First of all, if you're looking for a highly technical review you're at the wrong place. Although my favorite magazine is Widescreen Review, their reviews tend to be highly technical and often tough reading. They can take a two minute explanation and turn it into a five page dissertation. I suppose in their world that would be referred to as thorough. This review is geared towards the hands-on end-user. I'll try to keep this overview the way I like it... simple.

*Note: This article combines the Runco QuantumColor Q-750i product review as a DIY project.

The odds are, unless hit head-on by a dump truck, the projector will arrive undamaged. It comes in a large extremely well packed box that's seated on a wooded palette. When you unpack the projector you'll quickly realize you are in possession of a high quality product. The case is rugged and made of a heavy gage cast aluminum. The projector weighs 49.4 pounds. You'll recognize the projector case right away. Runco tends to use the same style case for most of their projectors. I think its a great looking case. The remote control and the mounting brackets were Included in the shipping box. If you have an 8-foot ceiling you'll probably have everything you need. I have a 10-foot ceiling. I'll later explain how I resolved that issue. Don't worry, it's easily resolved.

Before doing anything with the projector you'll have to prepare your room. There are several things you have to consider. Placement, throw distance, mounting brackets and connectors. I'm a hands-on kind of guy. I try to do everything, if possible, myself. Some things may have a steep learning curve. You may want to leave those tasks for the experts. One of the things I had to do was some simple calculations. They were based on the distance between my ceiling and the top of my screen frame. That distance was 29.5 inches. The center of the projector's lens should equal that 29.5 inches below the ceiling height.

*Note: I mounted the projector to the ceiling. That meant the projector had to be inverted. The Q-750i defaults to a table top orientation. Runco knows there's a high probability the projector will be ceiling mounted. There are adjustments for inversion. They even make their logo reversible so it looks right side up when the projector is upside down. If the lens is off center to the left on a table top application, that means it's off center to the right on a ceiling mount application.

1) Placement: As mentioned earlier, I needed to locate the center of my projector lens 29.5 inches below the ceiling (My room had a 10-foot ceiling). The 29.5 inches would put the lens in line with the top frame of my movie screen. I had a custom-made aluminum pole bracket made for my specifications. I painted it flat black. The full length of that bracket came to 23.5 inches. The Runco came with its own 1.75 inch tall mounting bracket. I could have simply used their bracket by itself, if I had an 8-foot ceiling.
I had additional considerations. The top side of the projector to the center of the lens came to 4 inches. The back access door, when inverted, on the Runco hinged at the top. That meant the access door opened upward. I had a soffit at the rear of the projector. The back of the projector couldn't quite clear the rear access door. I was short by only a half an inch. I had to somehow add in the 1/2 inch. I cut and mounted a three-quarter piece of plywood between the top side of the bracket and the ceiling. The plywood was cut to the same dimensions as the top side of the pole bracket. That solution was simple and visually undetectable. Problem solved! Everything fit perfect. The center of the lens came to 29.15 inches from the ceiling.

2) Throw Distance: Every front projector has what is known as a throw distance. The throw distance is the distance between the light emitted from your projector lens to the surface of your screen. Your lens can only focus within a certain range of your screen. The newer projectors usually have, more or less, a two to three foot range of throw distance placement. That placement also depends on the zooming and focal range of the lens. I have a Stewart Studiotec 1.3 lumen screen. It's 107 inches wide by 60 inches high. Based on my lens, there was a formula for figuring out the throw distance for those measurements. You can simply go online and use Projector Central's throw distance calculator.

Here is the URL for that site; http://www.projectorcentral.com/projection-calculator-pro.cfm.

*Your instruction manual should also provide throw distance information for your specific model and lens.

3) Adjustments: The newer projectors luckily have a forgiving placement, unlike the old CRT projectors. CRT's had to be exact. You then had to focus three RGB (Red Green Blue) lenses. Then you had to setup the geometry and convergence. It was a major ordeal. My theater photo at the top of this page shows my old Runco CRT projector.
The Q-750i was a breeze. The lens on my Q-750i was slightly off-center horizontally by a half an inch to the right on an inverted mount. No big deal. Simply mount the projector horizontally so the lens is horizontally off-center 1/2 inch to the right. Of course, the center point is still at the middle top of the screen. The Q-750i has a horizontal adjustment ability of 12.5% of the screen width (left/right) and a vertical adjustment up to 60% of the screen height (down for ceiling mounts). The idea is to place the projector in its ideal location to minimize adjustments for vertical and horizontal compensation. That was very doable horizontally. Horizontally I was dead-on. Not possible vertically, unless you want to hold the projector in your hands and point it at the center of the screen. Not a great idea.

4) DIY: I mounted the bracket myself. The more you can do yourself the more money you'll save. I'm not afraid to jump in and do things myself. One of the things I had to do was go into my attic and measure between the trusses at the area I planed to mount my pole bracket. You'll quickly realize no two trusses measure the same. I made a sturdy wooden box to fit in between the trusses for my mounting pole. The box was made out of two by fours and 3/4 inch plywood that seated flatly on the drywall. I made the box a little oversized in length for forgiving tolerances. I screwed the box, plywood side flat on the drywall, into the trusses. The purpose of the box was for a support platform for the projector's pole bracket. You cannot just simply hang a 50 pound projector on drywall. In no way can the drywall support that kind of weight.

5) Measure and measure: I can't stress enough how important it is to measure, measure again and measure again to triple check yourself. It's not just a cliche'. The front of the projector has to be square (parallel) to the screen. Try to get it as square as humanly possible. You have to assume your room is not square. Even the best building contractors can't seem to make a room perfectly square (equal dimensions). It doesn't matter as long as your projector's front face-plate is parallel to the face of your screen.
As mentioned earlier, there are some internal adjustments in the projector to vertically and horizontally do some fine tuning. I mounted my projector lens about 18.6 feet from the screen surface, well within Runco's recommended throw distance. That's within the ability of my projector to focus and size correctly within my screen size of 60"H x 107"W (16 x 9).

6) Connections: The next thing you'll have to do is connect your cables from your equipment (surround processor) to your projector. In my case, I only had three cables that went to the Q-750i; a high quality 25 foot "StraightWire" HDMI cable (don't chince out on an HDMI cable), a supplied power cable and an IR receiver emitter cable that sticks to the IR receiver window on the front of the projector. The mounting pole had a two inch diameter. I simply ran all of the cables down through the pole. That allowed them to be hidden from view.
I use the Universal MX3000 remote control with an RF to IR receiver converter box. I do that so that I can control all of my equipment via the MX3000. I set up macros so one button could turn on all of my equipment. You don't want a thousand remote controls for your system. I suggest you buy a decent universal remote control. If you can't figure out how to program it, find someone who can.

7) A little help please: Unfortunately, I couldn't do everything on my own. I bought the Q.-750i from my favorite local home theater and lighting control center, Advanced Audio Design in Naples, Florida (logo below has a hot-link to their site). I needed help to mount the projector on the bracket. That was a 2-man job. I love my wife, but she wasn't remotely a consideration for that task. The gentleman who assisted with this project was Jon Gunther. He's my go-to man for all of my tougher technical questions. Jon's extremely familiar with Runco, along with most home theater, lighting and home automation related products and issues. He's been in the business forever, give or take a week. He saved me a lot of time when it came to the Q-750i's on-screen setup.

8) A little more help please: Jon also helped me configure the projector to the screen and helped with the setup of the internal menus for my application. That saved me an unbelievable amount of time. I didn't have to go through the entire manual to figure it out myself. Although I did go through the manual later on. I always like to know the in's and out's of all of my equipment. Unfortunately, the manual comes on a CD. I found it to be a pain in the neck to have to run back and forth to my computer every time I needed to look up any information. My solution was to simply print out entire the manual. I now have a booklet of the entire manual. I wish the manual came in both CD and booklet form. By the way, the manual was well over 100 pages. My appologies to the rain forrest.

From the moment I started the projector, and saw the out-of-the-box projected image, I knew I had something special. The image was astounding. The projector was very quiet, unlike my CRT front projector. The fans on the CRT were extremely loud. The fans on the Q-750i are fairly quiet. I could only hear them when the room was dead silent. My old CRT was directly above my seating area and sounded like a harrier jet hovering overhead. My Q-750i is mounted about 6 feet behind me.

*The above image is a reduced image taken directly from page five of the Q-750i's user manual. It's a right-side-up table-top view. You'll have to rotate the unit 180 degrees if you mount it to the ceiling. That means that everything in the above image will be on the opposite side. No big deal. Runco designs their projectors with that application in mind.

The on-screen setup menu was user-friendly. A large 6-tabbed folder-style dialog box is your access to the control menus. The six tabs are labeled MAIN, ADVANCED, SYSTEM, CONTROL, LANGUAGE and SERVICE. Every one of these tabs has submenus. You can make any desired changes within the submenus.
One of the first things we did was turn off all of the inputs except for the one applicable for my purposes. That would be the HDMI-1 input. There are a lot more inputs to cover pretty much every possible connection option. I only needed a single HDMI connection. It was pretty easy to make adjustments, although some adjustments are intentionally grayed out. If you use the HDMI input you'll get locked out (tab is grayed out) of the ADVANCED menu. There was nothing in the manual that warned me about this. I was at a loss. I called Jon Guenther. Jon contacted Runco to find out if there was a reason for that. Runco said the ADVANCED tab was inaccessible when connected to an HDMI input. Runco pre-adjusts for HDMI. They said the setting for HDMI were exactly where they were supposed to be. Apparently there are some specific protocols for HDMI that cannot be, and shouldn't be, altered.

Adjustments are available in the ADVANCE tab for any other type of input. Based on the final result, I saw no reason to make any changes to the HDMI setup. I guess one of my main complaints had to do with the user manual. Although it's generally pretty good, it seems like it's geared towards the professional installer. I want my manual to provide an explanation for everything. I shouldn't have to call Runco to find out the HDMI input negates the ADVANCED tab. That should be explained with the setup instructions. Believe it or not, that's pretty much the extent of my complaints with the Runco manual.

I only use the supplied Runco remote control to access the service menu. My Universal MX3000 remote control serves as my primary remote. Its a good thing too because you'll need a super high powered magnifying glass to see the text on Runco's remote control buttons. What were they thinking? The text buttons on my cell phone has more size and real estate. The text on the "on" and "off" buttons are the size of microdots. Oddly enough, one of the largest buttons is the "light" (backlight) button. Believe it or not, I really did have to break out my magnifying glass in order to read the text on most of the buttons. How crazy is that?

Without going into specifics, there are plenty of internal adjustments for fine-tuning the geometry, horizontal and vertical height, image temperature, contrast, brightness, PIP, etc. I must say, their default settings are pretty darn close, if not perfect. The fact that they lock you out of the ADVANCED folder when using an HDMI input was a good idea. Their HDMI ADVANCED settings were dead-on. To fine-tune on a more advanced level, I suggest you pick up a Blu-ray test video. I have Digital Video Essentials "HD Basics". If you feel like you're way over your head then let a professional installer do what you're unconfortable doing yourself.

*In case you you don't know, the Q.-750i is a single-chip DLP with a red, green and blue LED light source. With the exception of the fan, there are no moving parts. LED is an acronym for "light-emitting diode" An LED is a semiconductor light source. You may become suicidal after reading the explanation for a semiconductor structured light source. Yes, it's that complicated. Who cares, as long as it works.

Most single-chip DLP's have a color wheel that spins at a high rate of speed. It requires synchronization so the projected light, the colors and the image can be accurately displayed (an overly simplified explanation). The fast spinning color wheel, in theory, moves at a velocity where your eye can't pick up color drifts (known as rain-bowing). It's a perceptual phenomenon. Not everyone can see it. Unfortunately, I can. That rain-bowing effect has visual similarities like the rainbow you see in the sky after a light sun shower. If you have a discerning eye, every once in a while you can catch that rain-bowing effect on the screen. The newer single-chip DLP's managed to significantly reduce that phenomena. Those type of single-chip DLP's use either a mercury or a xenon lamp. They tend to have an average life span of 2,000 hours. They also use a lot of wattage and they're not cheap to replace. Because of a DLP's moving parts, they're also more susceptible to mechanical failures. There are some other nit picky issues that I really don't want to get into. The bottom line is, there are some great single-chip DLP's. My second favorite single-chip DLP is the Samsung SP-A900B, another awesome projector. I don't know how they did it but it's fan and color wheel are virtually inaudible. The Q-750i, as mentioned earlier, isn't inaudible.
My home theater is a dedicated room. The room has no ambient light source. That's important with an LED. LED's do not like to compete with ambient light. Like a CRT, they need every bit of light on the screen. They are inherently not as bright as a mercury or xenon bulb. If your room is light-tight then it's not an issue. The new LED's provide more than enough light on the screen - way more light than a CRT projector.

The first image I put on the screen was from my DirecTV satellite. The picture quality was superb (for satellite). It was sharp, clear, lacked motion artifacts and it was smooth. I think the colors were a little bit off. I'm using the component video output from my satellite receiver to the component video input of my Marantz processor. I'm using an HDMI cable from my Marantz processor output to the Q-750i. The colors lean slightly towards the green side. I believe that was caused by mixing the component input with an HDMI output. Unfortunately, I can't adjust that because I am using an HDMI cable from the processor to Q-750i. My satellite receiver does have an HDMI output; however, I'm using that output for a different monitor. I'll resolve that at a later date. By the way, that other monitor's colors (via HDMI) are dead-on, or at least as good as its capablities (32 inch Sony Bravia XBR).

Someone asked me what was going to be my first movie on the new projector. Without hesitation, I said the new "Star Trek". Besides being a huge fan of Star Trek, I knew the picture and sound quality was going to be awesome. I wasn't disappointed. The colors were dead-on. (connected via HDMI) The image was sharp as a thumbtack. There were no motion artifacts at all. Not even during explosions and intense light bursts. No rain-bowing (no color wheel). Not too shabby! The contrast and black levels were astounding. Better than my CRT. The whites (high frequencies) were not blown-out like you see on an LCD. The white areas maintained their detail. Simply put, it's the best projector I've seen to date. And by the way, I have seen a lot of projectors.

I also own a PS3 (PlayStaion 3). I play Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 online (multiplayer). Word of warning. If you want to stay married, try and play when your wife isn't home. I connected the PS3 to play in my theater via HDMI. I hard wired it from my modem (Comcast cable), to the router and to the switcher. Wow! The streaming image was indescribable. Color, sharpness and detail were beyond my wildest dreams. The sound was out of this world. I thing I'm gonna need to go to a Call Of Duty rehab center. "Hello, my name is Bob. I'm an addict, a Call Of Duty addict." Everyone replies, "Hi Bob."

I also threw a couple of DVD's in my Blu-ray player. The first was a music concert called "Zappa Plays Zappa". For whatever reason, Dweezil Zappa only released a standard DVD version. No Blu-ray. What a shame! I saw it first on my CRT with my Sony DVP-NS999ES DVD player. It looked ok at best. Kind of soft, even for a DVD (component output). The sound was pretty good via the digital coax output. In case you didn't know, the sound on DVD's are nothing but high quality MP3's.
I noticed a big difference, when I played the same thing on my new setup via the Q-750i, Pioneer Blu-ray/DVD player and Marantz processor. Although still not great, the video and audio had a noticeable improvement. The video was a little sharper, smoother and cleaner. The audio, now via HDMI, really opened up. I threw in a couple of more DVD's with the new setup. All had similar improvements.

I've been a member of NetFlix since 1999. I love NetFlix! With the new setup, I streamed a NetFlix movie in the theater. It was, "Dead Like Me: Life After Death." It's based on the two year run of the Showtime TV series, "Dead Like Me". I must say, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the HD picture and sound. The streaming was seamless via a cable modem connected to a router and with the router connected to a switcher. The end result looked as good as my DirecTV. The NetFlix image (via PS3) did not have that greenish shift like the DirecTV image. Remember, my PS3 has an HDMI output connection.

All of this comes at a premium. In other words, it ain't cheap! The retail price of Runco's QuantumColor Q-750i is $14,995. While other people saved their money for a boat or a fancy car, I saved mine for this, the Q-750i. And yes, it took a while. Simply put, the Q-750i is an amazing achievement in home theater front projection technology. The remote control was another story. The buttons were to small. You'll need a high powered microscope in order to read the text on those buttons.
If you're like me, you'll also want to read the Q-750i's specs.

Here's the link for Runco's Q-750i spec page: http://www.runco.com/q-750i_specs.html
You can also download a PDFof the manual at their web site.