Panasonic AE900 launched

[brendon]

I see that in the last few days the Panasonic AE700 replacement the AE900 has been unvield with a 5500 to 1 versus 2000-1 contrast ratio being the main improvement.
Details on Panasonic's US site and projectorcentral.com
Pricing looks to be reasonable but it will be interesting to see how much it will sell for downunder as it seems we are paying the same street price in AUD as you guys are in USD for the AE700(very unusual as normally we pay through the nose compared to the US).
Brendon

[George Bellefontaine]

The new Panny with 5000:1 contrast ( like the Sony HS51).LCD has come a long way, baby. My first PJ was a Sharp and had screendoor galore and piss poor contrast, and a greyscale that couldn't be adjusted and it sucked royally. The next lcd I owned was the Sony VPL400 and I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, even though it only had a contrast ratio of about 100 or 200:1. The good thing was you could adjust the greyscale. Today I own the Yamaha LPX 510 and it almost holds it own against my all time favorite, and still used NEC HT1000 dlp. But the difference between that first old Sharp lcd and the Yamha today is just beyond description.

I saw a demo of the Panny 700 and it had some issues, for me anyway. I would like to see the 900 just to see if those issues I saw still remain.