Not many of us need projectors any more. Whew!
3 Guns
The evolution of projectors has been remarkable! The first projectors we had were in the 80s, 3 gun monsters that sold for $20k. They were a nightmare to set up and drifted out of alignment. But if you wanted a 100+ diagonal picture, it’s what you had to put up with. My installers battled to install these with very mediocre results. But if you wanted a huge picture…
LCD
Sharp kinda/sorta kicked off the new world of smaller projectors that didn’t need 3 gun aligning. They were less expensive at $6-10k, and were much easier to place and despite an LCD screen pattern, were a step forward. This was not at all the bag of cats of 3 gun projectors and as long as you could afford it- it was a step forward. Little did we know…
There is a price to pay for participating in the leading edge of technology. Marantz made the 8600 projector for about $10k in 2006. It was the best of breed for a few years. The picture WAS better than the Sharps. Not cheap, but not a 3 gun beast either.
What we learned about Marantz, Sharp and other early LCD projectors, is that when the bulb quit about 5-8 years down the road- they couldn’t be fixed at a fair price. How could we have known?! We trusted that these guys knew what they were doing.
We knew a replacement lamp would be $800 or so. Big money, but, if you could just install it easily, it’s only money. What we found out with these projectors is, when the lamp went, there were MORE problems- like the ballast and power supply failed too. They ran another $800. Add some labor, $2K repair!
The customer had spent $6-10k ish for the projector and was looking at $2k in repairs about 5-8 years down the road! Worse… those repairs proved NOT to be reliable. I was livid with the repair departments of Sharp, Toshiba, NEC and Marantz. But it didn’t matter. That’s where we were in 2005-2010 ish.
The customer had spent $2k on repairs and we saw the projectors dropping a few months later. Guess who was left holding the bag?
We couldn’t leave our customers STUCK with $2k repairs that didn’t hold. I battled with Marantz, Sharp, Toshiba, NEC and the other guys we were dealing with at the time. All they would do is say, send it back in, we’ll try again.
More time. More freight. Wasted labor. A loaner to the customer. Wasted money right and left for a 5-10 year old projector that was now sorely out of date because projector technology had IMPROVED so quickly. It was no win for the customer, and me.
Sony
Sony provided the plausible solution. They came out with a new projector line starting at $2500 that was better than the $10k projectors of 8-10 years before.
Even though the customer spent $6-10K for a Sharp or Marantz, the best choice AT THIS TIME (roughly 2008 and north of that) was to junk it.
You can imagine the angst this engendered with our customers. You have guys who spent $10K roughly eight years ago, and I had to tell them, your best move is to throw it in Lake Michigan and buy the $2500 new model from Sony.
I was doing them a favor. I was being honest. They just got mad. These fellows just wouldn’t accept that the $2500 projector today was BETTER than the $10k model we sold eight to ten years ago. But it was!
Technology moves quickly in all fields. It was no surprise that projectors improved dramatically as well.
Somehow the customer COULD accept that a cheaper computer today, smokes a much more expensive one of ten years ago. But when it came to projectors, their noses got bent out of joint.
Venerable names like Runco, Dwin and JBL got their lunch handed to them by affordable Sonys.
Fall Out
I have customers that still think I was mean to them because I refused to go down the path of an expensive repair- that I knew would not hold (!!) with their old projectors.
I’m sad that we landed at this spot- but I was fully forthcoming about the details and how we had gotten here. The right move with projectors and CD players, is usually to replace rather than to repair!
Epson
Today most people don’t need projectors. The market is full of affordable, monstrous flat panels that run up to about 85”.
If you DO need a 120” screen, then I’d recommend a $4k Epson. It will give you a very nice picture at a fair price.
If you find yourself in an untenable repair situation ten years down the road, it won’t hurt so badly that you have to replace a $4k projector vs one for $10k.