The PLV-Z1 is a decent entry level home theatre projector with plenty of oomph, although you wouldn't want to move it around too much. Read our Australian review.
One thing you couldn't accuse the PLV-Z1 of being is pretty; it's a dull grey box with a front flap that opens up to reveal the projector lens. Still, you're more likely to get your friends marvelling at the projected images rather than the projector.
The PLV-Z1 has a brightness rating of 700 lumens, which is on the lower edge of most commercial-use projectors. On the other hand, the PLV-Z1 is much cheaper, and is essentially designed for very simple in-home usage; most users will probably set the PLV-Z1 up once, and then leave it on those settings for the rest of its useable life. For a 700 lumen projector, the PLV-Z1 manages a surprisingly sharp and bright picture on a variety of surfaces.
Inputs are relatively basic; one VGA, one composite RCA and three component RCA plugs. There's no onboard speaker of any kind, which is fitting for a home theatre projector -- who wants a tinny little mono speaker if you've got a surround speakers to hand anyway?
Setup of the PLV-Z1 did present us with a few challenges, most notably with the unit's feet. Like most projectors, the PLV-Z1 can be angled upwards via two protruding feet at the front of the unit. The PLV-Z1 manages the telescoping of these feet with small release catches. We clicked the catches, set the feet and switched on the unit, only to discover that the top edge had a distinct lean that we couldn't fix via keystone adjustment. We quickly ascertained that the issue was with the feet; unless you very carefully click both feet out at the same time and to exactly the same length, the picture distorts badly. Once we had this sorted, however, we had no problems with the displayed image from a variety of image sources. The PLV-Z1 is HDTV-capable; while it scales down to 964 x 544, that's 50% of a full HDTV signal, which should result in a cleaner compressed image; at least in theory. If you also wanted to project VGA images, the PLV-Z1 is capable of accepting signals of up to SXGA (1280 x 1024) resolution, which is probably overkill for most home users.
The menu system works well enough, although we did find response time for the buttons on the unit were slower than those on the remote for some reason. The contrast ratio of 800:1 is decent enough; for most home setups you're going to want a high contrast to offset the interference of other light sources, and especially if you're using computer or console video sources.
The PLV-Z1 has a few neat tricks up its sleeve to allow you to get a better image. Apart from keystone adjustment, the lens itself can also be shifted vertically and horizontally via controls on the front of the projector. We got a much better result, in fact, from this than from the keystone adjustment, which tended to blur images unacceptably.
Sanyo rates the PLV-Z1 bulb life at around 2000 hours; sadly they were unwilling to leave the PLV-Z1 in our possession for the couple of years it'd take to verify this claim. It's about average for a projector of this brightness, however, so we're inclined to believe them.
Home theatre projectors still haven't reached the magic point of being cheap enough for everybody, but if you're keen, but not highly endowed with cash, the PLV-Z1 is a good starting point that should meet most home users needs.
Sanyo PLV-Z1
Company: Sanyo Australia
Price: AU$4,499
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 02 8825 2822
