Great value - but you'll need higher quality sources

Whew - was my first reaction of relief after I took delivery of my brand new Panasonic PT-AX200U projector in November. It came shipped in plenty of protective packaging and I was excited to finally see it come in. The projector comes with a special locking kit to lock it to your projector mount (sold separately).

After a good month and a half of letting the bulb burn in and trying all kinds of different configurations, I felt comfortable sharing my experiences.

I spent the better part of 3 years researching all kinds of projectors, debating the merits between some of the newer LCDs and plasmas before taking the plunge.

In a nutshell, the Panasonic is a very good projector, but good enough that it'll expose flaws in your video sources if you're not running High Definition.

I paired the PT-AX200U with a 110 inch Carada high gain (+1.30) screen and a Denon DVD player and popped in Disney's The Incredibles.

It literally took me about 2 minutes to install the projector. It was one of the easiest installs I've ever had to do with audio/video equipment.

Once connected, it only took a about two minutes to adjust the screen size, focus the image, and center the image on the projector screen. Ridiculously easy to use.

Fan noise is there, but not all that noticeable except for the quietest of movie scenes.

Great remote with backlight - very easy to use and all buttons are clearly identified with their respective functions.

Image was just right on the high gain screen, but I could imagine that on a regular gain screen that the image might be a tad on the dark side.

However, the Incredibles showed enough Screen Door Effect (SDE) that at first blush, seemed to be indicative of a poor quality projector.

My brother brought over his Playstation 3 later and we ran a Blu-Ray disc as well as the PS3 game Motorstorm through the Panasonic and the resulting difference in image quality was VERY noticeable with no SDE.

I then proceeded to run through my library of DVDs just to see if I could detect a noticeable difference over an extended period, Star Wars 1 through 5, Aliens vs. Predator, Lord of the Rings, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Matrix, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and 007's Die Another Day, and the resulting SDE was noticeable to me, although my wife swore that she couldn't tell.

The resulting SDE bothered me enough to head out the following weekend to Best Buy and buy the cheapest upconverting DVD player that I could find. I bought a $40 RCA upconverting DVD player and ran the HDMI cables over to it. The resulting image quality, although not quite Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, was good enough that I didn't have to upgrade my entire existing DVD library.

I've since had quite a few friends over to check out the movie setup and everyone has come away from the setup just in awe of having such a huge screen to view movies from and so far, have not been able to detect any of the relatively minor shortcomings identified here.

Even when connecting up a Playstation 2 and turning on the video game setting, the resulting screen quality was more than adequate and elicited no negative comments.

The only downside is that because of the rather large size of the projector, the resulting heat coming from the projector is noticeable. In a cold movie room during the winter, this may not be a big deal, but I can imagine in a full movie room during the summer that this might be slightly more of an issue for viewers.

Also, low light scenes i.e. Lord of the Rings during nighttime scenes, was somewhat difficult for the projector. It didn't do poorly, but it wasn't the best that I've seen in comparison to say a Pioneer Kuro plasma or one of the higher end Sony VPLVW60s.

However, the price on the Panasonic is a fraction of what you'd pay for either the Kuro or the Sony VPLVW60s.

All in all, Panasonic balanced out the benefits of the projector with one of the best costs that I've seen for a projector with this good of an image quality and ease of configuration.

Great job Panasonic!