When it comes to display technology wars there's a heck of a lot more going on aside from just plasma and LCD. Enter the world of projectors and there's no shortage of acronyms squabbling for your attention. TI's DLP technology is finally making a stab at the mainstream Full HD market and impressive LCOS alternatives like Sony's SXRD and JVC's D-ILA are closing in fast.

But still in pole position when it comes to volume sales and value is LCD, a technology that has been lambasted by its rivals in the past ('deficiencies' such as indifferent black levels and the chicken wire/screen door effect caused by a visual pixel grid being common catcalls), but continues to get refined and polished.

Sanyo has been a quiet champion of LCD projection for a number of years, scoring some critical hits with its Z-series of projectors. Its latest iteration is the PLV-Z2000, a Full HD 1920 x 1080 model that makes the bold promise of a 15,000:1 contrast ratio. All for the very reasonable sum of £2,200.

These facts alone should garner the Z2000 a few eyeballs, yet its kerb appeal certainly doesn't stop there. It's also said to have - and I quote - 'the industry's most advanced lens shifting function', and 'the industry's most silent fan system'. Ignoring for a minute the curious English (you can't have differing degrees of silence, after all), it's fair to say that such bold hyperbole should pique the interest of any cinephile. Shame, then, that the projector does its level best to counter that interest with its fairly hideous design.

There's no way to sugar-coat this: the Z2000 is a boring, large rectangle with a nondescript matt white finish that doesn't look great at all. Just as well it's mostly going to be used in a completely dark room.

Easier on the eye is the Z2000's connectivity, which includes two HDMI ports, a D-Sub PC connector and, unusually for this level of the market, two component video inputs. A serious omission though is the failure to include 12V system control, commonly used to automate the lowering of a projector screen when the projector is activated. Turn the PJ
off and the screen automatically retracts to its ceiling base.

There's no excuse for not providing what is just a 3.5mm minijack, and its exclusion makes this product a non-starter for anyone with 12V system control looking to make an upgrade.
The HDMI sockets are v1.3 compliant, making them compatible with the DeepColor system that extends the colour gamut of HD pictures. Currently this is pretty-much restricted to home-made HD created on an AVCHD format camcorder.

Getting started

As you'd hope of a projector boasting the most flexible image shifting facilities in the business, the Z2000 is blindingly easy to setup. Vertical and horizontal image shifting 'wheels' are easily accessed down the projector's side, and they allow the picture to be moved vertically up or down as much as three screen sizes, or left-to-right as much as two screen sizes.

In use, this projector is indeed splendidly quiet. The Sanyo runs at about 19 decibels when used in the projector's lowest-brightness Theater Black Mode. This really is a strikingly low figure; Sanyo has produced a projector that for once will be seen but not heard. Making the low running noise possible is a Sirocco cooling fan using a newly-developed large aperture design. But there is a caveat.