Hi Paul! Welcome back!
I've always thought that Panasonic projectors were like their plasmas - nobody is ever sorry for having bought one. Frankly, if I could have gotten a PT-AR100U for what I paid for the Epson 8345, I probably would have bought it.
I committed pretty quickly to LCD rather than DLP. I see rainbows sometimes, and knew that - statistically - I was likely to be viewing with others who also might be bothered. In addition, the placement flexibility of LCD was important to me; the lens shift and zoom of the Epson mattered to my installation. AT MY PRICE POINT, the features I needed were only available from Epson.
I didn't research expensive DLP units to see if they had the zoom and lens shift I needed. I did find that DLP's are generally rated as quite a bit brighter.
I'm pretty sure that the Epson 730 you looked at is a 720p model, which also makes it brighter.
So, if you're stuck on a particular mounting point in your room, you should probably make some time to look at the calculator at projectorcentral to see if your throw distance can accommodate your image size and is adequately bright.
Since I have ambient light but a pretty short throw distance, I wanted to make sure I could get ~16fL and a 110" screen from about a 13' throw distance.
In addition to the Epson and Panasonics, people seem to really like Optoma and Benq.
Good luck! Have fun!
