Projector Reviews

Another first glance observation that I made was that I didn't find the image particularly bright. Turning off all ambient light helped greatly, but if you don't have complete light control in your viewing room, this may not be the best projector for your needs, and you'll also need to be careful with screen sizing.

During my evaluation, Universal released The Bourne Ultimatum on HD DVD, which has a very nice looking VC-1 presentation. Viewing the movie on the Z2000 was a pleasant experience, although not as bright as I was used to. Shadow detail was excellent, although the black levels weren't as inky black as I am accustomed to with my reference JVC RS1 projector. But at nearly 1/3 the cost, the Sanyo performed very well.

I next popped in the Blu-ray Disc of Disney's Cars, which has an excellent AVC encode with lots of bright colors that pop off the screen. The Sanyo was able to reproduce the colors in this film accurately, even though the color points on the display are slightly outside the HD color space gamut. Not once did I think the colors looked "off" by any means.

In general, the Sanyo produces a very pleasing picture, as long as your room is in complete darkness. One thing I noticed was if there was any ambient light in the room at all, the picture loses its punch. But this projector has adequate light output, and as long as you exercise some light control that shouldn't be an issue for you. My reference JVC RS1 projector is much brighter, and I can have some ambient light in the room while viewing and I still consider the image quite watchable, but by comparison, the Sanyo falls short in this area.

Another area where the Sanyo doesn't quite live up to the JVC is in its black levels. Although they are both rated at 15,000:1 contrast ratio, the Sanyo's blacks were more of a dark gray in comparison to the JVC, even though the Sanyo has the benefit of a dynamic iris. But the Z2000 does have something that the JVC lacks; the ability to avoid projecting any light into the viewing room from the projector itself. The light spill is non-existent from the Sanyo, and the same can't be said for the JVC, which by comparison is a sieve.

Nits To Pick
While I would generally sum up my experience with the Z2000 as positive, I do have some minor issues with the display. First, when displaying a full field white pattern (80 IRE), I noticed that the projector didn't display a uniform white field. There was a slight green tinge towards the upper half of the screen and a slight red tinge towards the bottom. I didn't notice this in any viewing material, but it's still something we don't like to see.

Another quibble that I have was with the auto iris. There were times when I could see it making adjustments on the screen, most notably when changing channels on a TiVo Series 3 HD DVR. The channel guide information from TiVo would noticeably change in brightness when a dark image on the screen turned to bright. The white lettering in the guide information would turn a dirty white color if the background were dark versus a bright white if the background were brighter. This was also apparent in the ending credits of movies, which looked rather dull and lackluster on the screen.

Finally, there were times when I could actually hear the auto iris working, but this was mostly while fast forwarding through commercials on the TiVo and the room was silent, but nonetheless, you could hear it working. In actual movie watching, I only heard this one time in a particularly dark scene with no ambient noise coming from the film. For this reason, I would recommend the default setting for the iris of "normal" and "-30" in the advanced settings. When set to fast, it was much too loud for my taste. I guess this would be the only negative of having such a quiet projector; it's so quiet you can hear the iris working!

Conclusion
Going into this review I wasn't sure what type of image to expect from a "budget" 1080p projector. While the image produced is quite acceptable, there are a few shortcomings that I found. Most notable was light output that wasn't quite as bright as I was used to. The trade off though is that the Z2000 is much quieter and the light spill into the room was non-existent. The documentation left a little to be desired, the build quality isn't as robust as more expensive PJs, and the black levels could have been darker.

But for $2,699 (after $300 mail-in rebate), you can't expect perfection. The price/value proposition that this projector offers is excellent and if you are in the market for a 1080p projector in this price range, the Sanyo PLV-Z2000 should be near the top of your audition list.

Highs
• Good Value
• Easy placement with H/V Lens shift and 2:1 zoom lens
• Whisper Quiet
• No Light Spill into room

Lows
• Not very bright
• Poor Documentation (Mounting screw size unavailable)
• Black levels could be improved
• Cosmetic's of exterior case not fitting snugly together