Many of us use our projectors in LOW bulb setting. You get longer hours from your bulb, lower heat (?) and possibly slightly lower black levels. As your projector bulb ages from more and more hours of use, it gets dimmer. (Also, the colour temp changes too).

If a high hour bulb set to low has not yet failed and you find it dim, can you extend the useful life of the bulb by switching to HIGH?

If the brightness increase was satisfactory, you could then continue to use your projector with that bulb for longer before getting a new bulb. Re-calibrating may be necessary of course. Setting an aging high hour bulb to HIGH may stress the bulb and shorten it's life further, but at least you're getting useable brightness?

Have people generally done this or is it not a solution?

Many of us use our projectors in LOW bulb setting. You get longer hours from your bulb, lower heat (?) and possibly slightly lower black levels. As your projector bulb ages from more and more hours of use, it gets dimmer. (Also, the colour temp changes too).

If a high hour bulb set to low has not yet failed and you find it dim, can you extend the useful life of the bulb by switching to HIGH?

If the brightness increase was satisfactory, you could then continue to use your projector with that bulb for longer before getting a new bulb. Re-calibrating may be necessary of course. Setting an aging high hour bulb to HIGH may stress the bulb and shorten it's life further, but at least you're getting useable brightness?

Have people generally done this or is it not a solution?

I have been using mine on High for five years now on the same bulb. Not sure I have answered your question, but I didn't think it looked as good on Low so I figured why bother. Thought it would have burned out by now, but it hasn't.

It is an NEC bulb.

John

I did just what you're saying with my Optoma H31. I went through two bulbs and switched to High brightness after 500 hours. Actually both bulbs still work, I retired the first one at about 2,000 hours because it was getting pretty dim even on high.