Panasonic PT-AE8000 Remote Control
Panasonic remotes seem to look a lot a like from year to year, cosmetically, but Panasonic provides more basic features in some years, less in others. The PT-AE8000's remote is smaller but, by no means tiny. It's approximately 6 inches long, has good weight and is pretty well balanced. Nice sized buttons, plenty of space. Not a whole lot of individual controls (less than 20 buttons - some remotes have 30+). Mostly that means you don't have one touch access to features like Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness, and instead go through the menus.
That's hardly a issue. Myself, I like good menus, and find having two dozen direct controls on a remote, to be more of a distraction, making it harder to find what I'm looking for on the remote.
In the case of the PT-AE8000 remote, yes it has those basic features, and a few more. (BTW, note that the power button is once for on, twice for off - as is typical).
Also of note, there's the Lens button at the top right. That lets you set focus and zoom. Below it, is the Memory Load button which lets you switch back and forth between aspect ratios for that wide screen, if you went that route.
Remotes should at minimum have a Source Button (direct sources, is nice though), one to select different Picture and User modes, Power (of course), and full navigation controls (Menu, arrows, Enter, etc.) Everything else, I figure, normally is fine on menus. In this Panasonic's case, on the remote (2nd row) are both Picture Mode (select Cinema, Dynamic...), and Picture Adjust. Picture Adjust is Panasonic's alternative to a lot of buttons. Each time you hit the up or down arrows, it scrolls you though each of those adjustments, such as Brightness...right and left arrow keys let you adjust each.
The third row has Viera Link (which talks to other Panasonic products), and Panasonic's very cool Waveform Generator (discussed on the first page).
Also the 3D button is on that third row.
Below that are the usual navigation controls, and further down a Sub-Menu button. The bottom row, has only Input Select (sources), and a programmable function key!
The PT-AE8000 remote control is nicely backlit with a yellowish-white light. It's neither dim, nor excessively bright.
It's small, good weight, well balanced. The backlight comes on with the touch of any button.
Bottom line: The Panasonic remote is a very good one. Good range, good backlight, key buttons, a couple of cool features, and small enough to be well balanced as you use it. And nothing, really, not to like! By my take a very nice remote with no real flaws!
Panasonic PT-AE8000 Lens Throw
As previously noted, the PT-AE8000 has a manual 2:1 zoom lens. That makes the placement range almost as good as it gets.
For a 100 inch diagonal 16:9 screen the front of the PT-AE8000 can be as close as 9.9 feet, or as far back as 19.8 feet.
The thing is, some folks are buying 2.35:1 or 2.40:1 (anamorphic or "Cinemascope") shaped screens. Those result in different distances, and also effectively reduce the placement range of the projector, significantly (by about 50%).
That's because to use such a screen for both wide screen content, and 16:9, you have to change the zoom setting. That costs about half of the range. Basically you lose the closest distance, i.e., you can't place the projector as far back.
Keep that in mind, as it may well mean for some, that you can't get the projector far enough back to place on a back wall (without using an extremely large screen for the room).
But, also remember, there isn't another projector anywhere near the price with a Lens Memory feature and this type of performance.
Because of all the different specs, in the next section we provide a link to a P
PT-AE8000 Lens Shift
The PT-AE8000 has manual lens shift. The joystick control (been around in Panasonic HT projectors for about a decade), is hidden to the right of the lens by an easy snap off door. The PT-AE8000's range on lens shift is rather excellent. Not the most we see, but definitely better than most projectors equipped with lens shift.
The projector can be placed above the top of the screen, below the bottom of the screen, and anywhere in between.
What is interesting, is that there are three sets of numbers relating to lens shift, instead of one. That's because you have three possible choices when viewing:
Viewing 16:9 content on an anamorphic screen,
Viewing 2.35 (or 2.4) to 1 content on an anamorphic screen.
As a result we're not going to attempt to list all the distances and anamorphic as we usually do, instead here's a link to a Panasonic chart that shows all the options in terms of distance to screen size, and lens shift:
