I've been trying to get to the bottom of this for a month now and no one seems to have the answer. There are plenty of posts on various sites with people having the same problem but no one has seems to know why.

This unit has not been used much, I got it from a friend and it's not worked since I got it. He only used it like 10x, it has a beautiful pic when it's on but it shuts down after 10 mins. Cools off and starts back up again. It's unusable in it's current state. There aren't many hours on the lamp life either. We're tried to attach fans to it, nope, still shuts down. We've put a huge fan next to it, nope, still shuts down. It's been suggested that maybe the machine is shutting itself down because it thinks the lamp is going to explode and I need to reset the lamp hours on the menu (haven't tried this yet) and I don't want to buy a new expensive lamp unless I know it's going to work. Called Optoma, they want me to send it in for $160 investigation which includes absolutely no repair so probably a waste of money. I'm about ready to dump it but one last effort here to see if anyone has a clue what's wrong with this thing.

It sounds like a bad lamp.

BTW - welcome to AVS Forum!

thanks for the welcome!
why do u think it sounds like a bad lamp?

A bad lamp can cause the unit to shut down after a few minutes. Since you've already ruled out an overheating issue that sounds like the most likely culprit.

It is starting to seem that way, it's just so damn expensive to find out! And I do know that this projector is a piece of junk and we should probably just buy a new one anyway...just broke at the moment. Thanks.

Anyone else have a thought?

Maybe someone on AVS has an old lamp they can send to you for testing purposes? It's possible it could also be a lamp driver or ballast issue but the only way to find out would be to try another lamp.

wow, that would be beyond amazing. Anyone have one??? I promise to take care of it and send it back. Maybe I'll post a seperate request.