Home Theater: Panasonic PT-AR100U Projector

It's about time!  At long last, a Panasonic PT-AR100U projector (click for specifications) has arrived for review. I'll start working with it tomorrow, should be fun. The PT-AR100U is a light canon of a projector. For those who don't recall anything about this projector, here's a quick refresher course: It's really bright.  Panasonic says the PT-AR100U has 2800 lumens under the hood.  That's about as bright as it gets for home theater projectors until you get into some 3 chip DLP projectors starting in the 20,000 range. Contrast is claimed at 50,000 to 1.  That's a very healthy number  For example 50,000:1 is also the contrast claimed by the BenQ W7000 projector, whose black level performance is Very good. Overall it has a very respectable feature set, but we'll save that for the review.  I'll just say that a  2:1 manual zoom lens with plenty of lens shift, offers exceptional placement flexibility.  Translated:  It will almost certainly "work" in your space. There's CFI for smooth motion Perhaps the most striking thing, though, is one feature it lacks, which is 3D. Panasonic built this as a 2D projector with the horsepower to tackle family rooms and living rooms. I'll do a "first look" review blog, probably on 3/6.  -art