Ok I posted on here ealier about my BenQ bulb popping... had a lil time today to take her down of the ceiling and get a look at it..... the way it went down initially is I wend down there with my Girl and her lil boy to watch a movie, hit the power, fired my recievers up and realized the PJ didnt come on... so I hit the power again, the fan came on, then it made a crackling sound "kinda like the sound of an electrical short; ie sounds like wadding some cellophane plastic in your hand" the sound is very quiet but there none the less.... well today i had a chacne and I took it off the ceiling, removed the bulb assembly to have a looksy inside, the bulb is not imploded and does not have any kind of dark scorching spots like I expected to see, however I have never seen a burned out PJ bulb before.... well I stuck it back in, reassembled it and thought I would try it one more time... same thing, fan fires up, it put out a small amount of light as they initially do during the warmup, then the crackling sound started and it shut down... then the LAMP light came on and she shut back down........ is the crackling sound normal or has anyone encountered this before??? just worried I might have some kind of problem...we had a power outtage about a week ago, but I have double line protection... a cheap outlet sized surge protector in the cieling outlet, and that outlet is powered through an APC battery backup/line conditioner... even when in the PJ is in operation if the power goes out I still have 40+ minutes of uninterupted run time with the APC's so I feel the equipment is well protected against a power surge..... thanks in advace

bump

my 7800 bulb went out early (735 hours), but I didn't have any crackling noise. I heard the color wheel start up as usual though. I heard the projector try to start up, but got error lights. The error lights were not the ones documented in the manual. I sent the projector in for repair and they cleaned it and said the problem was a burned out lamp. I bought a replacement lamp and it's worked fine since. The old lamp had no sign that it had burned out (at least to my eyes).

I also have a PE7800 and am wondering if you guys think its worth buying a bulb or buying a new PJ with real NTSC resolution like 1080p.

im gonna go ahead and buy another bulb.... after #2 burns out I will pull the trigger on a new PJ.... im still very happy with the PQ i have now with the 7800

My bulb burned out about a year ago. I replaced the bulb and decided that when the next one burns out whether or not to buy a 1080P projector. 720P projectors at the time did not offer enough incremental improvement to warrant the additional expense (a year ago remember). I hope a 1080P with HDMI 1.3a and deep color will be $2000 or so when the next lamp goes - then I will upgrade.

im pretty much thinkin the same thing as you Gjohnson, I figure in about 1.5 - 2 years a 1080p should be within that price range or less, and even if they are not a really good quality 720p will be easily found