A few weeks ago, my Optoma H78DC3 made a pop sound and the image went dark. The lamp failure light was on. So I figured the lamp had failed (at less than 300 hours), and ordered a new lamp. Finally installed the new lamp today. When I turned on the projector, as soon as the lamp itself fired up, the projector started making a very loud vibrating sound. And the image on the screen was very bad. Instead of the normal blue warmup screen, it was greyisha and flickering badly.

So I checked the lamp installation, no issue there. I also put the old lamp back in, which surprisingly lit up, but with the same vibration issue and image problem as the new lamp.

I know it isn't the fan...because I can hear the fan quietly running. So I wonder if maybe the pop sound was some sort of color wheel issue...which might explain why the vibration only occurs when the bulb itself it on. Any thoughts?

Hope it's in warranty

I believe that it is...it is less than 2 years old.

Sounds very similar to what happened to my H79. Opening it up I found that the color wheel had cracked and then broken apart. Certainly something that Optoma will have to fix.

I would use duct tape. Duct tape fixes everything. :)

Looks like a common problem add me to the group. Yesterday my H56 shut down and when I started it up again I had a beautiful black and white image. B&W on every input, in taking out the bulb pieces of the colorwheel fell out. Out of warranty but lucky for me I know some of their engineers. Maybe they can teach me how to install a new wheel.

Info: OTW repair for an Optoma H56 I'd imagine others would be similar. $100 for the color wheel, $150 labor.