PT-AX200 owners with defective LCD panel/polarizer

This is blue polarizer burn. What's the most number of hours straight you have used this PJ?

This is going to be of no comfort for you, but what you are experiencing, is NOT unique to Panasonic. This is a problem that can happen to ANY LCD projector, regardless of make/model. You might as well indict the entire industry.

If you were to take the time to search this and other forums, or do a Google search for "Burned Projector Polarizers", you'll find complaints from owners of projectors made by Infocus, Sony, NEC and quite a few others.

I have no idea about your setup, environment or maintenance, but I've seen and replaced quite a few polarizers for this reason. Many of the projectors were either run for many hours at a time, as in sports bars or they were in training rooms where no one had bothered to turn them off and they ran for days or they were neglected in that they were never cleaned and that resulted in inadequate cooling in the optics.

I'm not saying that this is the case with you, just what I've seen before.

You have more hours than most get out of a fp in that short time.I had a ax200 for 2 years and only had 600 hours.FP are made to use once in a while for movies not watching judge judy and american Idol reruns 10 hours a day every day.Just get a new one.They are dirt cheap now days.

I just got my projector back from repair. AX200 was a bit over year old - still under warranty. 3000+ hours. Both blue polarizers were replaced (in/out) and problem was fixed (for free)

I have to disagree -- only 600 hrs in 2 years is well below expected usage for this PJ. I have around 2400 hrs on my AX200 in 24 months with no problems or polarizer burn.

I'll agree with BMAG. There are loads of people using FP as their everyday viewing source. Mine is over 5000 hours and I've just started with the blue polarizer being burnt.

Very acceptable usage time before that happened IMO.

For the OP, this is standard wear issue for LCD PJ's.

I have around 5000 hours on mine and it is having the problem as well. I need help on where to buy the sevice manual and parts replacements....any suggestions out there?

I wish I can get to the point that $700-$1500 is dirt cheap to me.. If you dont mind me asking... what do you do?

I have the yellowish spot in the middle of the screen also. Any idea on how to replace the burned out polarizers without sending it to Panasonic?

Someone posted a tutorial w/ pics on replacing the blue polarizers (I think it was in the "official owners" thread) but I can't seem to find it now. But yes, if you do some searching there's a step by step guide. It might've been an AX100 thread as the two units are pretty much identical...

Nah.. that was pretty lacking and yes, it was the ax100 thread.

I have ~2,500 hours on my AX200 and it is now displaying the dreaded vertical bars where 4:3 material would appear -- very noticeable during light-colored scenes.

What are people doing about this? Mine is out of warranty and I just purchased a $300 back-up bulb a few months ago.

My AX200U is showing some rather annoying convergence issues.
Does anyone know if this is in any way adjustable? the red panel is right at least 3 pixels, and up 2. Rather annoying.

oops.. had this and the "issues to date" thread up, and I meant to post in there.

You can try projecting a completely white 16:9 image for a few (6-8) hours. If that doesn't help you'd probably need to replace the optical block.