So, this past weekend I got on the phone with Epson support. Back in October I bought a new Epson 3010 projector for the new and improved basement. The projector looked great, but after a week it began having "auto iris" errors and failing to start up.
Epson has a great support policy and will send out a new projector overnight for free - and you simply have to box up your bad projector and send it back.
Epson sent me a new projector. Unfortunately it had a problem as well. It made loud grinding sounds when the auto-iris changed during scene transitions.