Sharp XV-Z30000 Special Features

XV-Z30000 Lamp Life

he Sharp XV-Z30000’s lamp life is rated 5,000 hours in low power mode.  That’s about as good as it gets with home theater projectors.

The Z30000, however is only rated a standard 2000 hours at full power. That’s what we have called average until recently, but now the average at full power is a bit higher. Bottom line on lamp life: If you can run the Z30000 mostly in low power (eco-mode), you will have a significantly quieter projector and a very low cost of operation. At full power, though, all of the competition claims to get at least the same 2000 hour lamp life, and some claim twice the hours, which means those others will have lower long term costs.

Sharp 2:1 Zoom Lens

Sharp XV-Z30000 Lens Memory

Like several other projectors, including Panasonic and JVC, this Sharp XV-Z30000 can save your lens settings.  In fact when you do a memory save with the Z30000, it saves lens settings, color mode, aspect ratio and much more.

As a result, I have the Sharp XV-Z30000 Memory 1 set for viewing 2.35:1 movie on my 2.35:1 aspect ratio Stewart screen, filling 124″ diagonal.  When I select Memory 1, the projector switches to Movie 1 mode with my settings.  When I switch to Memory 2 (yes you can assign names to the memories), I’ve set that up for 16:9, Stage color mode, and filling the screen top to bottom (about 98″ diagonal).  In other words, Memory 1 for Movie viewing, Memory 2 for max brightness for sports viewing. Nice!