I currently use an NEC LT260 projector for home theater (ceiling mounted) with a 100 inch Da-Lite HiContrast Cinemavision screen. Contrast is good (but not great)--blacks are decent but the picture could be a bit brighter, color saturation could be better and there is some noise in the picture. I mainly watch DVDs from a Denon 910 DVD player with the occasional HDTV from my cable box. I have good ambient light control in the home theater--it is a basement room but the walls and ceiling are off-white although the wall that the screen is mounted in painted lamp black (my wife was willing to make that concession.

I've enjoyed the projector for the last 2-3 years, so much so that I have a little less than a quarter of lamp life left. Rather than buy a new lamp at the (exorbitant) $500 price, I have been thinking about upgrading the whole projector to one of the new LCD projectors. The Panasonic AE900U or Sanyo PLV Z4 are about in my price range. Has anyone compared either of these to an NEC LT260 or LT240 projector? Will I see a significantly imprvoed picture--I am assuming so, if nothing else than from the improvement in the technology generally over the last few years, but I'd rather not outlay the extra cash but then find the picture to be about the same (or worse). I am assuming that the contrast of these LCDs will be at least as good (or better) as my older NEC LT260 DLP projector, but does anyone know for sure?

The other alternative is to squeeze out some more life out of my projector by minimizing use or buying a new lamp and then eventually upgrading to the more expensive Optoma H79/H78--although I suspect it'll be a long wait before they get into my price range.

I have read the informative reviews of all these projectors on this site as well as the shootout between the Optoma H79 and the PLV Z4 which was very interesting--but I was wondering if anyone had some specific comparison experience with the NEC LT260/240. Thanks in advance!

oops- I read your entry again and happened to miss the fact that you already own it. Sorry.

I have seen LCD projectors that only have a contrast of maybe 300:1 for example and they really don't look that bad. Once however you get one with 2000:1 or 3000:1 you really realize how much you've been missing. Contrast is something that certainly has little to do with resolution, or brightness. But color depth and details of darker footage is what truly suffers with a low contrast projector, as well as shadow detail and numerous other issues. A film like 'Alien' for example which relies for the most part on dark hallways and night time footage really suffers on a low contrast projector. All it takes is to watch the same movie on a unit with 4000:1 like my H27 and the difference is very obvious. I once owned a Viewsonic pj-853 which i think was 250:1. I actually liked the image and the contrast seemed good, but once i had the chance for something better I was happy I took the plunge. In your case however if you are happy with your unit and haven't seen deeper contrast then what difference would it make? In my case I had the chance to see deeper contrast units before I owned one with higher contrast and I was bummed out I didn't have one with high contrast. if i had never seen one with deeper contrast I wouldn't have cared less. Now contrast is a strange thing in that it takes vastly different contrast numbers to create a major difference. An example of this is that 300:1 may sound much lower that 2000:1, and if truth be told, there is a very noticable difference. But when considering a CRT unit that has contrast rartio's of up to and beyond 25000:1 then the difference between 300:1 and 2000:1 seems almost non-existant. But yet when you consider 300:1 vs 4000:1 there is a very strong difference none the less.