
Take my Z2 as an example. I was one of the first to own a Z2 in Canada. Got one of the first 50 units. That PJ was pretty bad. It took me several visits to SANYO HQ and several phone calls before my unit was exchanged to a brand new one at the factory here. What makes this even worse is that SANYO tends to deny that a problem exists. They usually claim that it's "within spec" .


Your experience with one projector two generations ago may in fact be valid in the case of the Z4. However Z4 owners should check out different sources before claiming that their projector is bad. If the Z4 has terrible progressive component scaling then let's do the simple work of verifying that.

Manufacturers will always deny that an entire line has quality problems. Panasonic continues to say that vb is not a problem on their projectors when all they needed to do was provide a tweak like Sanyo. It's not truth that matters but customer perception. Even a vb free projector line that in past generations had vb problems, from a customer's perspective would do well to have the vb tweak menu. A smoothscreen tweak would have been nice as well, however Pan only treated the AE900 as a slight upgrade from the AE700. They put in a good effort on delivering quality out of the box performance but very little else in terms of improved features for customization.

Acegamer's recent revelation with the Oppo player makes me want to go down the source path. Assuming anything before checking all your bases is simply bad form in my opinion, regardless of your experience in the past.

What's the consensus on using lens shift? Due to room constraints, I have to ceiling mount at a height of 9.5ft, which puts the lens about 18 inches above the top of my screen. This equates to a vertical offset of 133% (relative to bottom of screen). If I understand correctly the Z4 max offset is 150%.

So will I sacrifice image quality by using this much offset?

I believe the offset is relative to the center of the screen. Yo should have no problems. Mine sits on the side of the screen and I see no difference.

Your experience with one projector two generations ago may in fact be valid in the case of the Z4. However Z4 owners should check out different sources before claiming that their projector is bad. If the Z4 has terrible progressive component scaling then let's do the simple work of verifying that.

Manufacturers will always deny that an entire line has quality problems. Panasonic continues to say that vb is not a problem on their projectors when all they needed to do was provide a tweak like Sanyo. It's not truth that matters but customer perception. Even a vb free projector line that in past generations had vb problems, from a customer's perspective would do well to have the vb tweak menu. A smoothscreen tweak would have been nice as well, however Pan only treated the AE900 as a slight upgrade from the AE700. They put in a good effort on delivering quality out of the box performance but very little else in terms of improved features for customization.

Acegamer's recent revelation with the Oppo player makes me want to go down the source path. Assuming anything before checking all your bases is simply bad form in my opinion, regardless of your experience in the past.

I believe there is a vb tweak on the AE900 in the service menu. And how could the smoothcreen be adjustable, it's optical ? And why would it need to be, people are very happy with it and more and more are confirming that there is no sharpness issue with smoothscreen. If there is any sharpness difference, it has more to do with image processing and the false sense of sharpness caused by the SDE on the z4.

I believe there is a vb tweak on the AE900 in the service menu. And how could the smoothcreen be adjustable, it's optical ? And why would it need to be, people are very happy with it and more and more are confirming that there is no sharpness issue with smoothscreen. If there is any sharpness difference, it has more to do with image processing and the false sense of sharpness caused by the SDE on the z4.

I don't believe that there is a sharpness "issue" with the Panasonic smoothscreen. However, reviews by credible sites and now users cannot be discounted that the Z4 looks sharper in many instances. Call it simple "perception" if you want, but it is certainly there. The 4805 obviously has SDE, but my side by side comparison on DVD movies against the Z4 clearly showed a sharpness advantage for the Z4.

I tried progressive scan both on and off with my DVD player, and couldn't see a difference.

The menus looked absolutely fine, BTW - crisp and rock solid. Every pixel visible. ;)

The reason I pointed out that "worthless" picture of Ewan wasn't to advance my case against the Z4 (I really wanted to like this projector), but because the picture in the review resembled what I saw on my screen watching both Pirates of the Carribean and Dream with the Fishes.

I am willing to believe this was strictly a problem with my setup that would go away if I changed sources (although my source was fine with my previous projector), or even that possibly I had a bad unit - however, the problem was real, and apparently not even unique.

I second all of the above.....

Menus razor sharp, picture crap! I'm taking it back tomorrow and I'll see the difference between other units and maybe it is my DVDP?! doubt it though as it was fine with the panny.

I really wish people wouldn't get so up tight, I'm not knocking your PJ or you for that matter for buying the Z4. All I am saying is that mine is crap and the picture on that site is a excellent example of how it looks on my screen. And yes it is in focus :D

I don't believe that there is a sharpness "issue" with the Panasonic smoothscreen. However, reviews by credible sites and now users cannot be discounted that the Z4 looks sharper in many instances. Call it simple "perception" if you want, but it is certainly there. The 4805 obviously has SDE, but my side by side comparison on DVD movies against the Z4 clearly showed a sharpness advantage for the Z4.

I don't disagree with the fact that the Z4 appears sharper to some, what I am saying is that the smoothscreen apparently doesn't cause softness, as you seem to agree as well. I disagree with spreading that as a fact when it has not been clearly verified.
It seems like the sharpness of the Z4 has more to do with the image processing/enhancement and maybe SDE.
What would be really useful is that someone feeds both projectors side by side with the same 720p signal to avoid any scaling and turn off all digital enhancement (some reported that edge enhancement can't be completely turned off on the Z4 though).
If you are going to feed the PJ with 720p HD or an upscaling DVD player or an HTPC, you will not use the internal scaler and so sharpness of the scaler becomes irrelevant.
If you are going to feed such a signal, which most would eventually, chances are, and it's been reported, that there will be very little to no sharpness difference.

Your experience with one projector two generations ago may in fact be valid in the case of the Z4. However Z4 owners should check out different sources before claiming that their projector is bad. If the Z4 has terrible progressive component scaling then let's do the simple work of verifying that.

snip

Acegamer's recent revelation with the Oppo player makes me want to go down the source path. Assuming anything before checking all your bases is simply bad form in my opinion, regardless of your experience in the past.

Not sure why but you conveniently snipped the most important section of my post which was:
" My advice: check the PJs out first before buying and buy from a place where they will exchange defective units. The projectors that work as intended are usually awesome. While others are less so. "

I don't think it's bad form to make sure you you deal with a seller that has good return policy!

Btw my experience is not based on 1 Z2. I personally had 2 and have compared 7.
My current one is almost perfect and I'm extremely happy with it. I'm not happy however with SANYO customer service. Had I not lived within 50 miles of SANYO CANADA HQ, I don't think my issues would have been resolved.
SANYO finally conceded after realizing I was not going away!

Anyhoo, deal with a great dealer that will exchange defective units. And of course make sure that it's your PJ that has the problem and not something else, like a bad cable or something stupid like that before calling the dealer demanding a refund.

This equates to a vertical offset of 133% (relative to bottom of screen). If I understand correctly the Z4 max offset is 150%.
Dick's right - reference is to center of screen. You have lots of room.

I believe the offset is relative to the center of the screen. Yo should have no problems. Mine sits on the side of the screen and I see no difference.

Correct, the Z4 offset is stated as 100% relative to middle of screen, or 150% relative to bottom of screen (for ceiling mount).

Anybody else's Z4 ceiling mounted? Please tell me how it worked out.

Correct, the Z4 offset is stated as 100% relative to middle of screen, or 150% relative to bottom of screen (for ceiling mount).

Anybody else's Z4 ceiling mounted? Please tell me how it worked out.


Had it mounted on the ceiling and the lens shift is awesome, took all of 5mins to get it perfectly aligned to the screen. Z4 7ins from ceiling, top of screen about 22ins, no problems with any screen bowing at all.

mbaxter: quote "What's the consensus on using lens shift? Due to room constraints, I have to ceiling mount at a height of 9.5ft, which puts the lens about 18 inches above the top of my screen. This equates to a vertical offset of 133% (relative to bottom of screen). If I understand correctly the Z4 max offset is 150%.

So will I sacrifice image quality by using this much offset?" end quote

I installed a Z4 today where a NEC LT150Z has resided. In order not have to repull cable and patch holes, etc., I took advantage of the lens shift in both the vertical and horz. directions with no discernable impact on PQ. The vertical drop in this install with the lens shift is about the same ratio as you are reporting needing. I think you will be very pleased with the mounting flexibility.

The Z4 is fed with a High Def. TiVo (HR 10-250 at 720p)via the existing component Video cables and an old Panasonic DVD player (RP-91) outputting 480p.

The HDTV signal was calibrated via the HDNET test signal and the DVD player via VE.
The screen is a 92" diag.. DaLite high contrast grey. The old NEC LT150Z was was well calibrated with most of the tweaks applied from this forum and a few of my own. Visitors enjoyed the NEC; in particular HDTV and DVDs.

But...the Z4 is a major upgrade with the impact of a 92" plasma, exceeding my expectations by a wide margin. IF installation flexibility and cost effectiveness are important to you and you use progressive sources and demand high quality PQ, the Z4 is going to be hard to beat around the low $2000 price point.

Regards and enjoy,


Report Post .

Hey, cool. I have a LT150z and was wondering if someone else had made the switch.

I am concerned that the Z4 is going to be too bright. Comment?

And I have to guess... it is much MUCH quieter?

One can never be "too thin, too rich or too bright" :-) Jokes aside, the db level is much lower than the LT150z and the "brightness" is "just right". I could not be more pleased with the install flexsability of the Z4 and the video performace. I understand that there are higher end PJs with higher price tags. As we have moved around over the years, each of my HT systems have sold as an option with the home. I had, for example, a JVC D-ILA with a panoamorph lens, Stewart Screen and calibrated by on of the best in the business. It, along with a high end sound system and dedicated HT room was extremely enjoyable fed by High Definition sat and a HTPC. I sold the lot at a nice profit when we moved and reinvested at a much lower dollar level at our new home. We have enjoyed the NEC for several years even though it did not perform at the level of the JVC, it was a fraction of the cost. So, we are not new to HT..this is our forth one.

So, back to the Z4....carefully installed and calibrated, the Z4 will rival the more expensive spreads, based upon one day's experience.

Enjoy

calibrated via the HDNET test signal
That is really cool.

I guess I should qualify my concerns that I have a relatively small screen and a short throw. The published specs for the two projectors suggest that the Z4 is about the same lumens as the LT150z but the projector calculator shows the Z4 as being much too bright for movies/video vs. the NEC, which it shows as being "in the green".

Before I ordered the Z4, I notice the same thing in the projector central calculator:

I guess I should qualify my concerns that I have a relatively small screen and a short throw. The published specs for the two projectors suggest that the Z4 is about the same lumens as the LT150z but the projector calculator shows the Z4 as being much too bright for movies/video vs. the NEC, which it shows as being "in the green".

However, my experience suggests that the calculator is incorrect re being too bright.

I need to build a ceiling mount for my Z4. Does anyone know what size screws fit in the threaded inserts on the bottom of the pj?

Try 6mm.

Try 6mm.

Do you mean that 6mm IS the size, or just to try that size? Sorry, I wasn't sure. I'm going to need to mount mine when I purchase it.

If nobody gives you a definite answer, assuming there is something screwed in at least one of the holes, you can carry that to a hardware store and use their "nut sizer thingy" to figure out what size you need.

There was a previous post stating that the bolt size is 6mm, I believe. I used the screws provide with a Peerless Industries universal mount (there is not a Peerless custom mount yet) and it comes with a varity of screw sizes, one of which fits the Z4

Yes the size is definately 6mm. I built a mount for mine.

Is there any consensus as to whether the 12 bit video processing makes for a better picture with the Z4 vs other projectors?
Any flickering or other issues with the iris?
How is the speed of the iris?

Quality control update?
How is colour uniformity and vertical banding doing for these units?

Wow, cine4home's measurements on a calibrated Z4 are impressive. 1450:1 without iris and 6800:1 with auto iris. Yowza!

cpc, have you seen any Z4s in your neck of the woods? My dealer indicates that, according to Sanyo Canada, the Z4s are expected to arrive by the end of November.

Some may find this review of interest:

http://www.projectorcentral.com/720p_projectors.htm

Evan's personal favorite so far is the Z4.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/720p_projectors.htm

Evan makes some excellent points. He prefers the Z4 for himself because of the extra sharpness and the fact that he sits 1.7 back from the screen so SDE is not a problem for him. If you have a medium to large room the Z4 is a great choice. In a small room or if you sit close to the screen the Panasonic AE900 may be better choice he states because of lack of SDE. What ever decision one makes should depend on one's situation and needs. The great thing is that there are two fine projectors available at a fair price.

I find pictures only mildly interesting due to the MANY variables that can be at play - quality of lighting, screen, camera used etc. However, I will say that I have watched that movie on my Z4 and I too would be disappointed in it if it looked even close to as bad as that picture posted. It looks incredible, and there is a ton of detail in close ups etc.

i have just watched this scene (that is the close up of ewan) over and over again on my Z4. i hate to admit it, but it juts looks the same as on the screenshot from the projectorreviews comparison.

i am feeding my Z4 with the oppo (HDMI).
i tried all possible presets and also some of RONEs settings.
always with the same result.
the Z4 is lacking detail in dark scenes like this.
if the panny looks like its screenshot as much as my Z4 looks like the screenshot of it than the panny must have a clear advantage in this regard.

now i won't take my Z4 back because im actually very satisfied with its overall performance, but i have to second the observations of the projectorreviews comparison and of some posters here.

Evan does a good job explaining himself in the comparison and I think it will do a great job at helping users not only pick the projector that best fits them, but also to do that without feeling there is much deficiency in key areas by choosing one over the other.

I value similar things as Evan since I don't like to sit close for the same reasons and sharpness is more evident to me than black level or contrast. I am quite use to subpar performance in those areas due to watching alot of flat-panel LCD's and also at the local cinema that uses DLP's that are either not capable of handling such a large screen or their bulbs have dimmed so much and they refuse to replace them. Now that's not to say that I want to stay accustomed to that and with the Z4, the little I've actually gotten to watch it, it really did do a decent job even in the horrible temporary environment I used to test it. Once I throw it up on a real screen I'm sure it will best my normal viewing sources in just about all areas.

i have just watched this scene (that is the close up of ewan) over and over again on my Z4. i hate to admit it, but it juts looks the same as on the screenshot from the projectorreviews comparison.

i am feeding my Z4 with the oppo (HDMI).
i tried all possible presets and also some of RONEs settings.
always with the same result.
the Z4 is lacking detail in dark scenes like this.
if the panny looks like its screenshot as much as my Z4 looks like the screenshot of it than the panny must have a clear advantage in this regard.

now i won't take my Z4 back because im actually very satisfied with its overall performance, but i have to second the observations of the projectorreviews comparison and of some posters here.

I know Acegamer mentioned earlier that upgrading the Oppo firmware made a night and day difference in black level perfromance.

I find the lack of installation flexibility on the Mits described at PC ridiculous. 1.2 zoom with no shift? Is it really that difficult for manufacturers to have a longer lense and shift? The 900 and Z4 clearly show that those capabilities don't preclude image quality.

Not available here yet, but I assumed some folks had them somewhere, but I guess that is over seas. Of course, the Z4, AE900 and TX200 have been available via import from the Island arc for a few weeks now. I'm just wondering when all these puppies will be available in our our back yards :)

As far as sharpness goes, I would say there will be an interesting comparison between the Z4 and TX200. The TX100 is sharp as a tack.

I know Acegamer mentioned earlier that upgrading the Oppo firmware made a night and day difference in black level perfromance.

i already had the newest firmware. so i can rule this out.
i guess the panny just has the advantage in this area.
i am not too worried though. i had a Z2 before and the Z4 is way ahead in this regard. maybe not as good as the panny but way better than my old Z2.

so, regarding those screenshots from projector reviews...specifically the close-up of Obi-Wan on the Z4 and also the Panny 900...I have an interesting observation to make. I think if you were to copy those images to your desktop and make them bigger you will notice what I noticed. Something fishy is going on with that shot from the panny 900. Check it out.

Nice little Review of the Z4:

http://www.projectors411.com/reviews/read.php?id=32

so, regarding those screenshots from projector reviews...specifically the close-up of Obi-Wan on the Z4 and also the Panny 900...I have an interesting observation to make. I think if you were to copy those images to your desktop and make them bigger you will notice what I noticed. Something fishy is going on with that shot from the panny 900. Check it out.

What is your observation since in your post you didn't make one really? What I noticed is that when blowing up the pictures the Z4 one has much blacker blacks. The Ae900 picture is very gray. If you brightened the Z4 to have mainly gray blacks then perhaps we'd see something different in terms of detail.

Nice little Review of the Z4:

http://www.projectors411.com/reviews/read.php?id=32

Right now, the Z4 is at the top of my list for a new projector by the end of January.

But we all know that the Z4 has shortcomings despite its price/performance. It needs lots of tweaking to get the best colors and blacks. But out of the box, according to the posts herre, is more than acceptable. But perfect, no.

This review is so unbalanced that it sounds like a press release. It contains no useful information to help anyone get the most from this projector. Worthless to me.

I'm not looking for cheerleaders to help me make my projector purchase decision.

Shelly

What is your observation since in your post you didn't make one really? What I noticed is that when blowing up the pictures the Z4 one has much blacker blacks. The Ae900 picture is very gray. If you brightened the Z4 to have mainly gray blacks then perhaps we'd see something different in terms of detail.


It seemed to me that based on those pics on projectorreviews some were a bit disappointed in the z4's performance with that star wars scene. I personally think screenshots can only give you an idea of how a unit might perform. Anyway, after blowing up those shots a bit more what seemed like more detail on the panny 900, doesn't really seem like more detail at all. In fact I'd say that the photo looks like crap and its hard to tell if its the photo...photo compression...or just the projector. I guess my overall observation is that you can't make any type of critical comparison based on those pictures. Maybe I misread a couple of posts...but I wouldn't give the edge to the panny 900 based on that. Maybe somebody with that projector could try to duplicate the shot.

This review is so unbalanced that it sounds like a press release. It contains no useful information to help anyone get the most from this projector. Worthless to me.


I stopped a quick skim after seeing this comment under Pros and Cons:

Looks like this projector has pros only and no cons.

Amazing. The world's first PERFECT projector at any price. :rolleyes:

yeah that latest review is garbage and does sound like it was written by a sanyo employee.

loved him going on about the different aspect ratio bars as well, ie stretching 4:3 to fill the screen. Great job!

loved him going on about the different aspect ratio bars as well, ie stretching 4:3 to fill the screen. Great job!
:p

I am ready to order a projector. If I went with the Sanyo, could I shelf mount it at the back of the room? The lens would be 17' from the 92" screen.

Which projector does 480i better? Primarily I will be showing 1080I and 480p, however I still watch some 480i.

The Hitachi I think I would have to ceiling mount. Anyone have any suggestions?

anyone noticed a pixelized image when using 480p for games in particular xbox while 720p looked fantastic (soul calibur) text and everything was smooth i find that 480p
is quite disapointing text in particular looking blocky/pixellated, and before you ask no my unit isnt faulty as ive had it in with sanyo over the last few days and everythign checks out ok. some games seem to suffer worse then others gamecube seems to fair a bit better with certain games looking great mario sunshine and other not quite as good could this be symptomatic
of the high def panels scaling the signal to fit? i dont know as with dvd running 480p isnt too bad its slightly noticable i think but lesser so with sharpness set very low altho seems to disappear if i upscale the dvd to 720p(please note im not using a hq dvd player just xbmc upscaled to 720p but it produces some nice results) surely others have noticed this
and it isnt just me infact i think i have read posts regarding pixelization its definately there however seemingly only is low res feeds thankfully im moving on to xbox 360 in a few days that shall alleviate all my woes and in the end i did buy this projector for high def material and it performs beautifully with that

I am about to get this projector but a couple of questions:

Is there another projector say less then 2g that is almost as good?
Would this be a bad idea to watch football in HD and play XBOX 360? With the downsides it has?

Its alittle hard to tell with this thing because i have read nothing but good about it.

Thanks for the help!

as for a close competitor for the price i cant comment im not too sure but for xbox 360/hd material i really reccomend the z4 perhaps z3 could also suit or panasonic ae-700 both of these are quite cheap now
but how they compare i dont know depends on your budget i suppose for me i chose the z4 as i wanted the latest tech with the three year warranty and basically most people have said its a little sharper then its competition

mrad,
Could you also send me a PM with the name of vendors that are willing to check the Z4 for VB, dead pixels, etc. prior to shipping and also has a good return policy? Thanks in advance.

I am about to get this projector but a couple of questions:

Is there another projector say less then 2g that is almost as good?
Would this be a bad idea to watch football in HD and play XBOX 360? With the downsides it has?

Its alittle hard to tell with this thing because i have read nothing but good about it.

Thanks for the help!
The Panasonic AE900 is the closest to the Z4 (and considered better by many) and with the current rebate it can be had at the price range you are looking at.

The Panasonic AE900 is the closest to the Z4 (and considered better by many) and with the current rebate it can be had at the price range you are looking at.

And the Z4 is considered better by many too, including myself :) The sharpness advantage DOES exist for the Z4, which is huge for me getting the Xbox 360 next week :D

mrad,
Could you also send me a PM with the name of vendors that are willing to check the Z4 for VB, dead pixels, etc. prior to shipping and also has a good return policy? Thanks in advance.

I would be interested in this also

Thanks!

I am ready to order a projector. If I went with the Sanyo, could I shelf mount it at the back of the room? The lens would be 17' from the 92" screen.
Is that 92" diagonal or width (with front projection it can be noted either way)? Regardless you'll be fine. If that's a diagonal measurement you have about 18 1/2' throw, and if horizontal measurement then it would be 21' and change.

And the Z4 is considered better by many too, including myself :) The sharpness advantage DOES exist for the Z4, which is huge for me getting the Xbox 360 next week :D

I suppose you'll be using your xbox 360 in 720p where the sharpness difference should be very little if any, I haven't read anything that would make me as affirmative as you are for that kind of source. People who have commented on the sharpness were usually feeding 480p or not telling us about the source and I have yet to see a comparison with 720p signals.
For gaming, you will want all digital enhancements (which also artificially increasing sharpness) off and you should make sure that they can really be turned off on the Z4, early reports suggested otherwise. Anyone can verify that by hooking up a PC ?

Hello people. I wonder if any Z4 users are teaming their projectors with the Zenith DVB318 and using component cables and the DVD player set to output 1080i - if the Z4 projector, with a 1080i input, outputs a natural 4:3 aspect ratio with 4:3 source material. I got spoiled in the past with the NEC Lt260 projector which didn't care what was it was fed from the DVD player, anamorphic, non-anamorphic, 4:3, everything was up-converted to 1080i and displayed that way. My current RPTV when it receives a 1080i signal is not able to display a "natural" 4:3 picture using the Zenith no matter what I try.
I have alot of TV shows on DVD that look alot better in 1080i than on 480P.

As one of the few detractors here of the Z4, thought I mention that I did take a look at the AE900U yesterday and I found the picture quality to be quite better - specifically I found the SDE to be a non-issue on the Panasonic, where it did bother me on the Z4 (12 feet away from an 84" diagonal screen).

However, I still found the AE900U to be lacking in details in dark areas, just as on the Z4, so perhaps this is just a difference between LCD and DLP projectors. The two people who watched it with me agreed.

My input source is now an Oppo DVD player w/ HDMI input.

On Monday I'm going to try the Optoma H57, which is an out of production DLP projector that is now in this same price range.

Amazingly weird. With my Hitachi TX100 I sit about 12 to 13 feet from a 90" diagonal screen and I have trouble using the screendoor effect to focus. I have to bring up the menu and walk towards the screen to see screendoor. I wear glasses and have good vision.

Amazingly weird. With my Hitachi TX100 I sit about 12 to 13 feet from a 90" diagonal screen and I have trouble using the screendoor effect to focus. I have to bring up the menu and walk towards the screen to see screendoor. I wear glasses and have good vision.
Yes. Must be very good vision. With my Z4 I sit about 10,7 feet from a 96" diagonal screen and I dont see it. However, I can see SDE in same size and distance with Z3, TX100, HS50 and other 1280x720 LCD-projectors excluding AE500/700.

In Projectorcentrals review: "Backing away from the screen, visible pixel structure disappears (resolves to a coherent whole) in video material such as rolling credits and subtitles at about 1.33 times the horizontal screen width. Pixel structure disappears from data graphics at a viewing distance of about 1.5x the screen width. "

This is quite true in my experience.

I still believe some could have have vision clear enough to see it at 1,93X screenwidth but if this is the case, with so perfect eyes it must be unfortunately the case (rather worse) with properly focused Optoma H57.

I think that distance is easy to over or under estimate, what could explain one part of the case.

I'll put in my 2 cents worth:

I have had the Z4 for 2 weeks. The first week I used a brown wall and thought the picture was fantastic. Last week I got a 96" Carada brilliant white screen and now think the picture is much much better. I feed it with a Direct TV HD10-250 HD material with HDMI output at 720p. I also use a Pioneer DVD player with component. I sit about 12 feet away. The projector is mounted on a 6 foot high stereo stand behind my couch and about 18 inches from the side. Some observations:

1. I have tried all of the presets and by far the best picture is obtained using Rone's settings from the tweak thread. I have run through them all many times and always come back to this.

2. If I really look hard I can see very minor SDE on white lettering but for all practical purposes it is not visible.

3. The deal with missing detail in dark scenes is much more a matter of the particular source/movie than the projector, I think. I watched "Without a Trace" a few nights ago. The program had lots of dark/night scenes and the detail was excellent. I have had others (can't remember which ones) and the detail can be missing in very dark scenes. The picture has great contrast and "punch" and for my taste the blacks are just fine. I have had a 40 inch CRT rear protector HD for 3-4 years and even on this some programs show a lack of detail in dark scenes.

4. I watched the DVD "Stewart Little Two" with my grandson and was amazed with the rich colors and fine detail.

5. Even with light leaking into the room, the picture is fine with no visible lack of contrast. Watched football today and I could read in the room but the picture was great.

I can't compare to any other projector but for me the ease of installation (I needed a lot of lens shift), the ease of cleaning, and the 3 year warrantee sold me.

Dick

I'll put in my 2 cents worth:

I have had the Z4 for 2 weeks. The first week I used a brown wall and thought the picture was fantastic. Last week I got a 96" Carada brilliant white screen and now think the picture is much much better. I feed it with a Direct TV HD10-250 HD material with HDMI output at 720p. I also use a Pioneer DVD player with component. I sit about 12 feet away. The projector is mounted on a 6 foot high stereo stand behind my couch and about 18 inches from the side. Some observations:

1. I have tried all of the presets and by far the best picture is obtained using Rone's settings from the tweak thread. I have run through them all many times and always come back to this. Dick

Thanks for your feedback.

ROne's settings are based on the Living preset, using his HDMI connection.

You are saying that these settings also are your best for your component 480p connection as well. Is this correct?

It's also great to hear that you can these settings with some ambient light in your room for daytime viewing.

Shelly

I have only watched a couple of DVDs so far. I did try all of the presets on the DVDs and liked ROne's the best, but I must admit most of my testing was HD via HDMI. But this is the point I was trying to get across: the many variables involved are probably greater than the dfferneces between two differnt brands of projector. Most all of the reviews i have seen are based on one or two DVDs and for some reason people seem to like the dark DVDs for testing.

Will this Z4 be able to display properly with these dimensions? Thanks!

SDE to be a non-issue on the Panasonic, where it did bother me on the Z4 (12 feet away from an 84" diagonal screen).
Another pair of bionic eyes. That's a pretty small screen - I wonder if it's a function of image density.

danlugs,
yes, Throw range is 9.2' - 18.5' for 92" diag.

"92" diagonal screen with 17' throw"
"Will this Z4 be able to display properly with these dimensions? Thanks!"

http://www.projectorcentral.com/Sanyo-PLV-Z4-projection-calculator-pro.htm
Yes. Use the calculator at this website above.

The Panasonic AE900 is the closest to the Z4 (and considered better by many) and with the current rebate it can be had at the price range you are looking at.
Is it just me or is the 900 showing more variability in quality then the Z4? Reports indicate:

• vertical banding on some to different degrees
• video noise again to different degrees
• fan noise more on some then others
• a couple of reports of iris noise when it's clamping down
• some reports of fuzzy images, but that sounds more like eyes then hardware

The Z4 seems to be a bit more consistent, unless I'm missing something.

Is it just me or is the 900 showing more variability in quality then the Z4?

And I've read a couple of places, that it gets hot. Very hot.

Is it just me or is the 900 showing more variability in quality then the Z4? Reports indicate:

• vertical banding on some to different degrees
• video noise again to different degrees
• fan noise more on some then others
• a couple of reports of iris noise when it's clamping down
• some reports of fuzzy images, but that sounds more like eyes then hardware

The Z4 seems to be a bit more consistent, unless I'm missing something.

I was wondering about that as well. If you look at the reviews of the AE700 vs. the reviews of the Z3 on projectorcentral.com, there were 22 out of 262 reviewers who gave the AE700 3 stars or less out of 5 (8.4%). But there was only 1 out of 68 that gave 3 stars or less for the Z3 (1.5%). It does look like there are more problems with the Panasonic projectors. But is this a fair comparison? Were there roughly 4 times as many A700's than Z4's sold worldwide (262 / 68) ? Or were there 10 times as many sold? Does anyone have the total number of units sold worldwide for each projector?

I don't know how accurate it would be to draw conclusions from the few posters with problems. Every machine will have some issues. We mostly hear from the people with the issues and not from the people with no problems, that is normal. I do remember that a few Z4 owners also had issues and returned their units because of iris problems. Without real statistics on the return rate and number of units sold of each unit it is difficult to draw any certain answer about problems with each projector. My guess is that most people are very happy with either choice. For some the extra sharpness of the Z4 and better lens shift is very important, for others it is the lack of SDE and the film like picture on the AE900. It is interesting that once one makes the decision to buy one or the other they often try to justify their choice by degrading the other product. Cognitive Dissonance is an interesting theory in Psychology.

Also, the z4 hasnt been out as long as the 900,
up here in canada, we cant even get the z4 until the end of november unless we order from the states, the 900 however has been out for about a month now, so until more and more people start buying it and sharing their expierences with it. its another reason why "problems dont come up"....yet.

Also, the z4 hasnt been out as long as the 900,
up here in canada, we cant even get the z4 until the end of november unless we order from the states, the 900 however has been out for about a month now, so until more and more people start buying it and sharing their expierences with it. its another reason why "problems dont come up"....yet.
Very true. I keep hearing end November as well. Tick tock.

convegence problems also?
see picture
DrA

So is this something we have to live with? Mine has the same problem. Blue looks off considerably and I can even see it at times from my viewing distance of approximately 14'?

I have just received and mounted my Z4. I am using an LG Hi-Def box with Comcast Cable using a DVI/HDMI adaptor along with a 35' HDMI cable. I am noticing video noise mainly around lettering, I have turned Transient Improvement off & sharpness to -7 but noise is still present? Is this typical of your Z4 experience or could this be a cable issue? I am going to hook up component and see if the noise goes away. TIA.
Larry

So is this something we have to live with? Mine has the same problem. Blue looks off considerably and I can even see it at times from my viewing distance of approximately 14'?

My Blue is off by one pixel or less. I had to get up pretty close to see it though. Covergence is a problem with LCD projectors but usually it's not that bad. I find blue to be far more tolerable than red. Maybe you can do some convergence tests to see how far off it actually is.

I have just received and mounted my Z4. I am using an LG Hi-Def box with Comcast Cable using a DVI/HDMI adaptor along with a 35' HDMI cable. I am noticing video noise mainly around lettering, I have turned Transient Improvement off & sharpness to -7 but noise is still present? Is this typical of your Z4 experience or could this be a cable issue? I am going to hook up component and see if the noise goes away. TIA.
Larry

Seems a bit long to me. Do you have an HDMI DVD player though, that you could also test with? Also I'm assuming that you are mentioning noise on the HiDef signals rather than SD given how bad SD is anyway.

Seems a bit long to me. Do you have an HDMI DVD player though, that you could also test with? Also I'm assuming that you are mentioning noise on the HiDef signals rather than SD given how bad SD is anyway.

Yes, this noise is on all HD channels and is not limited to just 1 or 2. I tested this cable prior to pulling it and ceiling mounting the Z4 and didn't notice it but I didn't do any extended viewing either. I think I will go buy a HDMI dvd player and try it as well.

What can I do convergence tests with? I have the original Avia... not sure if there is another one out.

Honestly I have found HD through cable boxes to be subpar and noisy in general. I don't know if it's my horrible cable company and the compression they use or what but HD is only so-so. But so-so HD is 100 times better than SD. Not that this has anything to do with HD necessarily but when viewing standard definition I will sometimes switch from DVI(cable box) to the coax input on my flat panel LCD television since there's a dual tuner built-in. SD with my LCD doing the scaling is way way better than what I get with the cable box. I have a Motorola something or other HD DVR box.

Here are a couple of shots of photos I took of the Z4 Menu screens to try to illustrate the issue of the Blue Panel being misconverged as I mentioned in an earlier post. I think this is excessive but wanted to query other Z4 owners for their opinion. TIA.
Larry

Here are a couple of shots of photos I took of the Z4 Menu screens to try to illustrate the issue of the Blue Panel being misconverged as I mentioned in an earlier post. I think this is excessive but wanted to query other Z4 owners for their opinion. TIA.
Larry



How big is that image you showing us? It looks huge. You should try the same test with the screen size, and view it from the seating distance you'll be using.

Here are a couple of shots of photos I took of the Z4 Menu screens to try to illustrate the issue of the Blue Panel being misconverged as I mentioned in an earlier post. I think this is excessive but wanted to query other Z4 owners for their opinion. TIA.
Larry

How close do you have to be to notice the blue pixels? It almost looks like the blue pixels are not focussed properly, but it is hard to tell from the pictures. Also, one thing to remember is that blue misconvergence is more forgiving than red is. From the proper seating distance the blue should not be that noticeable.

Kevin

The image size is 106" diagonal. Those pictures were taken from about a 12-24" away from the wall. Seating is about 13-14' and the blue is not noticable except during very bright scenes and usually but not always with lettering or logos. I was just trying to determine if other Z4s are similar.

LVS - a cross hatch pattern would be preferable to identify how much misconvergence you have. Also important is where the convergence issue exists - what does the center line show? If the center is on and the very sides are off, then that could be more optics than panel. How much lens shift is being used? Anyway, based on what I saw it looks like green is shifted left 1 pixel and blue shifted right 1 to 1.5 pixels, but is a little blurry so hard to tell exactly. Not perfect, but not as bad as other LCD pj's have been. If the blue is truely visible at 14' then that is valid cause for a vendor/manufacturer call. Good luck.

Thanks daggerNC. I will put up a cross hatch pattern and see if it is consistent from inside to outside as you suggested. I can see the blue glow at times from my seating distance and may be able to get a picture of it. Thanks again to all those who have helped.

Can anyone confirm if the Z4's mounting screw configuration is the same as for the Z3? I will be purchasing a Chief RPA mount for the Z4 when I order it and want to know if the same plate is used as with the Z3.

I don't know about the Z3 but my Z4 is hanging by my old Z2 mount w/o any problem...same screw placement.

Jay,
I called Chief approximately 3 weeksago and they have this scheduled for a new mount design, in other words, it is different than the one specifically for the Z3 and they had not built a specific mount for the Z4 yet.

I used the RPA-U(niversal) and it works great! Also if you change projectors this same mount will most likely work. I highly recommend the RPA-U as much as these things cost. However, they are well worth it IMHO.

If the universal is what I'm thinking of seeing previously it doesn't look like a very low profile solution. The bracket allows the mount to stay nice and tight to the ceiling.

Harmill, are you using a Chief mount?

My bracket and RPA extend above projector approximately 3 1/2".

Hello,

I am so close to buying a Sanyo Z4, probably early next week.

I heard that it was poor with 480i material , so decided to upgrade my old DVD player to an Arcam dv-27a which outputs 480p via component .
I also will use 720p with the xbox360.

What are peoples experiences with the Sanyo Z4 running movie material at 480p?

thanks, Joe

So my Z1 just blew its lamp after 1055hrs so I'm trying to come up with a logical explanation to convince the wife it's not worth putting $350 into a new lamp that will probably blow again in another 1000hrs or less. Are the extra features on the Z4 (closing lens cover, holes to clean the panels, and better filters?) going to help get to the 2000 hour range? I cleaned by Z1 about every 3 weeks and never saw much dust. I'm assuming Sanyo has made some improvements since the Z1 built a horrible reputation with lamp life.

I don't care about the cost of replacing lamps but of course it's not my opinion that matters when it comes to spending another $2000 on the home theater. I'm also assuming there's no guarantee that the AE900's lamp will last 2000 hours?

I need some words arranged logically in a sentence that will "click" with my wife! Any help would be appreciated!

Using progressive output and component inputs I am finding the Z4 to be great for DVDs. Certainly better than my old Z2. I am increasingly tweaking the Living presets for the best picture for DVD and HDTV ota. Nothing final yet but I keep coming back to my saved settings based on Living. Interesting to me is my wife's unsolicited comments about how much better the picture is on the Z4, especially when I am using some permutation of the Living set up. It is that obvious I guess.

My bracket and RPA extend above projector approximately 3 1/2".
With projector specific bracket it's 1 3/4".

Madpoet, did you get yours yet? review?

I need to buy a new DVD player for use with my new Z4.
Any suggestions out there ??
Is it worth it to get an upconverting model with the Z4's HD capability ?
If I already have the DVI socket taken with the feed from my HD Sattelite TV can I upconvert over component or is there a way to send 2 DVI feeds to the Sanyo?

If anyone has a Z4 in Edmonton, Alberta would love to take a look :)

Took the newest Hitachi model HDPJ52 home from a dealer thinking it would be my new toy to replace the Z1 but it ended up going back as was not impressed at all over my Z1 watching DVDs.

Hello,

I am so close to buying a Sanyo Z4, probably early next week.

I heard that it was poor with 480i material , so decided to upgrade my old DVD player to an Arcam dv-27a which outputs 480p via component .
I also will use 720p with the xbox360.

What are peoples experiences with the Sanyo Z4 running movie material at 480p?

thanks, Joe

Hi Joe

my personal 2¢: I would suggest to upgrade to a DVD-player, which upsamples/converts to 720p. The reason: even with 480p, the Sanyo still needs to upscale the picture to its native resolution and from own experience, a good upscaling player can do better.
For that reason, I have bought myself the OPPO 971H and can just say: Picture quality is amazing. I would rate Oppos upscaling quality much over Sanyo's.
Fortunately, I am not watching a lot of TV (576i, PAL), since with the Sanyo on a 2.4m screen, I can't just stand the poor picture quality delivered by Satellite (even PAY-TV "Premiere" is so much compressed, that I look more at artifacts and poor picture quality than the at the movie :( ). So for watching TV, I guess, I don't have to pay attention, whether the Z4 can do good de-interlacing and upscaling.
In my case, all I needed was a good DVD-Player, which I've got now...

Joerg

Is the Sanyo itself, capable of upscaling? I wasn't aware of that. Which chip does it use?

I need to buy a new DVD player for use with my new Z4.
Any suggestions out there ??
Is it worth it to get an upconverting model with the Z4's HD capability ?
If I already have the DVI socket taken with the feed from my HD Sattelite TV can I upconvert over component or is there a way to send 2 DVI feeds to the Sanyo?

First off the Z4 has no Dvi, it's Hdmi. My recommendation is the s97 upconverting player from Panasonic, it's top notch. Personally I went for the Samsung HD850 because I wanted a backup vertical stretch capable device for 2.35:1 CIH. As for inputting two digital sources there are several ways to skin that cat. The first is an HDMI switch from Gefen or another company. They come in 2x1, 4x1 and maybe more. You could also go with an external scaler like the DVDO VP30 that has multiple hdmi inputs or an AV reciver such as the Denon 3806 like I bought that has 2 hdmi inputs. These last two options cost over 1000 bucks while the gefen 2x1 or similar is a couple hundred.

Hi Dusk,

I have the older Panasonic RP-91 dvd player and one its most annoying quirks is that the time display does not tell you the remaining time, just the elapsed time. Has this been fixed with the RP-97?

Shelly

Hey All

Would any of you lucky Z4 owners be able to post pictures of your installations? I've only seen the marketing and review pictures of the projector and am interested to see how it actually looks in a ceiling mounted application.

Gracias.

Any chance that the blue shift is not a convergence problem but actually chromatic aberration in the lens caused by moderate to extreme lens shift? Anyone done any tests for "color fringing" at different lens shift positions on the Z4 (or AE900)?

I'm trying to determine how much effort I should go thru in trying to mount my (yet to be purchased) projector on-axis.

Well, I've just taken the plunge and joined the Z4 family. I am a former part-time Infocus X1 user. (Bought it for someone else but borrowed it on occasion.) I truly hope that this will be a big step up. Admittedly I have a lot of second thoughts based on the posts here... seems that Z4 owners spend more time tweaking or troubleshooting their projectors than I see for most other projectors. Hopefully that has more to do with the people than with the actual unit.

This will be used for HTPC, DVD, HD cable and maybe some current-gen + next-gen console gaming. I bought an Oppo player to go with it at the same time. Hopefully both will be here sometime late next week. Would definitely love to hear any feedback or comments... this was a rather big expenditure....

Thanks for the reply, as I've just spent loads of money on a new DVD player, I don't want to change that.

Has anyone else experience of the Sanyo Z4 with 480p material?

joe

Thanks for the reply, as I've just spent loads of money on a new DVD player, I don't want to change that.

Has anyone else experience of the Sanyo Z4 with 480p material?

joe

I am using my Z4 with 480p signal from my several year old Sony progressive DVD player, and it looks incredible to me :) Comparison with a 4805 definitely showed a "sharpness" edge when viewing 480p DVD content. This advantage has been stated in reviews over the AE900 and even much higher priced projectors.

I bought an Oppo player to go with it at the same time. Hopefully both will be here sometime late next week. Would definitely love to hear any feedback or comments... this was a rather big expenditure....

Make sure to get the latest firmware on your Oppo if it doesn't come with it. Acegamer can attest. Sounds like you have a nice range of input sources. Not sure if an HDMI switch would meet budget approval but your 3 sources would all potentially utilize that Hdmi in. You can get a 3x1 from Gefen for a good price slightly south of 3 bills. What screen do you have, room specs, audio setup etc.?

Well, I've just taken the plunge and joined the Z4 family. I am a former part-time Infocus X1 user. (Bought it for someone else but borrowed it on occasion.) I truly hope that this will be a big step up. Admittedly I have a lot of second thoughts based on the posts here... seems that Z4 owners spend more time tweaking or troubleshooting their projectors than I see for most other projectors. Hopefully that has more to do with the people than with the actual unit.

This will be used for HTPC, DVD, HD cable and maybe some current-gen + next-gen console gaming. I bought an Oppo player to go with it at the same time. Hopefully both will be here sometime late next week. Would definitely love to hear any feedback or comments... this was a rather big expenditure....

Sphinx,

Check in once you get a chance to watch a DVD on your new Z4. I am also moving from an X1 and the Z4 is my first choice. I will project onto a grey screen and hope to see improved black levels and contrast in addition to more vibrant colors. Your thoughts on your own X1 to Z4 move will be very handy to the many X1 owners who have waited for two generations to upgrade as opposed to one.

Thanks.

Greg

Make sure to get the latest firmware on your Oppo if it doesn't come with it. Acegamer can attest. Sounds like you have a nice range of input sources. Not sure if an HDMI switch would meet budget approval but your 3 sources would all potentially utilize that Hdmi in. You can get a 3x1 from Gefen for a good price slightly south of 3 bills. What screen do you have, room specs, audio setup etc.?

I will need a switch eventually, but initially I am happy to switch cables. I feel that the HDMI switching market hasn't quite settled; I want to see where lower-end AV receivers take HDMI switching over the next 12 months. (If anywhere.)

I'm really "between places" here in the setup. No screen at all. Any advice? Torn between the Optoma Greywolf vs. a full-out Firehawk. Room is fairly large - 22' by 14'. Sound I'm pretty happy with for now, Meridian 568 v.2 with super-old DSP5000s at the corners, however I don't have a center speaker yet and the sub is a Hsu VTF2. Even have some golden oldies like a Nakamichi Dragon and a Phillips DCC player as sources!

I do have other less attractive video sources but I'll send those to the 27" TV. I am only looking for the Z4 to do well on DVD-and-better sources.

Thanks for the reply, as I've just spent loads of money on a new DVD player, I don't want to change that.

Has anyone else experience of the Sanyo Z4 with 480p material?

joe

Sphinx,

Check in once you get a chance to watch a DVD on your new Z4. I am also moving from an X1 and the Z4 is my first choice. I will project onto a grey screen and hope to see improved black levels and contrast in addition to more vibrant colors. Your thoughts on your own X1 to Z4 move will be very handy to the many X1 owners who have waited for two generations to upgrade as opposed to one.

Thanks.

Greg

Will do... my X1 credentials are about 750 hours on a X1 with the 4800 firmware projecting on a white tarp, basically. I have pretty high expectations for the Sanyo :)

No screen at all. Any advice? Torn between the Optoma Greywolf vs. a full-out Firehawk. Room is fairly large - 22' by 14'.

My feeling is that if you are even considering the greywolf then you might as well just grab one given how cheap they are. It's a great stopgap for the time being anyway.

That is what I am leaning toward, I even can pick it up locally so it would be a quick and dirty solution. That said, it would be nice to get something I'm going to keep over the long haul. I have too much junk lying around as is, the victims of previous "upgrades" that happened due to poor planning.

What are other Z4 owners using for screens?

I am using black out cloth diy screen and Z4 looks great on it. My dealer demoed Z4 on a white dalite screen that looked terrific. When I plugged in at home I thought my old diy looked just as good. Now, in a side by side perhaps the daylite would look better, I don't know, but it is too close to call viewing one at a time. I just wish I could see a graywolf at work. Lot of reports indicate it is great with Pany and Zs if doing table mount rather than ceiling.

What are other Z4 owners using for screens?[/QUOTE]


I'm using my Z4 with a FireHawk, 45" x 82" if I remember correctly. It looks terrific. I bought the FireHawk when I got a Z1 several years ago. I splurged on the screen knowing that I would be keeping it and upgrading my projector every 2 years or so. Blacks, brightness and color are excellent. No VB, no misconvergence on my unit.

I'm using a 92" Graywolf and and am very pleased.
This is my first FP setup. I didn't want to spend a huge amount of $ and the price and talk on the Graywolf made it hard to pass up.
There are little things that irritate me about the GW such as the case being white but I can fix that and the screen isn't the easiest to get to roll up but I can handle that also.

I'm really enjoying my Z4!
Batman Begins was the latest viewing.
Feeding it a 480p signal from my older Toshiba SD3750.
The money saved on the screen allowed me to buy a new 50' component cable from Blue Jeans Cable. It cost more than the screen!
Next up a new upconverting DVD player and a HDMI cable to go along with it.

D :D

Hi guys, I'm italian (sorry for my little english) and i have bought a Sanyo plv-z4. Now I need a dvd-player with a good scaler (720p) (scaler inclused in the player) with exit hdmi. I want to spend max 400 euro, so i think to some player like Denon 1920, philips 9000 or I don't know.. I have read very well of oppo, but there are too much matters with the PAL, so it's too dangerous and prefer something with italian assistance.

What's the best dvd-player hdmi under 400euro for Sanyo plv-z4? Thanks for the answer..

I hope in you..

Kr0nK

I'm from Denmark and the Oppo is sold in a PAL edition in Europe under the name BBK. A friend of mine got it and he has had no problems at all since the latest firmware. It's good value for the money.

Regards

I'm from Denmark and the Oppo is sold in a PAL edition in Europe under the name BBK. A friend of mine got it and he has had no problems at all since the latest firmware. It's good value for the money.

Regards

BBk is equal to Oppo so the problems of pal are not resolved. It have a scart but the problem of PAL begin only if you have a cable dvi-hdmi to use 720p that go on only in 60hz (ntsc)

I think the choice is between denon 1920 and sony ns92.

BBk is equal to Oppo so the problems of pal are not resolved. It have a scart but the problem of PAL begin only if you have a cable dvi-hdmi to use 720p that go on only in 60hz (ntsc)

I think the choice is between denon 1920 and sony ns92.

Yeah one needs to wait for PAL fix firmware for oppo for it work with many displays. For some displays there is not problem 50Hz PAL/60Hz NTSC as it should be.

How to check out new Z-4 for defects?
I'm getting ready to order the Z-4 and would like to check it out fairly thoroughly (during the first 4 hours). I think I know how to check all inputs, modes, and common user settings. But how does one check for:
1. Dead/sick pixels
2. Uniformity of projected image (onto the screen)
I do have a light controlled room and a DYI white screen.
Thanks in advance for your ideas!
Mahlon Register
Crossville, TN

I'm torn between getting the pannie ae900 or Sanyo PLV-Z4. My viewing distance will be about 11', so that's why i'm leaning towards the pannie because of it's smooth technologie. On the other hand, i'm having troubles trying to find a good shop for the pannie, and he z4 I can get for a nice price with free shipping. (I'm from Belgium)

I'm hoping to get 100" out of it or a bit more. Would the Z4 still look good from 11' at that size? (It'll be connected to PC)

You'll be happier with the 900.

Kr0nk,i would suggest you to buy panasonic s97 or s77

I am using my Z4 with 480p signal from my several year old Sony progressive DVD player, and it looks incredible to me :) Comparison with a 4805 definitely showed a "sharpness" edge when viewing 480p DVD content. This advantage has been stated in reviews over the AE900 and even much higher priced projectors.

Thanks, sorry I somehow missed your reply and double posted :o :rolleyes: , that's great to hear, in the UK I've also heard from someone using 480p material just fine :)

thanks again

Joe

inFIRNis,

I am very happy with my Z4 with 106" screen sitting at 14' where sde is not noticeable. At 10 0r 11' the SDE is there...it is a matter of whether or how much it bothers you. I tend to not notice it much if I sit closer than usual, but I can see where someone sensitive to sde, or with darn good eyesight might be bothered. I think you simply must see the z4 demoed at 10', consider sitting back another 3-4' (yes, it will make a difference), or strongly consider the Panasonic 900.

inFIRNis,

I am very happy with my Z4 with 106" screen sitting at 14' where sde is not noticeable. At 10 0r 11' the SDE is there...it is a matter of whether or how much it bothers you. I tend to not notice it much if I sit closer than usual, but I can see where someone sensitive to sde, or with darn good eyesight might be bothered. I think you simply must see the z4 demoed at 10', consider sitting back another 3-4' (yes, it will make a difference), or strongly consider the Panasonic 900.


May I take the opportunity on this thread to ask you a not so related question? I am in the proccess of building a dedicated hometheater as we speak. The Sanyo in on my short list, together with the panasonic, and a couple more. I own a 3 year old 65" CRT HD TV, which looks amazing with HD and dvds. How does the picture of one of these projectors compare to a standard 65" crt tv? Let's say compared to a 106" screen like the one you have, given that you have a room where you can control the light?. I understand the projectors limitations with blacks, but besides this, How bright, how saturated are the colors, and how smooth is the picture?

Washed out pictures has always kept me from buying a projector, will the 106" picture from a projector (room light controlled) be as dynamic as the picture of a 65" tv crt display? or will the picture always look softer and the color seem muted?

I have a 4yr old calibrated Tosh 65" hdtv rp. The Z2 I had was used for all hdtv sources because the size and sharpness was more dramatic and enjoyable than the Toshiba, even though the picture was somewhat "washed out" and colors less saturated. With the new Z4 just slightly adjusted from preset Living mode (my favorite) I find myself comparing the picture much more favorably to the Tosh, though crt still has the clear advantage. The black levels and contrast are finally good enough and colors saturated and accurate enough that I find myself commenting "hmm, this is ALMOST as good as my Toshiba." I don't find myself missing the superb blacks and contrast of the crt tubes (I often did with the Z2) all that often...and the Sanyo is still big, sharp, and dramatic. So there is my impression.

"With the new Z4 just slightly adjusted from preset Living mode (my favorite) I find myself comparing the picture much more favorably to the Tosh, though crt still has the clear advantage. The black levels and contrast are finally good enough and colors saturated"


That's good to hear. I visited a dealer last week, and they had a Sony projector selling for about $4,000, I don't remember the model, but it looked so bad that made me think twice about getting projection system.

Many people have the same impression. The problem is that most TVs & RPTVs are not correctly calibrated (may not be true in your case). Most CRT sets have their colors boosted way too much (unnaturally over-saturated) and are run way too bright (needed for viewing in daylight conditions). The key is to look around you (and look outside), you'll see that nature doesn't look that way either (more muted colors and "washed out").

However, LCD PJs will not have the contrast range of a CRT set because they can't produce true black (total lack of light). The current (new) versions of LCD (& DLP) projectors come closer than last years versions, but are still not equal (and probably never will be - in the near future). The advantage they have is a much larger picture (2x the screen area, or more) and give you a much more immersive experience, especially with a good 5.1 (or better) surround sound system, for less money.

NOTE: All PJs (including RPTVs) need to be calibrated (some more than others) before they can produce a really good (true) picture.

Well said, CT... I watch my crt Tosh during the day or for low rez programing. At night with dvds and hdtv sources I much prefer the Z4. Immersive, exciting, dramatic, and several more positive adjectives come to mind. I am not knocking the Toshiba, it was great in it's day, but the projector experience is so much more enjoyable with a hi def source.

[QUOTE=CT_Wiebe]Many people have the same impression. The problem is that most TVs & RPTVs are not correctly calibrated (may not be true in your case).


As you say, many people do not have their displays properly calibrated, but mine was profesionally calibrated, and it produces a great picture. That is why I am so worried about the transition from a 65" RPTV to an LCD projector, the mayor factor driving me to buy a projector is to find an expirience as close to the movie theater as possible, and like everybody else size is one of the main reasons.

Luis you sound much like me agonizing before I jumped from my expensively calibrated Toshiba to the Z2. Like you I wanted the real movie theater experience (who else buys a 65" crt?) and the Z2 delivered and immediately became my main and favorite display for hi def. Yes, I noticed flaws, but they were overwhelmed for me by the big screen theater experience. There are considerably less (but still some) trade offs with today's Sanyo z4and Panasonic 900 pjs. If you make the jump I think you will be glad you did. Won't be perfect, but really great fun.

And it is equal to or better than the picture quality that you see in the movie theater (with a high quality DVD - with a good film to video transfer).

Luis, that's why I put in the disclaimer, you sounded like you may be one of the few to have had your RPTV calibrated.

Hi

a question with the hope on interesting and controversial answers :)

As far as I understood, I can set the Z4 to accept Studio RGB (16-240) and PC RGB (0-256) with the L1/L2 HDMI-option.

I would like to discuss the advantages/disadvantages of these settings, when feeding the Z4 with a Studio RGB signal coming from a DVD-player via HDMI.

What I have done so far is the following:
1.) chosen creative Cinema as a preset
2.) adjusted the Z4 with a test-DVD for brightness and contrast and stored the
appropriate adjustments for L1 and L2 each in a user setting.

Now - what is the result of feeding a signal, that only contains 16-240 grey-steps into an input, that asks for grey-steps 0 - 256?

Theoretically (that was my assumption to start off with) I have a bit more "space" at both ends of the brightness/contrast range for extremely dark or bright scenes.
When set to L1, theoretically the complete range is filled with the signal coming from the player.
When set to L2, the STUDIO RGB from the player can NOT fill the PC RGB range completely. But it gas some "overhead" on both sides, that theoretically can be filled, since DVDs can contain values outside of the STUDIO RGB range.
I could see that, when I was using the BTB / WTW tests (Peter Finzel Test DVD, but I guess, other DVDs have that test, too).
When the Z4 was set to L2 ("bigger range" - PC RGB), I could much better adjust BTB and WTW and that way in a norm a Studio-RGB greyscale (16-240) got a better distinction/definition: 0%,2%,4% and 96%,98%,100% brightness were better distinguishable - in other words, better "resolution" in very dark/very bright scenes on normal DVDs.

The downside of that is - I have still to find out, whether this REALLY is a downside, that's why I write this post and ask for your opinion - that the picture looses a bit of "impressiveness" and "depth".

Let me explain that with an example:
In LOTR II, there is a scene in the first few chapters, where we "fly" to the tower of Saruman. First we see the big "Mines" from the air, then we are inside the tower and see Saruman with that "glass-ball". In the back are very dark walls, left of him we can see light streaming in from a window.
Pay attention to the back walls and the black stone "table" in front of Saruman. In the L1 setting, everything is very black, very "deep", but it lacks a bit of distinction between the different shades of black.
With L2, there is more differentiation between the blacks, but you do not have that impressive "depth" and "perceived darkness" of that picture.
The other scene is the first one, just right before the "Firey Dragon" falls into the "lake". We see the big cave, where the "Dragon" falls out of a hole in the top.
With L1, that cave is pitch-black, I can only see the top rocks in the front of the cave, and more or less guess, what's in the back.
With L2, I can see until the back of the cave, even the farthest rocks are visible. But again, the perceived "impressiveness" of the picture seems better in L1

So: in YOUR OPINION - how do you rate this experience?
Is "L2" the setting, that's technically better - or does it not pay justice to what's on the disc and put "curves" and "bumps" in the Gamma-curve - or put dark greys and bright whites to a position in the greyscale, where they are not supposed to be? In other words: "compress" the picture/greyscale?
Is "L1" a setting, that's more impressive, since it "betrays" the eye (like, if you switch on "loudness" on your HiFi: it sounds "Better", but it is not "real" anymore)?

I hope, I did not bother you with this post and look forward to your answers and thoughts on that.

joerg

Running L1 on a PC-levels based VMR source crushes the blacks which appears to give more contrast but you are actually losing shadow detail.

The reason it appears to give more contrast is the amount of "black" on screen increases due to the crushed lumping together of several shades of black which in turn creates a bigger area of contrast - hence the percieved nature of higher contrast.

If you measured the difference between the two settings (L1/L2) you would find that the contrast ratio is the same when calibrated.

Thanks for the information. :)

Running L1 on a PC-levels based VMR source crushes the blacks which appears to give more contrast but you are actually losing shadow detail.
Hi ROne

- as always a great source of knowledge. You make a valid and good point - but my experiment went in another direction.
I was talking about a Studio-level based source (the DVD-player) and feeding that Studio-Level either to L1 (Studio Level) or L2 (PC-level). In both situations, brightness and contrast of the Z4 are calibrated with a test-disc to ensure proper values, so that I end up with the following settings/situations:

1.) DVD-Player (Studio Level) -> Z4, HDMI @ L1 -> calibrated Bri/Con -> User setting 1

2.) DVD-Player (Studio Level) -> Z4, HDMI @ L2 -> calibrated Bri/Con -> User setting 2

Since running studio-level into the Z4, neither with L1 nor with L2 I run into the danger of "crushing" blacks/whites, since that signal is fed to an input, that either matches it (L1) or provides overhead (L2). By recalibrating the Z4 for each setting, I actually ensure, that there is no clipping and the brightness/contrast range is fully used (that's what I assume, at least ;) )

In "real world", when I compare both settings (toogleing between user settings AND of course also toggleing to the appropriate L1 or L2) I end up with two different perceived "darknesses" and "darkness resolution" and the other effects/questions posted above.

Joerg

Hi ROne

- as always a great source of knowledge. You make a valid and good point - but my experiment went in another direction.
I was talking about a Studio-level based source (the DVD-player) and feeding that Studio-Level either to L1 (Studio Level) or L2 (PC-level). In both situations, brightness and contrast of the Z4 are calibrated with a test-disc to ensure proper values, so that I end up with the following settings/situations:

1.) DVD-Player (Studio Level) -> Z4, HDMI @ L1 -> calibrated Bri/Con -> User setting 1

2.) DVD-Player (Studio Level) -> Z4, HDMI @ L2 -> calibrated Bri/Con -> User setting 2

Since running studio-level into the Z4, neither with L1 nor with L2 I run into the danger of "crushing" blacks/whites, since that signal is fed to an input, that either matches it (L1) or provides overhead (L2). By recalibrating the Z4 for each setting, I actually ensure, that there is no clipping and the brightness/contrast range is fully used (that's what I assume, at least ;) )

In "real world", when I compare both settings (toogleing between user settings AND of course also toggleing to the appropriate L1 or L2) I end up with two different perceived "darknesses" and "darkness resolution" and the other effects/questions posted above.

Joerg

Ahhh.

I'm with you now. One tiny thing I thought the presets didn't store the HDMI setting? Or are you toggling this in addition to changing the preset.

I think this is worthy of more exploration.

Maybe I could simulate it by setting Overlay out of my HTPC ...

Could it be the relative Gammas are different on the HDMI settings?

Ahhh.

I'm with you now. One tiny thing I thought the presets didn't store the HDMI setting? Or are you toggling this in addition to changing the preset.

I think this is worthy of more exploration.

Maybe I could simulate it by setting Overlay out of my HTPC ...

Could it be the relative Gammas are different on the HDMI settings?

Hi ROne

you are right in your observation, the HDMI setting L1/L2 is NOT stored in the presets. I have to toggle it manually every time for comparison.
I don't have the impression, that the Gammas are different, but visually, it is hard to prove - you needed to do a measurement.... I think, due to the fact, that I am using "more bits" for the whole signal (in audio, I would say "I have a bigger dynamic range) and expand the signal to fill those more bits, I do have a better resolution over the whole range, which of course leads to better resolution in the "border zones" of the "dynamic range".

BTW: I had a friend at home yesterday, who is a professional in that business. He thought, the combo Z4/Oppo was very good, and he especially liked the following setting I programmed:
Oppo set to Brightness 0 and Contrast 0, TrueLife off
Z4 set to Creative Cinema and then adjusted the following way:
HDMI-> L2
Contrast and Brigthness adjusted with the Peter Finzel BTB and WTW tests according to his description in the "manual"
Color and Tint adjusted properly with the according "Blue-Filter" tests
Fleshtones adjusted with Color-Management
He said, it really lead to a better resolution on the "low end", in dark scenes. The "L1" setting lost detail in dark scenes (as You, ROne, wrote: is more impressive by crushing borderline blacks)

Sometimes, he noted a bit of grain (which was better with Z4's Sharpness set to -5 and Edge-Enhancement in the Advanced settings set to 0) and was quite impressed of the upscaled quality, that very combo delivered. He had seen better things, of course - in their reference system, the projector and the DVD-Player alone cost 80.000 Euro! - but for a total of about 2000 Euro, he thought I had made a very very good choice of components!

Joerg

Can any of you post some good pics of this projector in action? I would like to see it.