Product Description

If you’re looking for a home theater projector, you want one that is full high definition (1080p), easy to install and still affordable. SANYO is one of the largest LCD projector manufactures in the world. For many years it’s been a leader in projector technology with professional grade equipment. Now SANYO brings this high level of technical expertise to home theater. The SANYO PLV-1080HD offers many advanced features at an affordable price. First you are getting the best video quality with full 1080p (1920 x 1080) resolution which is the highest available from any source material. The picture quality from HDTV, Blu Ray movies, HD video games, HD camcorder videos and still digital photos will look stunning on a TRULY big screen. With two state-of-the-art HDMI (ver 1.3b/Deep Color) source inputs and two component inputs you have the flexibility to connect all the HD sources available today.

Product Details

• Brand: Sanyo
• Model: PLV-1080HD
• Released on: 2008-11-01
• Dimensions: 5.70" h x 17.70" w x 13.60" l, 16.50 pounds

Features

• Full 1920 x 1080 HD resolution with TopazReal™ technology
• 10,000:1 contrast ratio for rich colors and deep blacks
• Four HD inputs including two HDMI version 1.3b and 2 component
• Easy DIY installation due to advanced lens shifting.
• Virtually silent fan design with low fan noise of 21 dB

From the Manufacturer
If you're looking for a home theater projector, you want one that is full high definition (1080p), easy to install and still affordable. Sanyo is one of the largest LCD projector manufacturers in the world. For many years it has been a leader in projector technology with professional grade equipment.  Now Sanyo brings this high level of technical expertise to home theater.

The Sanyo PLV-1080HD offers many advanced features at an affordable price. First you are getting the best video quality with full 1080p (1920 x 1080) resolution which is the highest available from any source material. The picture quality from HDTV, Blu Ray movies, HD video games, HD camcorder videos and still digital photos will look stunning on a truly big screen. With two state-of-the-art HDMI (version 1.3b/Deep Color) source inputs and two component inputs you have the flexibility to connect all the HD sources available today. 

For home theater projectors contrast is king. When this projector fills your screen with 1200 lumens of light, you also get a 10,000:1 contrast ratio which provides the rich colors and deep blacks of a great picture. Sanyo uses their exclusive TopazReal technology which includes a 3D color management system that addresses changes in color phase and color level to obtain a perfect color reproduction. Sanyo further enhances color and focus with inclusion of a 14-bit digital signal processor and a real-focus HD lens system. 

The PLV-1080HD is designed to be easily installed by the home owner. Advanced lens shifting allows you to move the image throw of the lens up/down or right/left for maximum flexibility when positioning this projector in your room. Combined with the 2x zoom, automatic iris control and 5 preset calibrations, the PLV-1080HD will produce a stunning, high quality 100-inch image from a little over nine feet away.  And it's quiet too, producing as little as 23db of fan noise so you hear the movie, not the projector.

Customer Reviews

Outstanding Performance & Value
We had been holding off buying a home theater projector since technology was improving and prices were coming down. I revisited the market this fall, doing some extensive research both online and at the local stores. I came across this Sanyo 1080p projector that seemed promising in its initial reviews -- and certainly was an attractive price point at $1,599. We have a large living room (29' by 16') that we intended to maintain as a multi-purpose living room/home theater. The room has one wall that has floor to ceiling glass with vertical blinds, which allows us to darken the room during daylight but certainly not to pure theater levels. For our situation our local retailers were promoting projectors that would cost $5,000 -- to be coupled with sound system, screen and installation that would push the cost to $10,000 or more. After researching the options, we bit the bullet and ordered this Sanyo 1080p projector from Amazon -- figuring it was cheap enough now that if it turned out to be a mistake we would just live with it for a few years until technology improved and prices came down further. In preparation for its arrival, we had our local cable company upgrade our service to digital which gave us access to their HD programming through their set-top box.

I am delighted to report that we could not be more pleased or impressed with this purchase. We had it up and working within 10 minutes of its arrival, using our white wall for our initial screen. I have to tell you that it looked so good that we decided to make the wall our permanent screen. The up-down and left-right lens shifting allowed us to place the projector about anywhere we wanted -- so my son and I designed a permanent installation with a wall mount near the ceiling. We added a $250 Sony "home theater in a box" for sound, concealed the wires, rearranged the living room furniture and have a complete home theater system for less than $2,000.

And the picture quality? Oustanding! We've set the picture size to the maximum for our room, which provides a picture that is over 6' tall with a 13' diagonal picture size. David Letterman is larger than life, and football games allow you to see the blades of grass and faces in the stands even on wide shots. With the 1080p HD, the "screen door" pixels are very sharp and clear at the wall but are virtually invisible when more than 3' away. The picture is as bright and clear as anything we saw in the local retailer home theater demo rooms -- maybe even better. Ambient light is no more of a problem than it would be with any TV in the room, and we find that we are using this as our primary TV. The setup and operating instructions were clear, setup was simple, the on-screen menus are easy to use, we don't hear the fan, and for our purposes, we can't think of a single thing we would change. If we have a concern, it's that we'll use it so much we'll have to buy that replacement lamp a lot sooner than we would like (3,000 hours they estimate) -- but we're beginning to consider that $300 cost a bargain compared to the entertainment value we're getting.

Bright and colorful
This is my first projector and so there is not much I can compare it with.

First the pros:

a) Great value for money. This is the first sub $2k 1080p projector I found.
b) Simple to setup. It has two HDMI and two component inputs. I just plugged the power in hooked up my HD tuner and DVD player in and I was up and running in a couple of minutes.
c) The image is bright, crisp and colorful. On my first attempt I projected the image onto a dark wall and yet I could see a lot of detail and colors.
d) The zoom combined with the vertical and horizontal shifts mean that you can pretty much install it wherever you want and control the size of the image.
e) The lens cover is motorized and shuts off when you power off the device, keeping out unwanted dust.

Cons:

1) The projector is a bit bulky.

Very good projector
I got mine today and hooked it up. Easy to setup, 5 stars there. The menu on the remote is a bit funky, not much though. It just needs a couple extra minutes to adjust to it. After that, it's easy sailing.

Picture Quality, contrast etc?
I don't have a TV in the room so I really have no point of reference other than what I understand to be a good picture based on the couple of plasmas and lcd's I have upstairs. The picture is decent. I projected it onto a light yellow wall and the image was as good as my LCD. Projected onto a screen, this is a very good image. It wasn't cristal clear because I was running Oceans 12 at 480P, still very clear. 5 stars there.

I have 20 pot lights downstairs, with half of them on (see my uploaded pic with Halo 3 http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B001GCUIK8/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_all) the picture is still clear - not sure what the fuss is about poor image quality there. To me, the movie was easy to take in with half the lights on. With the lights dimmed, it's that much more beautiful.

It's bigger than I thought it would be. There's no way this will blend into a ceiling, won't happen. Get used to it. I'm not bothered by it because, how many people stare at your ceiling anway? 3 stars.

I didn't get a co-ax plug-in. Bummer. Still, there's ample s-video, component and hdmi to keep me occupied. 5 stars.

This projector runs hot. I spent a few hours installing it into the ceiling and I can tell it needs to be well ventilated. However, the fan is not loud enough to be noticeably. 4 stars

The problem.
This thing has no key stone (sp?) correction - at least that is what the tech support guy said it was. The projector must sit horizontal. If it is not, the projected image follows the angle so you end up with a projected angle that doesn't fit square into the frame of the projector screen. That bothered me because I could see black edges on the image before the black images on the projector frame.

Tech support didn't know how to fix it. What I had to do, which worked really well, was to set the projector plumb horizontal and use the lenses shift to move the image down and across to fit the screen. I played with the zoom (contrast was already spot on) until the image fit perfectly into the projector frame. That fiddling took about 2 hours to be honest. I couldn't drop the project lower down from the ceiling beccause of space issues - that would have worked as well. 3 stars.

All in all?
If I had 2 grand, I'd buy it again without even thinking about it. It's that good. The issues I ran into had work-arounds - except one which turned out to be really nasty. X-box 360 has a black level setting. The extended black option setting caused the component 1 input to cast nasty green lines. And it just would not go away. I finally figured out that it was the black level setting. After reverting to normal setting, the image came back.

At this point, I wouldn't drop money on a 720 projector, it's a bad investment giving the rate at which technology is moving. I wouldn't spend more money than 2 grand on a projector either because I don't edit movies for living and I don't work in a movie studio so I don't need a ferarri projector - not many of us do.

This projector works for me because I can run my computer through it and work on a 120 inch screen without fuzzy fonts, I can watch movies in all their splendor when I am bored, and the rest of the time, Xbox puts it to plenty of use.