Yes, an anamorphic lens costs a fortune - hopefully they'll drastically drop one day! It all depends whether you're willing to spend this sort of money to get a proper anamorphic picture. The alternative is to use a 2.35:1 screen without the lens, but this requires a few adjustments to the zoom and vertical shift when swapping between ratios. This is the route I decided to take, and although a bit of a pain, I do find mysef enjoying 2.35:1 and 2.4:1 movies much much more, whereas before they had no impact and they looked a lot smaller on a 16:9 screen. You could just get a mega huge 16:9 screen, but then you may find your 16:9 stuff a little too big - a bit like an Imax theatre if you've ever visited one.
There are plenty of projectors in that price point, and all top notch too. Most manufacturers are in the process of replacing their current models over the next couple of months, but I can tell you a few differences between what we've witnessed here.
We've been mainly concentrating on Mitsubishi for a while, as they had decent warranty periods, are dead quiet, great black levels, and up to 5,000 hours from the lamp. The HC6500 and HC7000 (about £1900 and £2700) are both stunning projectors for their price points, the main difference between the two being black level. We wanted an alternative so we tried out Epson and JVC. The Epson TW5800 wasn't quite as quiet as the Mitsi's, but had an added advantage of the 5 year warranty covering the lamp too - very unusual, and handy! It wasn't quite as sharp as the HC7000, but had a slightly more 3D looking image - not much, but a little. Black level was clsoe to the Mitsi too, but as the mitsi was £800 cheaper, there wasn't enough to justify the jump up to the 5800 other than the 5 year warranty that covered the lamp too. We wanted a digital projector, so we tried the JVC HD750, as this seemed to be much quieter than DLP and without RBE. Great black levels, obviously better than the Epson and Mitsi, but then you'd expect that for close on twice the price. Again, was almost as sharp as the HC7000, which was good. The only drawback was it's unnatural skin tones and OTT colours. Most of this can be sorted in the set up, but even then skin tones were not quite as good as the previously mentioned LCD's. While the JVC had the black level licked, one area couldn't match the cheaper LCD's - and that's the 3D look. The interview scene with Arthur Lee Allen in the factory in Zodiac just didn't have the same depth - technically it was a great picture, but looked a little flat. The HD350 looks almost as good as the HD750, but again, like Mitsi's cheaper projector, it doesn't have the black level of it's bigger brother, and loses some of the extra set up options of it too.
If this '3D' look isn't important to the user, the JVC's are one of the best looking projectors out there due to it's black level. But those that want a more 3D looking picture should look at the Epson 5800 and Mitsi HC7000. All of the above mentioned projectors are soon to be replaced, so only use the above as a guideline. The Pana 3000 is also to be replaced soon, so we'll have to see how they compare once we get them in our demo room.
There are DLP options too, but until they display zero RBE and get quieter, I don't think it's something we'll be keeping in our demo room. A product needs to be saleable based on a demo!
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