Greg,

Like I said, if you want black levels and shadow detail like that on your Panasonic plasma you will need to go with a JVC projector. The JVCs get that performance without the use of a dynamic iris.

The Sony projectors are very close in performance, but you would need to have the dynamic iris ON to get that performance. The good news about the Sony projectors is that they have one of the best implementations of a dynamic iris (in their price class). From reading professional reviews, it is nearly always mentioned that you can almost never catch any pumping of the iris. Only with bright scenes fading to black, or vice versa you may catch it, if you are looking for it.