I can't offer much help with your inquiry, but I will chime in about the Z2. I picked one up in late 2005 and had been absolutely THRILLED with it until last fall. I began having blue blobs on the right side of the image, which ended up being the dust balls that you speak of. Well, I called Sanyo and they said it probably needed a cleaning, which was not covered by the warranty, but they would do it for $100. Well, I boxed it up and went out and bought a Samsung LCD set since I wanted something for regular viewing anyway.
I finally got around to sending the thing back to sanyo last week, and they told me that they felt I had neglected the unit with regard to the little air filter that needs to be cleaned every so often. Supposedly the dust build up caused it to run hot, which damaged the LCD panels. They said they weren't going to fix it. Naturally, I was pretty pissed off. If you read the manual, it says to just sort of knock the dust off the filter by tapping it or by using a light brush....that's exactly what I did about once a month, and the last time I saw the filter it didn't look all that dusty to me. I demonstrated as best I could that I had followed the manual, and told them that I felt it was ridiculous that a projector was kaput after only one year. I even have air filtration in the room the pj is in, so I know for a fact it wasn't neglect.
Anyway, they finally agreed to take it apart, gut the internals, clean it thoroughly, and replace the damaged parts for me for $200 total. I felt that was a fair compromise on their part, so I'm expecting the pj to be back in my HT on Friday of this week.
I"m not quite ready to jump into a 1080p machine, and I really didn't want to spend the $1k for a suitable replacement at this time. I'm thankful to SAnyo for being reasonable and following through on the customer service they talk about so prominently on their website. The image quality on this projector is very, very good for the money, and I couldn't see parting with it so soon.
Viva la Z2!
