Epson EH-TW3200 - why this one?

Sony VPL-HS10 projecting into a mirror to get 1 meter more distance so my 2.70 meter wide screen gets used to the max. If you do the same with the Epson, you have a 120" (3meter) diagonal from 3 meter distance.

My quest for a 3D capable HD projector came to an end after discovering all the problems, incompatibilities, viewing problems, non support of drivers and the manufactures and lack of content.

Searching now for the best full HD projector in the low budged class I found that the Epson 8350 / TW3200 ticked all the right boxes.



On our little island at the west coast from Africa the only store who is carrying this projector is the MediaMarkt - and they were out of stock but had it listed for 1199 Euros.
While passing the time until the projector arrived I discovered a major problem people had with these Epson models especially the 8100.
The Epson bulb had a lot of premature failures.
After reading through the Epson Home Cinema 8100 review where in the comment section a lot of unhappy people posted their frustration about the early defect of the Epson lamp.
Looking at the newer Epson Home Cinema 8350 there were no lamp failures mentioned so far.
Doing more research I found at the avsforum the thread called:
Epson 6100, 8100, 6500ub, 8500ub, 7500ub, 9500ub Post Pre-Mature Lamp Failure here
what confirmed my bad feeling.

One thing most of the owners of these Epson projectors mentioned, was the way Epson handled the premature bulb failure problem. Nearly everyone got a new bulb without cost.
Reading this made the problem look a bit less bad.
A months passed and MediaMarkt got the projector back in stock.
A few days before I noticed that Amazon in Germany who listed the 3200 also mentioned a 3 year bulb warranty limited to max 2000 hours.

Crosschecking with Epson Spain, who would be the supplier for my projector I could confirm the 3 year bulb warranty but neither on the website (2 years warranty on the projector) not in the brochure (3 years warranty on the projector) was any hour limit mentioned.

Well that sounded very promising, so I went out to get me an Epson EH-TW3200 at MediaMarkt.
From the two projectors they had an hour before when I called there was only the open box display model left.
Not a problem but I noticed the price also had been lowered to 999 Euros and MediaMarkt hat an offer for a 100 Euro shopping card for every 500 Euro spend. Hunting through the store I found a pair of ultra cheap earbuds for 1.29 Euros and this is how I got this nice projector for 801.29 Euro.


One of the reasons why all other projectors in the 800 to 1300 Euro price range did not make it was that the Epson has a whopping 2.1 x zoom and using the Projection Calculator it seemed that I finally could get rid of my room extension via a mirror trick ( see picture on top of this post).

After reading the comparison between the 3200 and 3600 I am sure I found the best bang for my Euros.
The Epson EH-TW3200 is 99% identical  with the Epson EH-TW3600 which is identical with the Epson Home Cinema 8350.

The warranty situation still seemed a bit unclear, so we tried to get clarification since after unpacking the projector at home Epson had a surprise for me.

3 years warranty except the lamp

3 months warranty on the lamp max 500 hours

After a couple chats with Epson Spain who were not able to answer the simple question:
How many years and / or hours is the warranty of the lamp from the Epson EH-TW3200
we tried Epson UK who confirmed the 3 years max 2000 hours for the UK but  mentioned when the projector is in Euroland than there is no hour limit.
Epson Germany  confirmed the 3 years 2000 hours max for Germany.
Epson France could not answer the question in the 30 min chat time limit.

2011-3-14
we just got a response from Epson Spain and they confirm the 3 year warranty on the lamp up to 4000 hours!