Sanyo PLV-Z2000 Home Theater Projector Review – General Performance-3

PLV-Z2000 User Memory Settings

PLV-Z2000 Projector - Remote Control

Sanyo offers up a very nicely laid out remote. It is medium, in terms of size, with the major controls and navigation in the top third, and tons of smaller buttons below. From the top:

Power is top left (press once for on, twice for off). Across from it, is the backlight button. Hit it, and all the buttons light up red. The red light is reasonably bright, although it’s not as good a choice of color for making out the text on the buttons, as some others. Still, the backlight scheme overall, is better than most. (I hate dim backlights.)

Between those two buttons, and slightly below, is a Reset button. I’m not a fan of Reset buttons being in the “middle of the action”, but I never managed to hit it accidently, so, maybe it’s just fine.

Next comes the Menu button on the left, and complementary Back button to the right. Immediately below are the four arrow keys for navigation, in a circular layout, with the enter (labeled “OK”) in the center.

Below the arrow keys to the left, is Screen, for toggling through the aspect ratio choices, and opposite it, the Info button, which brings up all the info I mentioned in the Menu section above..

That takes us to the array of small buttons. Moving down the remote on the far left are separate buttons for each source. That, by the way, is a nice way to do it.

To the right of the first source button are two image mode buttons. The first lets you toggle through the seven presets, and the second, through the seven user savable modes.

Below those two, a series of buttons allowing direct access to control brightness, contrast, sharpness, color temp, color saturation, and also a button marked Image Adjust, which lets you toggle through each of those adjustment areas.

Four more buttons, and we’re done. Down toward the bottom, one for toggling between lamp modes (bright, low, A1, A2 dynamic modes), a Logo button for bringing up a user savable logo, a Freeze frame, and lastly, a No Show button for muting the screen.

Overall, a very good remote, better than the majority. It also had good range. By comparison, I found it to be a much better remote than that from the competing Optoma HD80 / HD8000.

PLV-Z2000 Lens Throw and Lens Shift

The Sanyo PLV-Z2000 has a 2:1 zoom lens which is typical for home theater projectors using LCD technology.

In order o fill a 100″ diagonal 16:9 screen, the front of the projector needs to be between 9 feet 10 inches, and 20 feet.

The Sanyo has excellent vertical and horizontal lens shift range, although the manual doesn’t provide specifics other than a poorly labeled chart. It looks like the vertical lens shift is +/- 100%, which means that the bottom of the screen image can be one half screen height above the top of the lens (or if ceiling mounting the lens can be 1/2 screen height above the top of the screen surface). For that same 100″ diagonal 16:9 screen, I estimate that the projector (measured from the center of the lens), can be placed approximately 24.5 inches below the screen surface, or the same amount above the top of the screen surface, or anyhere, in between. Those who are ceiling mounting and have higher ceilings, will appreciate the huge vertical lens shift, as it will mean you can keep the projector up higher, so that it doesn’t have to hang down on as long a pole, as almost any other projector would require.

As always, use of horizontal lens shift impacts the range of vertical lens shift, but since few people need more than a couple of inches of horizontal shift, it shouldn’t be an issue.

Both the lamp and filter can be changed without removing the projector from a ceiling mount (assuming you are using one.) Access to both are on the back of the PLV-Z2000.