Sony VPL-CS3 User Reviews

Once again a good product from sony Lamp well out last it's life span ...I had an external fan (just a regular small fan/$ 10.00 CAN) to help keeping it cool giving me a 5 years and just under 4000 hrs of trouble free view.

Any Problems: Not HD ready. It requiers a pitch-black room for a good image. No ceiling mount makes it hard to be used as a home device The remote stoped working after a couple of years (?) Now that the lamp has finally "gone to a better place" I find it much to high of a price for a replacement ($ 350.00 CAN)

I bought this projector about 5 years ago .Price was fair for back then .Image quality is very good compared to other projectors of it's time , contrast ratio and brightness are quite low for todays standards - you need a completely dark room to enjoy a decent picture . The inbuilt scanrate converter is very good , allowing this little (and meanwhile old) projector to display graphics very decently .Actually in this area it beats hands down even today's cheap chinese machines .

Any Problems: Biggest problem i encountered was the lack of a ceiling operation mode .The solution for this came for me years later in the form of a computer as the signal source , i use my graphic's card secondary video output and i flip the picture upside down from the graphic card settings - a real saver ! Another (common it seams) problem is the fast wearing off of the main fan , resulting in increased operation noise (it rattles) , but i found out it is not worth replacing it since the part is expensive and noone guarantees you the new fan won't fail in a few months too . Oh , one more tip : clean the air filter WAY sooner than suggested in the operation manual , if you wait for the 300 hours as suggested you are going to shorten the lamp (and perhaps device) life significantly .I noticed that about 50 hours of operation are enough to saturate the filter with dust .

I bought it in 2002 may'02. I bought it as home theatre, The bulb life really stretched over its limit and served my purpose. , I have changed the bulb six months back and it cost be 800 Singapore dollars....so I recommend buy a new technology if you want to a buy a new machine. If you are existing user...I think it is still very very good for home viewing.

Any Problems: The only issue I have is that at times the machine gets very hot and starts making a loud noise of the fan and at times disconnects after an hour. This technology is now obsolete

I bought it in 2002. It was good but expensive view today's price. He done it's job!

Any Problems: I have exactly the same problem with the standby light that Ross have. Do anybody know what it is? I'm considering repair or replace.

Nice little projector with reasonable brightness. The blacks could be darker and there are few features. It lacks a roof mounting design with no option to flip the image even if you had it mounted. The speakers are great and image quality is good on video and even better when connected to a pc.

Cool!

Any Problems: More than 3000 hours with the first lamp along 4 years! The projector has now about 5 years, with only one lamp replacement and no other bugs, it is good to me.

Good for about 2 years...3 years later completly un-useable!

Any Problems: This projector worked perfectly for about 2 years until the problems started! Firstly, the "silent" fans started to rattle, which was considerably loud enough to annoy you when trying to watch a film. This cost me £120 to buy a replacement fan. After about another year, the standby light would sometimes not come on for up to 10 minuets, meaning I couldnt turn it on. Over time, this started to get worse, up until the point whereby I had to wait about a day before it could even turn it on. It has now got to the point where it is completly unusable..and is currently waiting a decision on wether to pay Sony to get it fixed.. or just buy a different model! I dont know if im the only person who has had this problem, and would be interested to find out.

We have been using the VPL-CS3 for home use for less than twelve months - unfortunately the lamp has now failed. For the price - I would have expected a longer lamp life.