I’ve been using LCD projectors since the early 90’s & I’ve yet to have to replace a lamp in any of my projectors. I brought one lamp as a backup for a projector a brought used & the backup lamp still sitting in my office. That projector I used for business, home, rentals, its been shipped on airlines to events & still haven’t clocked enough hours to replace the original lamp. Figure if the lamp has 2000 and you run the lamp to 1000 hrs that is 250 4 hr events. The new projectors have lamps going up to 6,000, I believe those are DLP projectors.
What I do is always carry a backup projector. If something does go wrong in the middle of an event the last thing you want to do is open up a projector. With a backup projector your back up in running as fast as you can get the second projector back in place. I’d say I’ve heard more stories of projectors not working after being dropped or banged around (and a backup lamp wouldn’t fix the problem) than lamps reaching their limits. One other thing would be to make sure you have good cases to protect the video in transport. If the warning does come on replace the lamp ASAP as I’ve been told lamps pass there limit can breakup in pieces inside the projector & you don’t want that.
Kevin
Andromeda II
