Optoma HD70 Impressions

Optoma HD70 Impressions

Okay, so I broke down and picked up an Optoma HD70 yesterday after a month or so of agonizing over it. I’d like to share my thoughts with the community so far.

A bit about my setup. I have a dedicated home theatre room (10’x 15’), seating at 12’, fully light controlled, 7.2 (if only there was source material) surround, Bell HDTV PVR (component or HDMI), an Xbox 360 (hooked up via VGA), and up to yesterday a 2.5 year old BenQ 6100 projector (800x600 or 800x450 in 16:9) projecting a 110” image (slightly defocused to help reduce SDE). I’ve included below a handful of pictures of my basic home theatre room. Nothing to fancy, but once the lights are out, they all look the same with the exception of the image . Note: I used a Canon SD200 Digital Elph 3.2MP camera for all these screen shots. I can tell you that the actual image in person is much better (brighter, better shadow detail and somehow crisper). Not sure if the problem is my camera or my 7 year old 21” CRT monitor. Maybe both?

http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/Room1.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/Room2.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/Room3.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/Room4.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/Room5.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/Room6.JPG


HD70 Build Impressions:
Similar size to the BenQ 6100, but a little lighter and cooler looking with its glossy white exterior. Seems solid enough for ceiling mounting and the overall fit and finish seems just right. That said the lens cap is a little lame (rubber cap) as it does not fit very well (though I never use them).

HD70 Ceiling Mounting Impressions:
Ceiling installation was a snap and even though I had been very worried about key stone, I was very surprised to find out that this was not an issue (more below). My BenQ was mounted exactly 78.5” from the floor to the center of the lens and 16 feet from the screen (I have an 86” ceiling in my projection room / closet behind the main theatre where the projector is). The BenQ 6100 has A LOT of offset with 66% to 100% depending on who you ask and as a result I had to correct with the digital key stone feature.

I mounted the HD70 in the exact same spot as the BenQ 6100 with an expectation that I would have to move it up higher to prevent key stone. I wanted to avoid moving it higher as I would have to cut a hole in the back of the theatre room wall and make other physical modifications to the projection room / closet ceiling. I was prepared to do this, but to my surprise the amount of key stone present in the image at the same position as the BenQ 6100 was so minimal I did not care nor did I bother correcting it with the key stone feature. I measured it and essentially the top if the image is 1” to 1.5” wider than the bottom. On a screen that is now 130” you really do not notice it unless you really look for it. Take a look at the screen shots and judge for yourself. I did hear that the HD70 may in fact have an offset less than 33%, and I am guessing a lot less. Perhaps as little as 15 %to 20%? OR maybe 33% is not as bad as I thought. The image is 22” from the floor if you are curious.

HD70 Ceiling Mounted:
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/Room3.JPG

Key stone after install:
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/29.JPG

HD70 Image Impressions:
After installation I fired up the HD70 and went into my Xbox 360 dashboard. WOW!!! This projector can really put out a lot of light and still have great contrast. The image is very punchy and a huge step up from the BenQ 6100 in many ways beyond even the resolution. I figured that the projector was in high lamp mode as it was so bright. To my complete surprise it was not in bright mode? When I put it into bright mode it was WAY too bright and the colours began to look a little washed out compared to it off (still very watch able and nice though). So I left it off.

I next started an Xbox 360 game called F.E.A.R (awesome…scare the heck out of you FPS) and was again very impressed with the image on the title screen. The darks were much darker, the brights WAY brighter, the colours much richer and of course the resolution 2.5 times higher than my old BenQ 6100.

I then continued my game (played it a few hours before on the BenQ 6100) and started to instantly feel like I made a BIG mistake. Everything looked very dithered and gradients were not at all smooth. In fact, it looked like and older 256 colour display. I did hear that the HD70 uses 8 bit colour processing and that there may be some gradients that are not smooth, but what I was seeing was FAR WORSE than I could have every imagined.

Before I bought this projector I extensively researched colour processing and discovered that 8 bit processing is the same at 24 bit or even 32bit on the PC. In fact I found out that with the Brilliant colour processing technology the HD70, in effect has theoretically 48bit colour processing. I created a post with my findings and others chimed in with the above info (search the AVS Forums projectors under $3,000 forum or cut and paste this URL http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=735140 ).

So, could I have been so wrong in my purchase decision? NO!!! It turns out that by turning the TrueVivid “feature” to 0 out of 3 (it was at 1 out of the box) the problem completely goes away. Now the gradients are 100% smooth with no noticeable dithering. Why did Optoma put this feature in? Would you ever want it set to anything higher than 1 as it sure makes the image look terrible? Projector Central’s review (http://www.projectorcentral.com/optoma_hd70.htm) had this TrueVivid feature set to 1, which is probably why they saw gradients (I sure did, especially in skin tones as they stated). If someone at Projector Central reads this, they may want to investigate, and possibly note this in their review too.

Anyways, after my little panic attack, I spent some quality time viewing HD content from my PVR and 360, standard DVDs and other 360 games like the incredible Gears of War (see screen shots), and Call of Duty 3. After spending about 3 hours on the HD70 I can safely way that this thing throws up and impressive image.

Bell ExpressVue HDTV Screenshots
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/1.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/2.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/3.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/4.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/5.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/6.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/7.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/8.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/9.JPG

XBox 360 F.E.A.R. Screen shots:
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/10.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/11.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/12.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/13.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/14.JPG

XBox 360 Gears of War Screen shots:
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/15.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/16.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/17.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/18.JPG

XBox 360 Call of Duty 3 Screen shots:
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/19.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/20.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/21.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/22.JPG

XBox 360 Viva Pinata Title Screen shot:
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/23.JPG

Standard DVD The Incredibles Screen shots:
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/24.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/25.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/26.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/27.JPG
http://www.wff.ca/matt/HD70/28.JPG

A couple of positive things that I can think of are:

Contrast: Wow, the bights are so bright scenes that are sunny actually look sunny (make you squint). When a scene has mixed bright areas and dark areas the difference between the two is quite amazing. My BenQ 6100 had a contrast ratio of 2000:1 and the HD70 3000:1. IMO the difference between the two projectors is so high, that either the BenQ was actually way lower than the spec or the HD70 is higher (or a bit of both).

Colour: I was not expecting better colour as the BenQ 6100 got decent reviews in this department. Was I wrong! All colours looked deeper and more pronounced. Incredible richness that I did not even realize I was missing.

Resolution: This is a no brainer. Compared to my BenQ’s effective 800x450 resolution, the 1280x720 is a huge step up. If you do the math, I now have over 2.56 time the pixels on the screen. I noticed details in movies, and games that I did not know was even there before. Because the game F.E.A.R. was so fresh in my mind from playing it on the BenQ 6100 earlier, things like carpet, painted walls, concrete, hardwood floors and ceiling tiles all had textures that I previously was not aware of. This level of detail really enhances the overall emersion in games.

On a side note, some of the HD content that I watched though very good was noticeably not always in focus (their end not mine). I heard that HDTV has been challenging for Hollywood and TV as it shows the flaws in sets and the actors. I am guessing focus is one of those areas that they need to worry more about now than in the past?

Screen door effect (SDE): I sit 11 feet away from a 130” screen (plain white wall…Behr Ultra Pure White Flat latex paint) and rarely notice SDE. In really bright areas I may occasionally notice a little SDE, but this is easily fixed by defocusing slightly (very slightly or sharpness will be lost).

Rainbows: I very occasionally noticed rainbows on my BenQ 6100 with its 2x wheel (was 3x in some reviews and specs, but BenQ did confirm it was 2x a year or so after it came out), but they never bothered me or my family and friends. I have yet to see a rainbow on the HD70 even when I try (by looking side to side very quickly).


A couple of negatives that I can think of are:

Black levels: Better than my BenQ 6100, but not quite black yet, rather dark grey (somewhat a limitation of the technology today)

Image AI: What an annoying feature! For those of you who do not know, Image AI, increases and decreases the lamps brightness depending on how bright or dark a given scene is. It apparently helps with contrast and black levels. Well, this may be the case (though I could not readily tell the difference), however the effect of the lamp constantly increasing and decreasing in brightness was VERY noticeable and very distracting.


Bottom line:

The HD70 is an impressive projector that leaves very little to be desired. Sure more expensive projectors would perform better, but I suspect that they would have diminishing returns with the exception of perhaps higher resolution and better black levels. When you consider the price, you really CAN NOT go wrong here unless you are a super hardcore videophile or perhaps do not have a light controller room (though the HD70 can easily handle some ambient light…e.g. reading light in the room). If you are holding backed due to ceiling mounting challenges similar to mine, then I would say no need to worry as this ended up being MUCH less of an issue than I had calculated.

I am off to enjoy HD gaming, movies and TV!!!