This is my first Panasonic projector. I have had others from Infocus, Sanyo and Epson. I have had DLP and LCD. I have seen many others. This projector is an LCD (no burn in like plasma and no color wheel to strain your eyes and make you see color smear/rainbows) with a dynamic iris (which improves contrast).

Second, I have had a home theater in my family room with front projection technology for about 7 years now. It is our main viewing room for High Definition Satellite and Over the Air TV and DVD, as well as Standard Definition TV and DVD.

Our room is light and has windows, so it is not a dark surfaced dedicated home theater, so I have light walls and ceiling and ambient light to deal with. The best way to maintain contrast and the vividness and viewability of a front projection picture is with high light output. This projector is rated at 2000 lumens, and though setting the picture to its precalibrated will lower that figure substantially, it still remains one of the brightest home theater projectors available, and it certainly has brightest picture for anything within multiples of the price.

One of the other best parts about having a bright projector is you can have a bigger screen. Larger screens tend to cause projectors to fade out and lose punch and vividness. My screen is 10 feet diagonal and it is stunning.

Two additional tips to gain brightness if your viewing environment is like mine, first try to set up the projector so that it remains as close to the screen as possible while filling the screen with the image (in other words, use the shortest throw as this will provide maximum light output).

Second, consider a light rejecting High Gain screen. I prefer the Da-Lite High Power. I have three of them. They are unique in their ability to provide high gain at a low price. They have many other excellent features too. They are washable and they hide waves in the screen allowing you to use a non-tensioned pull down screen for convenience and flexibility. They don't have sparklies and they have no visible hot-spotting. Their viewing cone is not as wide as a flat screen, but if you sit within the sides of the screen and keep your projector mounted within a few feet above or below your eye level, you will get maximum gain of about 2.8.

I have had two other bright projectors, 2000 and 2200 lumens, which served me well. However, tremendous improvements in the quality of signal processing (making for a smooth and glitch free picture) and contrast ratio (blacker blacks and more detail in the shadows) have occurred since my last purchase. Moreover, this Panasonic can be had for a quarter of the cost of the prior projectors.

This projector is a 720p projector. That means it can display both versions of High Definition that are available now: 1080 interlaced and 720 progressive. Most people can't tell any difference, and different HD sources use one or the other. Both look fantastic and the projector displays any source automatically.

Does it work? Yes. It works beautifully. Much higher contrast than I have been used to, and terrific color accuracy. Pixels cannot be seen from any viewing distance. I just find the picture jaw dropping. It is the best projection picture I have ever seen. And keep in mind that every projection system I have ever had in my home has been far superior in detail, clarity, color, contrast, brightness and image stability to the commercial movie theaters anywhere near me. The effect of a bright projector on a high gain screen is essentially the same as huge flat screen display (plasma or LCD). It looks the same, but it is about 6 times bigger. It fills the entire wall.

Not only does it look stunning in High Definition, it makes lousy standard definition sources actually watchable. Actually more than watchable, even enjoyable. So chalk that up to the advanced signal processing and superior color, contrast and brightness. It is a miracle to me that it can be had for around $1,500 (as I paid $2,000 and the retail price is $3,000).

These professional reviews may also be of help to you:

http://www.projectorcentral.com/panasonic_ax100.htm

http://www.projectorreviews.com/Manufacturers/panasonic/PT-AX100U/index.asp

Installation is a breeze with the flexibility of the lens shift and zoom (you can put it just about anywhere) and it is made to exhaust from the front so it can be shelf mounted against a wall, which used to be quite rare.

Some folks have complained that the 'smoothscreen" technology makes the picture less sharp than other projectors. Sharpness is a complicated thing. Some sharpness is artificial noise placed in the picture to mimic real detail. That's bad. Sometimes a marginally visible grid between the pixels gives the appearance of sharpness. That's also bad. Your faithful direct view TV of yore had a very smooth picture due to its technology. A lot of projector nuts thought that was the best picture ever (though it lacked a ton of detail we now have). All I can say is that sometimes when the focus is sharp in the scene and the detail is there, this projector has the sharpest picture I have ever seen. Your teeth will fall out. But when the source is slightly out of focus, or the source is of low quality, you can tell. Just like a great stereo, you see everything, the good gets better and the bad gets obvious. Fortunately with the availability of HD sources, it's all really good if you want it to be.

I follow a dedicated home theater forum which discusses this projector heavily. That forum tends to be populated by extremely picky and vocal folks. Quite a few have reported a couple of problems with their units which I have not experienced. Similarly, there are many people on the forum without these problems.

The two major problems are sudden variations in brightness when used in low lamp mode (which I can't imagine ever using so it has never come up) and some reddish shading or a line on the right side of the picture due to a color filter not backing out all the way.

As to the first problem, of light flicker, it appears that there is a software update which is eliminating that problem. However, others have also reported that the problem goes away after the projector has been used in high lamp mode for a while. Almost everyone says that the problem can be eliminated immediately by switching to normal lamp mode.

As to the second problem, I am concluding that it is being caused by a physical filter which is used to internally calibrate the colors. It appears the filter slides in from the side and it can get stuck before it gets all the way in or out. Now a lot of these fellows I know on the forum in question are endless "tweakers". I suspect that if there is any weakness in this particular mechanism, they will find it by cycling through the picture options A LOT.

EDIT: There is a third problem popping up now, and that is a mechanical failure of the dynamic iris. That is a warranty item and requires simple lubrication.

Some are speculating that heat may be the cause of some of the problems, so if you want to keep your projector cool, you can set the preferences to "high altitude" which runs the fan harder, making it cooler, but a little louder too. END EDIT.

New Update: Apparently there are two software upgrades that fix the problems mentioned and the Dynamic Iris issue is also resolved on all the new projectors.

I just moved the pj to a much larger room and screen with less ambient light control. I found the picture to be dimmer than the 2200 lumen pj I was used to. So I jacked up the contrast to +4, +8 and +16 in the three memories, and dropped brightness to -2 in all. I beefed up the mid and low gamma to +4 and +8 and boosted the color progressively.
I now have a choice of settings to defeat dimly shot shows like 24 and to fight ambient light for daytime sports. It looks fantastic again.

As I say, I and many others have never had the problem. So be sure you buy the projector from someone with a liberal return/replacement policy.