Is my Z1 defective? (1 Viewer)

[John Besse]

I just got the Sanyo Z1 on Monday. For some reason I cannot get the image to be rectangular. Without using the keystone, the Z1 is projecting a trapezoid. When I mess around with the keystone I can get the left hand side of the screen straight. The image then slopes up a bit going towards the top right corners and then angles inward at about an 80-85 degree angle going down and to the left at the bottom right corner. Nonetheless, I would expect upon pulling a 16:9 projector out of the box to give a rectangular image instead of a trapezoid. So, I'm wondering... Is this a defective unit?

 

[mark alan]

You probably don't have it square with the screen. If you have it mounted already, take a piece of cardboard and project a picture onto the cardboard right in front of the projector. See if you can get a perfect rectangle by moving the cardboard. If you can, adjust you projector or screen. If you can't, call Sanyo.

 

[John Besse]

No, the screen is good and the projector is sitting directly in front of it. It is not off to the side or anything, right now the pj is in the sweet spot blocking my center channel. It is projecting upwards, tilted by the feet. Any other ideas or should I give up and call Visual Apex and ask for a new one?

 

[Max Leung]

Did you try Mark's trick to confirm? If it was a problem with the lens assembly I would expect you to see pincushioning instead of a trapezoid...trapezoid almost always means an improperly positioned projector or screen.

 

[John Besse]

Sure enough. It appears to be the fact that the projector does not like to be positioned using the feet to tilt it upwards. What I don't understand now is why they would put extendable feet on the bottom of the PJ if it is going to change the shape of the picture.

 

[mark alan]

That is why they have keystone correction. If you weren't able to fix it with that, you obviously had the projector shifted to the side a little also.

You are much better off using the lens shift to get the picture display higher. Of course, us Z1 owners are more limited in lens shift ability compared to Z2 owners.

 

[Max Leung]

Jesse, you're right...I had the same issue with my Z1...I found it much harder to get a square picture using the retractable feet too!