Projector Central Panasonic PT-AE2000U Review is Up!

Wow! What a surprise!

It is a glowing review, and more or less states that short of the RS1 this is the best choice. If you have the money, though, the RS1 (and presumably the coming RS2) is better.

Weep no more my child.AE2000 Rules

Wrong post/link my friend.

Spending twice the price of the Panny to get the RS1 (or RS2) does not get you twice the performance......I've seen the RS1 in action myself and in my opinion, the AE2000 looks just as good.....or better in some cases. Panasonic has just proven to this whole industry just what kind of performance we can now expect for less than $3,000. Bravo!

ProjectorCentral did not mention at which lamp mode they took the lumen measurements, normal or eco ???

Weep no more? Please, it does rule for the 3,000 and under pjs, I will give you that. But let's not go crazy. P.P.C. as predicted did the best cheerleader "review" to date...

And of course failed to mention a few key features (as usual)...

Just like your response.

Anyways, Alan seems to like it too.

We all like it. I am just not ready to claim it is better than pjs over 3,000 to 4,000 at this time. Not until I can do my own side by side comparison (soon)...

I have to chime in and say that it is probably the king of budget PJs...there are some of us who crawl around in this forum that don't blink an eye at the difference of the RS1 vs ae2K price...=X

Congradulations go to Panasonic.

However PC needs to dump their crappy dimwit Stewart Grayhawk.

"Cinema 1 looks its very best at a screen size of 100" to 106" when displayed on our Stewart Grayhawk, with a gain of 0.95."

A Da-Lite High Power 2.8 screen would allow for a much brighter and larger image with virtually no side effects (if the projector is mounted correctly for optimum gain).

What that tells me is that Evan hasn't replaced his screen in a long time. Especially for "smaller" (lol) screens around 100 inches the grayhawk used to be very very popular with digital projectors because it could bring down the black levels when they had poor contrast and black level performance.

Now, with the way digital projectors have advanced, more gain is probably more beneficial as the black level is better and brightness is more a determining factor.

At least thats my guess! haha

who doesn't hate on evan?

The one thing that has me scratching my head about the PC review is their criticisms of the AE2000's SD DVD performance. Last year's AE1000 was widely considered exceptionally good on SD DVDs--so one would think the AE2000 would also excel in this regard. Hmmm.

Oh, and for those who respond, "who cares about SD DVDs anyway," the answer is plenty of people do, given the sheer quantity of film content that is only available on SD DVDs.

I dont think he was really hating on the SD quality with the Panny. It was more that the Sanyo truly blew him away in that regard and the panny just wasn't quite as good.

In my opinion, wasting precious bulb hours watching lots of SD on a 1080p projector is pure lunacy............that's what your bedroom TV is for. (Kinda like buying a Corvette so that you can drive 5 minutes to go to the mall)

I have to totally disagree PSB.We watch 3 or 4 sdvd yesterday on the ae2000 and they look great.In fact my super bit 5th Element and Starwars look great.I use a HD-A1 for scaling.Could not be happier.
Also joerod I emailed Evan and he is going to update the sony vw-60 review with the convergence adjustment.He said his sony came so close to perfect that he never used it in fear of messing it up,He said he will add more info to each review.

You obviously haven't seen a properly de-interlaced and upscaled SD-DVD signal. It is not HD, but it is very sharp and detailed non-the-less. It's not a bad idea to watch standard def DVD's with the right upscaling and de-interlacing before the projector. Not all titles are on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray yet...so why wait?

No one is perfect. Hate is a pretty strong word too. Never forget that when anyone starts to be too truthful, someone is going to be offended. Here it could be those who sell competing models and especially the blind brand loyalists.
Evan is showing great leadership by sticking to the facts and publishing his clear expert observations. He is being slow to judge until all the contestants are allowed to perform.
I don't think we could ask for anything more except for perhaps an updated white screen

HD content isn't limited to just Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, there are TONS of HD programming right now from off-air TV and satellite (DirecTV's HD channel content is soon to go into triple-digits). I spend dozens of hours every week watching HD content on satellite. Sure, I can see watching a good SD movie once in a while on a 1080p projector.......but c'mon, compared to HD, it's still doesn't come close (no matter what is upscaling it)....esp. when it's blown up on a 110" screen!

What I meant is, people are calling him Panny Projector Central. I didn't mean hate in that extreme negative way either, I meant it in the way that people have too much negative feedback about him... I like reading his reviews.

-ELmO

What you watch on your projector is your choice. But for me, I would much rather watch a SD movie on my 60" family room TV than on my AE2000 and 110" screen .......picture quality is better on the 60" for SD and I'm also saving my pj bulb for the really good stuff. I have a Toshiba XA2 HD-DVD player (and a Blu-Ray Panasonic) and a Onkyo 875 receiver that also upscales everything into 1080p.......yeah, a nicely mastered SD disc looks decent on the Panny, but I would be crazy to spend hours and hours watching inferior SD on it when there are tons of HD programming on DirecTV, off-air TV, and Blu-ray/HD-DVD discs. All of us here didn't wait years and years to finally get affordable excellent 1080p projectors just to watch SD stuff.

I agree the major reason for buying a AE2000 is to watch HD. I would think that using the Toshiba XA2 going into the AE2000 would provide more than a decent picture. The issue reported by PC was using SD disks upscailed on both Blu-Ray and HD players. Evan does not state which players he is using. It just seems strange that this should happen. I wonder how many disks he tested the projectors with?

Interesting the mention that black level is only bested by the RS1. The RS1 would have been my 1st choice, but I am afraid of getting a bad one (MC and BC). Other areas the Panny seems to possible even beat the RS1 (sharpness, colours...). I was leaning towards the VW60 because of the convergence capability. So far misconvergence doesn't seem to be too much of a problem with the AE2000. Hopefully this stays true once more people get one.

I want to go with the 12' wide high power screen, the AE2000 looks to be a good choice for that as well. Lots of lumen for sports with some lights on.

[quote=reio-ta;12112555]Wow! That's like the first thing that we both agree on.

I've seen upscaling on a Denon using a Realta chipset and was wowed. Even on a PC using FFDshow and Dscaler, you'll get more than satisfactory results. While not up to the quality of HD discs, it's still pretty good, even on a big PJ screen. In some ways SD is better than HD discs are now. There's more macroblocking and artifacts compared to SD encoded DVDs, but that's how it was for several years with DVD vs VHS, although the DVD was better, the VHS had slightly better quality with less artifacts and noise with first generation DVDS, but later that changed. I'm sure Blu-ray and HD-DVD will both go through the same evolution too, when that happens, then I'll buy a player from whichever ends up being the winner.

EDIT

Hey I agree with you PSB if you could see what the ae2000 does with my hd-a1 you would change your mind I bet.I have yet to see a dvd better than my super bit 5th element sdvd or hddvd.The color and smoothness is the best.Not atificial like some hddvd such as King kong.If all sdvd were done as good as the 5th element.Their would be no need for hddvd IMHO.But I do like them.By the way I have some hddvd that are not as good as some of the top sddvds. Go figure

[quote=buddahead;12113076]

Wow. This is the first time I've seen people that say HD sucks compared to SD. What are you guys smoking? A Superbit version better than Blu-Ray? C'mon! The latest Blu-Ray versions of the Fifth Element and Spiderman 3 blows away ANYTHING I've seen on regular DVD's (superbit or otherwise). I have a Toshiba XA2 HD-DVD, so I know what a good upscaled SD movie looks like.......in no way shape or form does it even come close to anything I've seen in recent Blu-ray or HD-DVD releases.......esp. on my Panny. If some of you are in so much love with your SD stuff, why buy a 1080p projector in the first place?........save thousands and buy a 720p projector. In the end, though, everybody is entitled to their opinions.........if you think SD is better, go right ahead enjoy yourself. I'm having a grand 'ol time watching the very best HD has to offer on my Panny.

I never said hddvd sucks,Far from it,I love my hddvd,But I have sdvds that are so good scaled properly that I would not buy them on hddvd,Their just is not that much difference to waste money on having 2 copies of a movie.My guess is you never seen a sdvd done right,I have a 720p fp also and the 1080p makes sdvds look better.

I have over 400 SD DVD's in my collection...so quit with this nonsense that I've never seen a SD-DVD "done right." BTW, a 1080p pj will not make a SD movie "better" over a 720p unit.....that's nonsense........if anything it's only going to reveal more flaws from the source. My previous Optoma H79 produced better images from SD material than my Sony Pearl.