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Don't skimp on your screen though. It's the way to go if you want to step up to HD DLP projection. Excellent on all points. This projector is easy to use, has an excellent picture, is essentially silent and the price Amazon had it for was untouchable. Complement this device with the best screen you can get and you'll be very happy.
Colors are deep, blacks are much better, and no more seeing pixels at 13ft. from the screen. I just replaced my older Benq PE5120 480p projector with this one, and it's night and day. Rainbows are pretty much non existent in all but extreme cases of high contrast you "might" see one if you race your eyes across screen. I love this projector and i'm only feeding it with a 480p signal over component video. The Faroudja processor even cleans up standard cable to a watchable signal. I think the optics are sealed so no dust will get inside.
The only thing to be aware of is placement. I have had to crank down the brightness in the normal mode.to get the blue back in the sky, so this thing really puts it out. I have it sitting on a stand in back of the couch, and have to tip up the back feet pretty drastically to hit the screen from that position and it gives a little bit of a trapezoidal shape to the whole image but it is not bothersome and I detect no distortion.
I have also added an upscaling dvd player, the pioneer, to the mix and this gives a very near high d look on an original dvd and still pretty dang good on a file from the internet or a copy.I had no trouble setting it up. My other experience was with an epson lcd projector, supposedly, according to the guy that lent it to me much more expensive than this one, but it could not come anywhere close to the clarity, brightness, or depth and richness of the color that this baby puts out. I bought this product after reading many reviews and studying the situation on the internet.
I'll get some black out cloth when I can, but I am impressed. I actually would of liked to buy a bit cheaper one, but the advertised brightness of this unit, combined with it's ability to the xga computer display were the ultimate hooks.I have a small restaurant in Guatemala named Blind Lemon's and I bought the unit to show movies there. I am projecting onto one of my dead mother-in-law's old bed sheets hung between two metal poles to stretch it out, and it just looks fantastic.
It's a hot product.
This model vents hot air out the side, as if it was intended for the viewers to be seated behind it. So these projectors are really not good for viewing movies and some TV shows. This is the second one I've owned (due to the inexplicably good reviews on Amazon). In a home environment, where both the projector and the viewers are likely to be against the wall opposite the screen, this means that viewers to one side of the projector are having hot air blown at them. They're mostly good for business presentations in brightly lit office environments.The main problem I've had with this particular projector is spontaneous lamp shutoff after about a minute of use.
Having to constantly restart the projector is maddening (as is sending it in for repairs only to have it returned with the same problem).Other problems are, of course, minor by comparison. I sent this particular projector back to them twice, and they have still failed to fix it.One problem that I've seen in both Optoma projectors I've owned is that despite the bright pictures and purportedly huge contrast ratios, most of the actual effective contrast is skewed towards the bright end of the range. First of all, it would be wise to avoid Optoma products all together. This means that no matter how much calibration, tweaking, and adjustment you do (or how dark your viewing environment) dark scenes tend to range from muddy to unviewable. And despite the side venting design, the form factor seems explicitly designed (with corner feet and sloping top) to *not* stack nicely with other A/V components (specifically any component that is smaller in some dimension than this large projector).The bottom line is this projector is a head-ache from start to finish.
I've had plenty of problems with them, and Optoma USA is spectacularly unresponsive and unhelpful. Avoid it.
Shop around. There is newer better technology out there at better prices. I am the lead installer for a company that installs RealHomeTheaters, so hopefully my experience can be of some help. This projector has been on the market since 2006. Consider the Mitsubishi HC1500 or the Panasonic PT-AX200 and be sure to read my reviews on them too.Hope this helps get your RealHomeTheaters off the ground.
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