[briandx]

Now that this projector has been on the street for a month or so, I am requesting current owners to briefly answer these following questions:


1) Overall how satisfied are you with your purchase (scale of 1-10)?

2) Have you encountered any problems?

3) How well does their dynamic iris work?

4) Your screen size/brand and your overall impressions of brightness levels?


Thanks for any input you can give me over the next several weeks.

 

[Jones_Rush]

This thread is very encouraging.


It seems very few people were willing to pay so much money for a projector with so few lumens.


Now my hope is that Panasonic will be forced to drastically reduce prices on this model in the following months, allowing people like me who don't want a very big screen, to enjoy a great picture.

 

[izzihd]

Don't equate forum chatter with sales. They may not be related. My dealer tells me the 1000 and the 100 are their top sellers.


I have a 1000, but it's not installed yet - more comments to come. I bought a Da-Lite Da-Mat 75 inch diag screen to go with it.

 

[Wet1]



Quote:
Originally Posted by izzihd /forum/post/0


Don't equate forum chatter with sales.

I totally disagree. Look at the forum time the popular stuff gets here at AVS... RS1, Pearl, AX-100, HD1000U, HD70, etc. These models get a lot of press here because they are outstanding units for their price ranges and sell accordingly. If you don't here a lot of chatter on one model or another, rest assured the sales volume is not very high.

 

[Jones_Rush]

I agree with Wet1. AVS is a good mirror for what goes on at the street.


izzihd, look, you are the only one commenting here who actually bought the AE1000 (and this thread started 3 days ago), and you bought it for a 75" diagonal screen. I think that says it all.

 

[izzihd]

Hi Jones,


Just to be clear I went with the 1000 because of the price and performance combo. I went with the 75 inch screen because my room is small - anything bigger will not fit.

 

[stevetoney]

I ordered one too.. replacing a 3year old 500U on a 96in CARADA screen - throw is 11 ft...


it is not here yet -- not setup -- so I can not respond to the questions above


there is another thread here where others have ordered the 1000 and are happy with their use of the projector


response or not in this thread does not likely - say it all........


it is still early since the 1000 was available


I went with the 1000 because I think the price with rebate is good and the size of my screen and throw will work fine with the projectors capability..


I'll comment further -- when it is running and I also get the XA2 in palce for HDDVD play

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jones_Rush /forum/post/0


I agree with Wet1. AVS is a good mirror for what goes on at the street.


izzihd, look, you are the only one commenting here who actually bought the AE1000 (and this thread started 3 days ago), and you bought it for a 75" diagonal screen. I think that says it all.

 

[stevetoney]

Although I would grunt some -- I think it would be great if Panasonic reduced the price too. but watch the price changes over time for the previous Panny projectors, I would not expect a great reduction that would over come the current rebate program that ends on 4 Feb.


reduction could get the price about the same as the rebate - roughly 3,600 - I expect, but by then I would have been enjoying the projector for several months..

Quote:
Originally Posted by stevetoney /forum/post/0


I ordered one too.. replacing a 3year old 500U on a 96in CARADA screen - throw is 11 ft...


it is not here yet -- not setup -- so I can not respond to the questions above


there is another thread here where others have ordered the 1000 and are happy with their use of the projector


response or not in this thread does not likely - say it all........


it is still early since the 1000 was available


I went with the 1000 because I think the price with rebate is good and the size of my screen and throw will work fine with the projectors capability..


I'll comment further -- when it is running and I also get the XA2 in palce for HDDVD play

 

[James Sponaugle]

I've received my Panny 1000 last week. At the moment, I don't have my screeen installed yet, so I'm just throwing onto a sheet on the wall, at roughly 108" diagonal. In cinema1 mode, it's plenty bright for me. I do have total light control, however. Once I get the screen installed (Da-lite Cinema Vision - 1.3 gain - 106"), I'll try to take some more objective measurements with a light meter. I think it's going to be great for my room. I haven't had time to calibrate yet, but the cinema1 mode looks very good to me, right out of the box.

 

[tapsas]

I've been following the discussions concerning this projector from the sidelines here. I think it is unfortunate many have been based on pre-production unit reviews and prejudices, I think it is great to ask for comment from people who have actually seen it.


I have seen it myself and bought it several weeks ago.

Quote:
1) Overall how satisfied are you with your purchase (scale of 1-10)?

2) Have you encountered any problems?

3) How well does their dynamic iris work?

4) Your screen size/brand and your overall impressions of brightness levels?

1) Let's say 9.5 with that .5 deducted because there is always room for improvement. But very sharp, very good picture, excellent color uniformity. I don't think the usual worries posted about this projector are valid at all. It seems to be a very good competitor for the Mitsubishi (the Mitsu has good points too, like being more quiet - although the PT-AE1000 is a clear improvement over my PT-AE900 as far as noise is concerned, so much that I can finally use full lamp). I got exactly what I expected, a very good step up from the PT-AE900 and no softness. Actually I got more than I expected: finally no bad whitefield uniformity like all my 720p projectors, including the PT-AE900, used to have. The whitefield is bang on perfect.


2) Xbox 360 VGA cable doesn't sync 1080p (Xbox VGA has issues), component 1080p works great with it. I also had some problems with HDMI via iScan HD+, but those seemed to be iScan related HDCP handshaking issues. I found lots of links with people having HDCP issues with iScan HD+, so I guess its not Panasonic related. When I got the cabling sorted out (bypassed the iScan for HDMI/HDCP), everything in my system works great: component for Xbox and HDMI for the rest.


3) Extremely well, very discreet. Panasonic always did this well, although I'm sure there are projectors with better blacks (Optoma? JVC?). No visible steps like I hear there are in Mitsubishi, Panasonic had this advantage over several projectors already in the 720p days. This is actually extremely important for us "foreigners" because of subtitling - Sony's dynamic iris, while really smooth unlike some, often pumps too much because of subtitling, Panasonic is quite discreet even with subtitling.


4) 92" GrayHawk RS with brightness and color extremely good at Cinema 3, far better than PT-AE900 which I had to run in low lamp due to its fan noise. PT-AE1000 hurts my eyes at times, so bright (I'm actually thinking taking it down a notch or two for my eyes' sake). Nobody is forcing you to use the internally filtered modes like Cinema 1 if you can't handle the lost lumens. I used external filters on the PT-AE900 and lost lumens in that case too, with the PT-AE1000 I don't have to because the filterless Cinema 3 is plenty good when it comes to color and contrast. I understand my screen is not that large (it is 0.9 gain so that tells you something though), but at least I'm getting same or more that I got from PT-AE900 for what that's worth.


As far as the JVC, oh, I'm sure it will be even better than the Panasonic. But at its price and size the Panny is a very nice projector. Personally I also like smoothscreen, no softness at all, but also no SDE - but its debateable if its necessary, I know. I just want to tell you - I saw the softness on the PT-AE900 everyone talks about and I see none on the PT-AE1000. Really, no softness.

 

[briandx]

Thanks for the comments so far. Keep them coming, especially from folks who have had at least several weeks of experience after calibrating their units.

 

[chuckken]

I have had this projector for 2 months and I absolutely love it...I pretty much agree with tapsas and his comments about this projector. For my application I honestly don't think I could have gotten a better unit...

The colors were awesome right out of the box, and I had to do very little tweeking. The black levels are great and as tapsas said, it is "not" soft...I have a 700U and a 900U also so I know what smoothscreen normally looks like. and the 1000U is not soft. I got a great deal on mine to boot!...

 

[Rene2]

Tapsas,


Thank you for your report.


About the brightness (item 4), would you mind specify the distance between the projector and the screen? And also lens shift (V and H) if you use any?


This would be useful as reviews for this projector report a significant lumen reduction at max telephoto. If this is the case then I wonder if your setup represents the best condition for this projector.

 

[tapsas]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Rene2 /forum/post/0


About the brightness (item 4), would you mind specify the distance between the projector and the screen? And also lens shift (V and H) if you use any?


This would be useful as reviews for this projector report a significant lumen reduction at max telephoto. If this is the case then I wonder if your setup represents the best condition for this projector.

I believe my case represents at least the brightnest conditions in the sense that the projector is pretty much closest to the screen as possible due to the small size of my room, it is really bright even though I have a less than 1 gain screen. I use very little horizontal shift and maybe half of the available vertical shift. If placing the projector further away and using a larger screen I'm sure higher gain screen is necessary to compensate.


I'm not trying to say this is the brightest projector by any means, just that using the PT-AE900 as a reference point I think the brightness is at least equal to that - and people should remember that even though Cinema 1 and 2, which use the internal filter, are quite low in ANSI lumen terms (not too dark for my use, but I prefer Cinema 3 for the added pop), that is not representative of the entire projector, because the filterless Cinema 3 is at least as bright as the PT-AE900 and has good color out of the box too.


Personally I got a good brightness boost to my image moving up from the older model since I could throw out the external filters and go from low lamp in PT-AE900 to high lamp in PT-AE1000. Quite the difference in "pop" (like I said, bright visuals momentarily hurt my eyes) and color and contrast is still better than what I used to have with my older Panasonic.


My guess is that with Mitsubishi I would have gotten a comparable experience (maybe both trading punches here and there in PQ), with a little quieter projector, but I chose its closest running mate Panasonic due to the discreet dynamic iris as well as the smoothscreen - I can't live with SDE, or even the fear of it, and knew from experience Panasonic had this thing covered for sure.

 

[wfrick]

Projectorreviews.com said the reds looked orange. Anyone notice this? Can calibration fix it?


Warren

 

[Jones_Rush]

With all due respect, the AE1000 does not worth 2.5X the price of the AX100. It is too dim.


The price of the AE1000 will come down to around $2000 by Cedia 2007. This will be a reasonable price for the unit.

 

[izzihd]

Jones -


Other than brightness, what do base your opinions on? Have you compared the 1000 directly with other PJ's?


It's cool to be a skeptic and ask questions, and I want to hear a range of opinions. I'd lust like to know how/if those opinions have more than one dimension.


Thanks.

 

[stevetoney]

When is CEDIA 2007?


You really think the "real street" price on this will drop nearly 50% in less than a year


Any such precedence / history with other Panasonic models other projector models??


While I think some drop in price is expected -- I think such a large drop would really be suprizing.............

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jones_Rush /forum/post/0


With all due respect, the AE1000 does not worth 2.5X the price of the AX100. It is too dim.


The price of the AE1000 will come down to around $2000 by Cedia 2007. This will be a reasonable price for the unit.

 

[KorCar1]



Quote:
Originally Posted by wfrick /forum/post/0


Projectorreviews.com said the reds looked orange. Anyone notice this? Can calibration fix it?


Warren

Projectorreviews.com also had this to say as their bottom line: "The PT-AE1000U is simply the most versatile of the 1080p projectors on the market in terms of ergonomics, both physical, and performance options. Combine that with the lowest price of any 1080p projector to date, and we do have a Hot Product Award winner."

 

[sfb]

I received my AE1000 last night and watched American Idol in OTA HD on a 106 inch Hipower from about 10 feet (throw is 11 feet). To me the picture did not look substantially better than my AE900. It was definitely brighter since my AE900 has about 2300 hours, a bit sharper, and maybe the black level was a little lower. The iris is more quiet when fast-forwarding and I didn't notice it working (but I never had a problem with the AE900 iris either). The fan is a bit more quiet, but I can still hear it during silent scenes (but the PJ is only 2 feet from my ear.)


The biggest improvement to me is the lens shift control. The joystick on the AE900 was difficult to use. Power zoom/focus is also nice. The biggest downside is the price and its massive size.


I would say at this time 1080p is not worth the price premium. I'm definitely glad I didn't get the RS-1 even at the pre-order price. I probably should have waited for the AE1100 and a price less than $3k, but I'll keep it since I think I can live with this PJ for several years.