ViewSonic PJ551D 2300 Lumen DLP XGA Projector

This is my first projector, although I'd tried 2 others that I borrowed from church and work. This is also my first experience with HiDef. At first, I connected it with the yellow composite conection, and the picture needed to be toned down, reducing the brightness of the white that was blown out with the factory setting and increasing the sharpness. The picture was just "ok", but of course huge. S Video gave similar results. Hooking it up to a laptop to watch a DVD though, was INCREDIBLE! Using the vga connection @ 1024x768 looked absolutely amazing. Then to top it all off, using a home made breakout cable following instructions online with rca jacks, cat 5 cable and a 3$ radio shack part, I connected the FIOS set top box using component to vga, and was impressed even more with 1080i. I can't go back to standard def now. Hi Def on the wall, 8' across has incredible WOW effect. Painted wall is excellent, or a screen if you don't have 8' of clear wall space. The amount of detail revealed was unexpected. Absolutely amazing. Grass, clothing texture, jewelry details, dust and smudges on prop surfaces, were suddenly revealed. A lit room seems good, until all the lights are turned out, and then serious enjoyment ensues. Totally amazed. Others have been impressed with it's contrast and brightness compared to older, more expensive projectors they'd seen before. I got it for just $499 on Amazon, and it had a rebate from viewsonic for a free bulb. Awesome deal. The only con I know of after a month, is it requires a relatively long "throw." It's practically a 2:3 ratio. If you want an 8' screen, you have to be 12' away. The zoom funtion merely allows for fine tuning of the size, to perfectly match the edge of your target once you get close to its dimensions. This has been the biggest consideration as I choose where to mount it based on my room's size. Other projectors have had shorter throw distances. I accept this con in consideration of the price to performance ratio. I've never noticed the fan noise while viewing. Shut down time is fast. My remote works very responsively. My intended use was for family movie nights, so I don't miss a built in speaker, as it would be inferior anyway. As for presentation quality, I can easily read web pages, emails, and documents. Pdf's are illegible if the screen's set to "read one page at a time." I'm not sure yet how much bigger I can go beyond 8' and still get a good picture, since I don't have a big enough surface to project against yet.

I bought this projector instead other, because in the web page they said that it comes with a replacement lamp, but when I receive it they say that this promotion was over. But in the web they show it until now. ???

I use it to wach movies, Fine image, but Noise.

This projector is an excellent value. I spent a month trying to decide whether to buy a 32" LCD or a projector. I made my decision and am very happy. For the same price of a 32" LCD i have a 90" screen in my living room that's clear and bright.
With all the lights on in my apartment the image is still bright and very visible.
The only problem is direct sunlight makes is hard to see.
Other than that this is one of my favorite purchases...

Bought this for great price and free replacement bulb, but had several frustrating days trying to get it up and running on a Vista Computer (it worked fine right out of the box with the XPs in the house).

I had to do a restore on the Vista computer because the projector has an installation disk that installs "drivers" even though you don't really need them and that was the issue in the whole process -those "drivers" did all sorts of mucking about the Vista computer's system. Don't bother to use the installation CD on Vista except to read the manual (which isn't included in a paper format).

Once it was working it has a nice clear picture and seems as if it will do the job. But, getting to this point was a tad frustrating...not for the easily frightened or easily frustrated computer user. (My own computer user ranking is "almost nerd" which means I know exactly enough to be dangerous.)

We are using the projector in our theater room and it works great. We have a screen about 4' X 8' and the picture is clear and very enjoyable. It is not HD, but the quality is plenty good for us.