How delicate is a 6500UB?

So my cat got a little enthusiastic in playing with a toy and swept my projector off the bottom shelf of a coffee table onto a carpeted floor, about 8 inches. When I set it up the only thing I noticed is a slight amount of keystoning, the top of the screen is about two inches wider than the bottom on a 100 inch screen, throw is about 10-12 feet with the projector sitting below the bottom of the screen.

I'm wondering if this is normal and I just now noticed it since I was trying to readjust everthing, or if some widget in the light engine or lens shift assembly got messed up. The lamp survived and the convergence is still accurate to the pixel. It doesn't seem this is dramatically more abuse than it would take in normal shipping; do I need to take precautions so it never happens again? Are projectors fixable or am I out the cost of a new one if it is damaged?

Well, I had the shop look at it and they declared it to be unfixable. The optical assembly is bad and a replacement is unobtanium. So I'm now in the market for another projector.

What current 3 LCD projectors have equivalent specs as far as black levels (75,000-1), lens shift, and doing 1080P/24 correctly (no interpolation or 3/2 pulldown)? (I have zero interest in 3D). Seems all the Epson UB models are long discontinued and hard to find even used. Or has DLP progressed in the past 8 years (I saw it in 2005 and absolutely hated the rainbows) to merit another look also?

The technology seems interesting as I'm underwhelmed with current projector technology, but some of the specs look horrid, looking around I find specs at 4000-1 contrast for the Viewsonic compared to the 75000-1 on the Epson UB series. I thought DLP technology produced superior blacks compared to LCD. Or am I missing something? And most important are these going to be sanely priced compared to metal halide type projectors?

As a side note, after my old projector was in the shop they broke it further. Originally the screen was crooked which they couldn't fix because the optical assembly was bad but now there's also pink band on top.

My sister didn't mind the crooked screen but I considered it unnacceptable which is why I brought it into the first place. It's not like they could do anything, but do I have grounds to complain anyway. I did mistakenly say "yes" when the guy dropping it off asked if the pink banding was the problem, I thought he meant the convergence was 1 pixel off which is they way it might have been, not that there was a 200 pixel or so wide band at the top
Edited by Mdcastleman - 6/15/12 at 7:23pm

I actually had a local shop look at it.

I've decided to take a pass at waiting for LED + Laser because I can't get a clear answer how much it will cost or if there will still be rainbows and try to buy used Epson 3-LCD unit of eBay. Were enough improvements made to the 8500UB and 8700UB to make it worthwhile to get one of those as opposed to another 6500UB?