Sharp XV-Z3000 Projector Review - General Performance-4

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Art Feierman

XV-Z3000 Lamp Life and Replacement

Sharp is a little vague here, stating that the lamp is rated up to 3000 hours, in eco mode, but no rating for full power. We'll assume full power to be 2000 hours, as most projectors with 3000 hour eco modes, are rated 2000 hours in full.

To replace the lamp, the lamp cover is located underneath, very near the mounting screws for a ceiling mount. While, with the right mount it is conceivable that one could be able to replace the lamp without unmounting the projector, but I wouldn't count on it.

XV-Z3000 Projector Screen Recommendations

The XV-Z3000 doesn't need a high contrast gray screen. I found it looked great on my 1.4 gain (measured 1.3) Carada Brilliant White fixed screen. Other than specific room requirements, and larger screens. , I would suggest anywhere from a 1.0 to 1.4 gain white surface. Higher gain, if you have a real side ambient light problem, in which case you'll probably be looking at a high contrast screen as well.

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But the bottom line, is that from low cost screens like the motorized Elite Cinetension (white surface) (I've been reviewing it at the same time, or the Carada, as well as similar projector screens from Da-lite, and others. For the slightly richer crowd, consider the Stewart Studiotek 130, with 1.3 gain, and perhaps the best rep in the screen industry.

As a side note, I was also pleased with the performance of the XV-Z3000 on my Firehawk 128" in Movie 2, with the Iris set to High Brightness.

XV-Z3000 Measurements and Calibration

Movie 1 and Movie 2 default to color temperature settings of 6500K, while the other modes default to 7500. In most cases, I found the measurements to be slightly higher than those numbers. Here goes:


100IRE	6975
80IRE	6553
50IRE	6440
30IRE	6510

I played with settings and ended up with Red set to +3, which brought down the color temperature slightly, but I can't say that the results were any more pleasing. Switching the Iris to High Brightness insignificantly affected color temperature: