Amazing Big Screen on a Budget!

Personal Experience with:
All I can say is wow!

Like many folks, I was sitting on the fence for quite some time reading reviews and waiting for the prices to come down. I finally narrowed down my search to either an Infocus X1/4805 or BenQ 6100/6200. Cheapest I could find an X1 in Canada was for a refurb at $950. 4805's are still approx. $1685 new. However, a large Canadian retailer had a massive boxing day sale on the BenQ 6100 for $800 (final price after a $200 mail-in rebate). I still haven't received my rebate check (only been 6 weeks) but even at $1000, it's still quite a bit cheaper than the Infocus machines.

All in all, I've been very satisfied with this purchase. I never believed I'd be able to build a decent home theater in under $2000 CAD for the audio/video. This projector made my dream possible. I have the projector ceiling mounted (DIY mount I made for under $20) about 12' from a a flat yellowish wall (amazingly enough, wall colour has no effect on the projected image colours... I imagine a proper screen will give added brightness and clarity to the image and allow more flexibility with ambient light and this will likely be my next upgrade project...) Audio is provided by a Yamaha RX-V540 receiver with a 6.1 set-up and I have a Panasonic F65 Progressive Scan DVD player and X-Box as video sources. I also have an older Sony Hi-Fi VCR that I have used for old VHS movies and use it as the tuner for regular cable TV through the projector but when you take an already crappy video source on a 27" TV and magnify it to 80" on a projector, the results are less than stellar!

Initially I was using the projector with a run of 25' S-Video cable. I was very happy with the image quality projecting on a flat yellowish wall that I was sceptical that upgrading to a component/vga cable could make the image better. Regardless, I took a chance and got my hands on a component/vga cable thus allowing the use of the progressive scan cababilities on my DVD player and I was just floored by the increased level of sharpness! The huge difference was with sub-titled movies (Huge fan of Bollywood and Asian movies) and end credits that were readable but a little blurry now are super sharp and black levels just fantastic. In fact, the only time I might see rainbows was during end credits and now having upgraded the cabling, I don't see them anymore.

My X-Box is still connected using S-Video and I'm considering upgrading it's cable as well. Halo 2, Project Gotham 2 and other titles are just amazing when playing on a 80" screen!

I'm sure the more expensive projectors out there would add increased levels of brightness and image quality but I could never justify the expense of such units after seeing the quality of the BenQ 6100. I highly recommend this unit to anyone sitting on the fence.

JB


Problems Encountered:
1) Nearly had a heart-attack the first time I mounted the projector upside down from the ceiling when after 10 minutes the picture died and control panel lights were flashing. Thoughts of pre-mature bulb failure flashed through my mind and having to go through the hassle of a waranty replacement and having to explain this to my wife made for a bad feeling. Luckily, it was my fault for not ensuring the powercable was pushed in all the way (help desk training came through... all all the cables plugged in snugly?)! Make sure you push that cable in tight!

2) Another problem I encountered was the project would go into a greyscale composite mode (ie. no colour). Again, it turns out I had a faulty S-Video cable (real cheap one) that once upgraded the colours came back.

3) Finally, I once had the projector boot up and produce odd colour schemes. I was obvious right from boot up when the normally white BenQ logo on a blue background came up as white on aqua/green background. I simply shut down the projector, let it cool down and rebooted and all has been normal again.

Technical Specs and "What's in the Box".
Resolution is 800x600 (SVGA) and Lumens is rated at 1500 but I suspect actual is probably closer to 750-800 lumens in economic mode (plenty bright in a light controlled environment).

Connection ports to this projector is 1 composite in, 1 S-Video in and 1 VGA port. In order to have component video in, you need a cable that has a vga connector at one end and the 3 component plugs at the other. Sadly, this is the 1 cable that doesn't come in the box.

Cables that do come in the box are 1 vga cable (vga connector at both ends), 1 composite cable, and 1 S-Video Cable. All cable are only 3ft in length.

Finally, you get 1 credit card sized flat remote.