I saw this at the Sharper Image store and decided on a whim to buy it. It already looked incredible in the store, even though the store was fully-lit and the projection was just a small one against the wall behind the shelf. I took it home and projected it on my ceiling with my lights off and...wow. I was just so blown away. My girlfriend and I just lied on the bed and stared. You really just have to see it to believe it.
The projection is pretty wide. I keep it near the foot of my queen-sized bed, and it covers the ceiling above plus most of the side wall. Obviously, the further back you put the device, the wider it will project. It seems that there are literally thousands of stars. A few will seem bright and stationary, but others will move about in all different directions and different intensities. This gives it some great depth. The bright ones in the middle seem to form a 3x3 grid, and this symmetry might otherwise ruin the "natural" look of it all, but if you have the light at an angle (which you almost certainly will) it's not really noticable.
The device is very simple. Just plug it in and turn it on. It stands about a foot tall. In addition to the on/off switch, there is a dial for the nebula intensity. This shows up in the middle of the stars as a big blue, gassy cloud. The detail of this cloud is amazing too. Turning the dial changes the brightness of the cloud. You can turn it all the way down so that you only see stars too. Just pick a level you like the most.
My only complaint is that it would be nice to have a few more knobs to control other parameters. For example, the speed of the stars. As I mentioned, there are countless stars moving at all different speeds, but it would be nice to have an over-all speed control so that you can vary the intensity of the experience. Different colors would be great too. The starsall come out as green, which again still looks incredible, but it would be nice to see them all in white or even some other color. Ditto for the nebula cloud. Maybe this has to do with the limits of lasers and their colours, I don't know. But for the price of this device, you'd think they'd include some more variation.
Over all though, this device does a great job at what it's supposed to do. It costs more, but if you compare this to some of the other projectors (most of which seem to be holes-in-a-sheet), you'll see why.