Unfortunately, my 2 week old Sharp 10000 is going in for repair. Two nights ago I fired it up and noticed faint, very thin horizontal stripes from the top of the screen to the bottom. The stripes are about 3 inches apart, only a mm or so wide, numbering 14 or 15 on the screen (92" diagonal, 16x9 screen). The horizontal banding is visible on all inputs, the underlying picture otherwise seems fine. I checked and re-checked all the cables, unplugged and "rebooted" the 10000 to no avail. The clincher that this is a Sharp 10000 problem and not something else in the chain is that I still have my old Sharp 9000. I re-installed the 9000, and everything looked fine - no horizontal banding.
The good news is Sharp support was excellent. Within 5 minutes of my phone call they had faxed me a case #, shipping labels and authorization for repair. The 10000 is now on its way to Illinois. I called Sharp again and made my case for a new exchange unit, but they balked. Anyone else had any experience with Sharp USA repair and know what I might expect next?
I am disappointed, but having the Sharp 9000 on hand has lessened the loss a bit. Interestingly, I put a new bulb in the 9000, watched the new Harry Potter DVD with the wife and kids last nite and the presentation was excellent, hardly missed the 10000 at all.
Just a couple of comments on the Sharp 9000 with a new bulb. Much much brighter, still subjectively less than the 10000 though. The machine was set up with Video Essentials and the color and tint needed only minor tweaking with color temp at -2 and standard gamma. I think I ended up with color at -2 and tint +2 for DVD. The slight yellowish tint that the old bulb had developed over time was gone. There was no flicker, contrast and blacks were good (although not as good as the 10000). After having the 10000 for several weeks, however, the biggest thing I noted between the 9000 and 10000 is a smoother and less "digital" picture on the 10000. The 10000 is really excellent in this regard. I think this is due to better deinterlacing/scaling, and less dithering artifact. The picture is just a bit more relaxed on the 10000. For you rainbow lovers/haters out there, I think there is really no difference in the two projectors in this regard. By the way, my wife and kids had no clue that they were watching the old projector.
Anyway, wish me luck in my dealings with Sharp.
Corey J
