pb

winter finally arrives in DC. it's snowing. i'm going outside to play.


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i need a dog or a chia pet or something. my geek pursuits keep giving me heartburn.

Volkov keeps hating for it, but I recently became the proud owner of a Panasonic PT-AE700 home projector. This baby was once very,
very sexy to me. She is small and spare, no frills. She can take
component or high definition inputs and can be set to resolutions
ranging from 420i all the way up to 1080i.

And, the best part: she has a zoom-able lens which is capable of
projecting a 120 inches of hi-def output on the wall of my small city
apartment. That sure makes for rather large Locust Grubs when I'm
rocking Gears of War with a screen that measures ten feet from bottom
left-corner to top-right corner. It's also cool to watch Number Six
rock that red dress on Battlestar Galactica (moving to 10pm Sundays,
btw). My friends are kind of worried about the whole thing
and triy to get me to go outside once in awhile. I'm not sure what's
up with that.

Anyway, Panasonic is pretty proud of this projector too. Price tag
for it when it was purchased was just about the same price as a 60" LCD TV. Hey, if I want to play
Geometry Wars in 1080i on a screen bigger than my car and don't feel like investing in my 401k, why not?

Panasonic is also rather proud of the bulb life in said projector. So
much so that they typically overestimate its run-life by more than 2/3
of what, through my internet research, seems to be the case for the
lion's share of the projector bulbs out there for this unit.
Panasonic advertises all over the place that the bulb for this
projector will last for 3000 hours.

Mine lasted about 560 hours. Woopay.

I checked my bulb time (the projector keeps track of how many hours
you've had your bulb on "on") right before diving into an online Gears of War fragfest for
about five minutes. Then, a loud "pop" and the screen goes dark.
With a sickening sense of doom I was still able to hear myself get
chainsawed in half by my Locust foes courtesy of the sound
feed from the 360.

The rubs? Listed:

1. Panasonic advertises, falsely, that their bulb will last for 3000
hours. False advertising is illegal.

2. Pansonic doesn't warranty the bulb past 30 days from purchase. If
the bulb has only, say, 3 hours of South Park on it and blows up 30
days past your date of purchase, you're frakked.

3. Panasonic doesn't answer their customer service line when I call.
It rings and rings and rings.

4. Panasonic's website email service is broken. I entered my
information, penned my complaint, made my request ("Your projector
sucks, send me another bulb plz kthx") and tried to send it. Nothing
happens. Click click click clickclickclick. Nothing. Nada.

5. Replacement bulbs for this projector are about $350.