hi everyone.

I'm in the hunt for my 1st front projector and am having a hard time deciding what to get. u was hunting around for a rear projections dlp or lcd even plasma and found that iwasnt too satisfied with the picture quality vs price that the current technology has to offer (i'm coming from a 27inch pansonic gaoo with svid and was hoping a 50 rear projector would equal it for sharpenss. eventually i've come around to accept the quality of picture being put out by the current micro displays but find that $4-5000for the display i want isnt affordable. so i started thinking why not keep my 27 and use a projector for big movie nites. my crt will be good for sd tv programming and gaming and the projecotr will be used for the 'big picture movie nites" you can read about my qualms and prefences in pq here: Toshiba Cinema Series 52HMX84... ?

I've always held back on upgrading till i could get a picture like my gaoo in 60" size but that not gonna happen soon at the price i want. I turned around as dismissing projectors when i happend to walk into a av store that had the Benq 8700 shooting a 120" image of spiderman2.althogh ambient lighting of the store washed out the contrast and blacks i was simply amazed at how detailed and "sharp" the picture was for a projector. they surely have come a long way. problem is i live in a fairly small canadien town with not many retailer carrying front projectors so i''ve come to you all to help me in my desicsion making.

my budject it for max of $2000ca. my prefecrence is for as sharp a picture as i can get. as bright as possible and good overall color saturation. using the benq pb8700 as the benchmark i would like anyone to offer their opinions as to the comparable picture quality of the following units i am considering for online purchase. if anyone has personal experience with any of them i would greatly love to hear about it.

before i list my choices, i hav a question? should i go sith a svga projector or ed or hd projector. the reason i am considering svga is price and also the size of the image. i'm going to try to drive this unit to optimal viewing distance geared for picture shapness. my new recroom is rectangula with about 18ft width and 21ft length with a single window so light control shuldnt be too big aproblem. i was going to try for about 60-70"diagnol screen (or less) so as not to obscure my speakers. will an svga projector gve me the qualities in pq that i'm looking for or shuld i stick with hd projectors?

1. Infocus x1/4800 or infocus 4805. at current online prices these models are within my budjet but ihav not seen either of them, will they compete with the Benq 8700 with smaller projected image size? i've read nothing but good things about these models although they are a bit older. i like the Faroudja DCDi video processing technology. source material will be dvd primarily and maybe some xbox games. will this technolgy give me an acceptable pq for what i want? HD program material is too expensive and out for my league for now.

2. benq pb6100 or 6200. how do these stack up against the infocus group? if i like the pb8700 image, will these exhbibit the same kind of qualites in a smaller screen size? ie, do all benq projections look similar roughly?

3. optoma h30/h31. wats the pq of these like? comparable to the other models. how about compared to my bench mark benqpb8700?

4. cosmetically similar yet about $2000 less, the benq pb7800 seems interesting? is it comparable to the 8700 in pq?

please, any input would be apprectiated.
thanks!