I've watched over 30 hours of content so far on the HD700. While the blacks are disappointing, most of my viewing has been with the projector effortlessly filling my 128" diagonal Firehawk G3, a high contrast gray screen surface. The Panasonic PT-AE4000, by comparison, simply doesn't have the horsepower - the lumens to fill my screen in its "best" mode.
Thanks to the HC gray properties, that lowers the black levels a bit. It does make a difference. I really have managed to watch a lot of movies, and while noting the blacks, they rarely spoiled my enjoyment of the movie.
Some folks will find the Cinetron HD700 to be an ideal choice if they have less than ideal room conditions. If your "theater room" has light walls, or some moderately low levels of ambient light that can't be eliminated, that pretty much eliminates the bulk of the advantage of a projector like the Epson's superior blacks.
For example, the HD700 should pair very nicely with a gray screen in a family room environment, where pitch blackness, and dark walls rarely exist. All those "best" mode lumens should come in handy, and if the rooms ambient lighting comes from the sides, the HC gray screen helps there too. So, less wash out of the image, and blacker blacks. Bottom Line: Overall Picture Quality: The HD700 does look good. If you aren't overly concerned about the blacks, or have an environment where it matters less, and you pair it with good HC gray screen, the HD700 looks good. It has that wow factor on those bright and normal scenes, but suffers a little in terms of blacks. The very bottom line on the overall image quality and color of the Cinetron HD700: Very pleasing to watch. Natural skin tones, extremely good black levels and shadow detail. Excellent on just about everything, but the darker scenes, where it still performs very well.
True, there are projectors including the Epson and the BenQ W6000 that can muster up a fair amount of additional lumens when needed (1300+), but for sports and digital science and travel content, you get the combination of good brightness, and better color.
Like with my JVC DLA-RS20 projector, if you want a big screen and a more than a little ambient light on when watching sports, you will likely wish for more lumens, (I'll be pulling down my JVC for this weekend for Superbowl, putting up the on loan Epson 9500UB, for the roughly extra 50% more brightness).
But! If you have a smaller screen, say 100, or 110 inch diagonal, the HD700 should do a really nice job with the same ambient light.
Bottom Line: I watched a couple of NFL playoff games - HDTV - and some other sports, reducing the projected image to around 105 inches for the NFL games since I had a few friends over. Plenty of brightness handling a fair amount of ambient light. End of conversation.
Note please: the HD700 isn't fancy, no creative frame interpolation which smooths out motion, and I personally like for sports. I don't consider the lack of this relatively new feature to be a real issue, but, a number of the HD700's competitors offer CFI.
The HD700 is, if you care much about frame interpolation, a rather excellent projector for sports viewing. The image just pops! I like this projector for sports, and for HDTV in general. On travelogue type HDTV content, it is spectacular.
