Sanyo PLV-Z60 Projector - Physical Tour

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Art Feierman

We start facing the front of the charcoal gray PLV-Z60 home theater projector. The recessed, manual zoom lens is offset to the right. Focus and zoom rings are located around the lens. When the projector is powered down, a motorized door closes to keep dust off, and to protect the lens. From a placement standpoint, the 2:1 zoom lens (for a 100 inch, 16:9 aspect ratio screen), can be placed as close as 9.8 feet and as far back as 20 feet, as measured from the front of the lens. Note: Lens shift range can be found in our lens section on the General Performance page. There is an infra-red sensor in the front, to the right of the lens. Below the front are two screw thread adjustable feet.

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Moving to the top of the PLV-Z60 (and from now on, we are looking from the back of the projector), you will find the projector's control panel, located toward the right side. A large silver Power button is furthest to the right, and front. (Press once to power up, twice to power down). The rest of the control panel consists of the usual diamond shaped array of four arrow keys for navigating the menu system, with an "OK" (enter) button in the center of them. To the left of the Up arrow, is the Menu button, and to the right, the Input button (source select). And that, folks is it, except for three indicator lights above the up arrow, from left to right: Lamp Replace, Warning, and Power.

On the left side, are the dials for vertical and horizontal lens shift, and a lock to hold those adjustments firmly in place.

The PLV-Z60 is designed to allow shelf mounting, and to accomplish that, the air intake is in the back while the hot air exhaust is located on the right side.

That takes us, finally, to the input panel on the back. The PLV-Z60 is very nicely endowed for a 720p projector, sporting two HDMI inputs (both 1.3, with Deep Color support), an analog computer input (standard HD15), and the usual S-Video (DIN connector) and composite video (RCA jack). In addition there are two component video inputs (each with the usual color coded R,G,B RCA type connectors). In addition there is the usual RS-232 service port, which can support controlling the Z60 from a computer or room control system. Lastly, you'll find a power cord receptacle (Sanyo uses the "mickey mouse" three round connector), the master power switch, and a Kensington Lock slot. There are two different air filter access doors in the back.

Finally, the lamp door, to change out a lamp, is located on the bottom. This will require a projector that is using a ceiling mount, to be unmounted, to change the lamp. That's a definite nuisance, but is the case on many, but probably less than half of home theater projectors.

That concludes our "physical tour" of the PLV-Z60. Time to get to the heart of things - image quality.