Hello My name is joseph,

I have a canon LV-7345 Projector That i have been using for hometheater, and to be honest it has worked nicely, I have a dalite high contrast screen that helps with the contrast ratio, the canon specs are 1024 x 768 (xga) and 1800-2100 lumens, its native 4.3 but also has a widescreen mode, I watch hd tv ad it looks preety good, dvd also looks nice, I have compared it to a zanyo z3 and (my brother has one) i decided not to upgrade because to be honest i didn't see any big gains, I like the fact that i can watch movies even with the lights on, blacks are o.k., guess the screens helps, should i upgrade my projector?

the canon has a new bulb and has been recently cleaned by canon, to remove dust from its pannels, i got the projector for about $500 3 years ago..

Wait, soon the 1080p projectors will be affordable. 2-3k.

If you want to see a real improvement get a DLP. They have much better native contrast. Look at the Mitsubishi HD1000U. For further improved blacks and contrast look at the HC3000U. The HD1000U is about $899 and the HC3000U under $1,500. Both great choices.

BTW, when you compared your unit to your brother's Z3 how well was it calibrated and what was the source material? Either way, DLP offers a bigger improvement. An even bigger improvement in image quality is CRT, but they aren't for everyone.

I guess i should wait till prices of 1080p drop to about $2000.00

The time to have upgraded if you wanted to was before you replaced the bulb and had it serviced IMO. I don’t know what that cost but putting that money along with what you could have sold the canon for could have put you into something like the HD1000U

But now that you have it good to go again I would hold off and wait for the newer stuff to advance to the next step and then maybe buy one generation back. I have a XGA projector and like you I’m still pretty happy with what I’m viewing. At least not unhappy enough to make the plunge yet.

I do think like mentioned above take a good look at DLP’s next time around