New Optoma HD33 HD3300 1080p 3D Projector Review - Page 123

This review is from amazon by me: FAVI 16:9/120-Inch Electric Projector Screen (HD-120) (Electronics)
Favi or Elite? So the answer to the question is ELITE hands down. I am happy to say that i love this screen. i have the 125 spectrum electric and it is awesome. Love the the black casing.looks very home theater like, and looks fantastic in my theater room. FAVI white just did not do it for me. White casing was distracting and stuck out like a sore thumb. After trying two FAVI screens and receving them defective, i gave up and went with the ELITE. Right out the box it was perfect. operated as advertised. Left the screen down for a week and as the manual states, if had lines across or waves leave down for a while. Got rid of lines and the edges flattened out, but still has one diagonal wave on both corners toward the center of screen. Only 8 inches in. Still waiting for this to clear.Only really noticable in bright white scenes. Favi edges were curled much more and distorted the image to where you could notice it. had horizontal lines every 6 inches all the way from top to bottom. It also had couple of waves. Not bad though. Also, I guess because of higher gain, I saw a lot of sparkles kind of looked like grit that sparkles. Drove me crazy in grey or bright scenes. The elite does not have this so the pic looks sharp and artifact free. The elite screen looks clean.

I now have 125" of glory compared to 120 inches on favi. Can really notice it on 3d which is awesome on elite. Avatar actually looked better on the ELITE than the FAVI, even though the FAVI has a 1.3 gain and the elite has a 1.1 gain. The electric lowering of the screen compared to the FAVI is whisper quiet. FAVI was noisy and when retracted near the end gave a rubbing sound going into casing as if it was too tight and had no more space. ELITE has a 12 volt trigger, FAVI does not. In order to receive the RF remote, you have to purchase one which is not a big deal to me since I will hookup the 12 volt trigger and will lower when projector is powered up. Elite is a clear winner and the price point is perfect and well worth the money. FAVI and ELITE price are about the same. Now don't get me wrong, the favi did a pretty good job, but the defects just ruined it for me. Elite just seems better built of a higher quality. So all things considered, elite blk casing looks very professional and blends in well. Super quiet, less waves, curls and lines than favi. 12v trigger, awesome image in 2d and 3d. And has 2 year warranty compared to 1 year favi.

I hope this helps those who are on the fence. Buy it and you wont regret it.

This got my attention so I googled around

I found this review:
http://hdguru.com/tru3d-active-to-pa...n-review/5926/

But honestly 1499$? That's absolutely crazy considering it buys you 15 active glasses., heck it buys you a second optoma and you can build your own passive setup. I don't see the benefit and neither does the reviewer I believe..

buying puss in boots 3d today. Bestbuy has $5 coupon which brings it down to $22. Heard the animation and 3d were pretty good. Really only buying for my 5yr old. He loves 3d. He just drives us crazy when watching a movie in 3d. Last night we watch "the ultimate wave Tahiti 3D" and the whole movie he talked about how cool the 3d looks and why this and why that and how does the pic come so close and shouting when the waves crash in our faces. I did not hear a single thing the narrator said about the documentary Awesome3D, definatly one to own.

Gotta be careful with young kids and (active) 3D though not much is known about the effects on young children..

I actually give my son (3yrs) a pair of sunglasses whilst we watch 3D

Yeah, I think because we use the RF's he does really well with them. DLP link was a nightmare with him and Wife. When he gets bothered with RF's he takes them off and takes a break. We monitor his viewing. Love RF's. The most comfortable, convenient, light glasses. He is actually almost six, so far so good. Hope there are no side effects down the road.

The two known potential problems are siezures based on flashing images--ala left and right on and off, and the parallax between the most distant images and how close the child sits to the screen. Measure the space between the center of the child's eyes and it will be smaller than yours. Make sure the most distant objects on the screen are not separated (left and right images) by that width, or the child's eyes will have to turn out to see the images in 3D thus causing potential eye muscle strain. If objects jump off the screen, then the child will look cross-eyed to see them, but that's not as bad. If you are watching a 3D LCD/LED TV, you're probably ok, but with a big screen of 120" or more, you are likely to stretch the kid's eyes beyond limits. Just sayin'. Not too many adults think about this when viewing a 3D movie with their kids.

Just installed the HD33. No problem with 2D viewing. My first 3D viewing didn't go well.

I got Transformer 3D from my cable provider. Signal is passed from the cable box to my Denon 1912 (3D receiver) to the HD33 with HDMI 1.4. Got the side by side, configured the HD33 for SBS and put on the optoma rf glasses. I could see the 3D, which seemed excellent except that it's way too dark!!! Unwatchable. I then made sure the lamp was in the brightest mode. Still way too dark to enjoy the movie...

I have a dedicated HT room, no window, complete darkness in the room. My screen is a Draper 1.0 gain, 106 inches.

Any thoughts...?

Just got mine back today. It took about 2 1/2 weeks, and this is with me living about 40 miles from their warranty repair center

Hmm, I have a 142" DIY screen that is about 1.2 gain and it's definitely bright enough for me. Others with screens your size usually say the image is very bright and the 2D image sometimes too bright. Have you tried bypassing the receiver? Maybe it's doing some signal processing. How is 2D--it should be very bright, almost too bright unless you turn the brightness and contrast down even in standard mode. I just watched Transformers on 3D bluray the other night and it was great--actually one of the brighter movies to watch.

I would definitely not judge the HD33 or any 3d display for that matter with SBS material from cable. I have sampled some 3d via Comcast on-demand and the results have been mostly horrid. The only decent 3d i've seen via cable was the Imax Haunted Mansion film on Comcast's 3d channel (and ironically that has some of the best 3d "popout" i've ever seen).

When i tried to watch Avatar on HBO 3d ondemand, it was a dark, blurry mess with little depth. The bluray is universally praised, so I would bet the poor results you are seeing are the fault of the SBS compressed transmission from your cable company.

OK. I'll try a 3D BD from my PS3 and see how it goes. Will report back.

Meanwhile, has anyone had any good luck with cable 3D material?

As for my experience with Transformer 3D coming from the cablebox, the image brightness seemed ok with the glasses off, but as soon as I turn them on, the 3D kicks in and the image becomes way too dark.

Windshift, before you think there is a problem with your PJ, just a heads up on Transformers 3D:

There is a production issue with this disk where brightness is cut drastically after the 42min mark (this is a 2.5 hour movie!). So while the moon part is in the properly rendered section, the rest of the movie is much dimmer than even the 2D counterpart.

If I hadn't been alerted to this problem by another AVS user, I would have been very disapointed with the brightness on my 100" 1.0 gain (I'm using a different PJ, Acer DLP). The same issue exists on the SBS version of this movie as its made from the same source.

Please take a look at this max luma graph posted by user Msgohan:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...0&postcount=30

Just got my HD33 back and it has firmware 4. Anyone know the details of this firmware update? Thanks

Just tried a 3D BD with my PS3. Mars needs moms.

Still dark. I have the optoma rf glasses.

2 things I noticed. First, when I turn on the glasses they become much darker. Is this normal? Second, when I look thru the upper part of the glasses, it's much darker than when I look thru the bottom half of the glasses. Again, is this normal or could there be a problem with the glasses? I have 2 pairs and both act the same.

I'll be out of town next week and won't be able to call Optoma support until the week after so any help would be welcome.

Thank you,
Windshift

When your PJ detects a 3D signal it switches to 3D mode tuning up the brightness, when your sync kicks in, the glasses darken. It's normal behaviour which you can tweak yourself to suit your needs.

Hey all,

Just returning to the thread to mention that if anyone is suffering from the "missing line of pixels" visual anomaly, I can confirm that doing a full reset via menu corrects the issue.

The reason I thought its worth re-stating is that originally I sent my unit back for repair because of the issue, but just last night the problem reappeared, on my projector with a new main board! Yes I freaked out a little then I remember a fellow forum member trying with success the reset method. After screen-shotting all my custom settings I reset the PJ and Shazam, it worked. So I can confirm this indeed works, and I guess I can also confirm that having your main board replaced will not necessarily fix the issue.

thnx for the info. Never really thought of that.

watched puss in boots 3d last night with wife and son on hd33 with a 125" screen. All I can say is absolutely astounding. The depth in this movie is amazing to say the least. Animation is beautifully done and story very good. Enjoyed way more than I would have in 2d. definately worth owning as part of your 3D collection.

Will purchase Hugo on tuesday, which I believe is oscar nominated. Heard the story and 3d are fantastic.

getting ready to pack mine up and ship monday. Soft edge focus on left side is quite noticaible once you see it. Really see it on avatar. The grid pattern in the menu clearly shows a convergence issue on left side. Let you all know the turn around time.

Tweak the glasses or tweak the pj?

If the glasses can be tweaked, how? As for the pj, I adjusted everything I could to boost the brightness as much as I could (lamp, gamma, brightness, pure motion, etc), and its still too dark thru the glasses. When I remove the glasses, the screen is super bright but then, the glasses darken the image so much that it becomes dark and much of the color is also going away...

Frankly, I'd say invest in a normal set of dlplink glasses to see what you get. Something must be wrong with the RF glasses. I have both the Optoma 101 and Ultra-Clears. They both work great with a slight edge to the Optoma 101s.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss...gl%2Caps%2C210

Problem solved.

Thing is there's not much instruction with the glasses or the rf emitter.

I found on this thread a link to detailed instructions from Optoma on the emitter and the rf glasses. The glasses can be adjusted for brightness thru the rf emitter joystick. You just have to push down on the joystick until you see 2 lights, then use the joystick left-right to adjust the brightness of the glasses. I had to dig quite a bit to find that info and evec then, it's not that clear. Instructions talk about "manual performance tuning", not brightness, but in the end it tunes the brightness

For what it's worth, when I tried to do the joystick method for adjusting the options on the glasses, I ended up inadvertently getting myself into swapped L/R mode and could not figure out how to fix it. Perhaps your instructions were better, but it was just too much of a pain for me.

What worked much easier for me is the MonsterVision app. I think you can download it at http://www.monstercable.com/lit/Mons...20Max%203D.zip. Run that puppy, hook up a USB cable to the RF remote, and you can change the settings easily. I was able to fix my L/R mistake and was able to confirm the delay and duty cycle settings as well.

Thanks. I'll give it a try.

Here's the link for detailed instructions on how the rf emitter and its joystick work:

http://www.optoma.co.uk/uploads/manu...em-M-en-GB.pdf

for those who are curious about using DLP Link glasses and RF glasses at the same time, i found that you could reverse the polarity in the glasses using that monstervision interface, and then set it to reverse in the projector 3d settings, and this enables the RF and DLP Link glases to function properly at the same time.

where do i get some ambient light? is there any cheap solution to get some ambient light for hd33?

http://www.projectorcentral.com/Opto...ulator-pro.htm

because it say that i need " recommend image brightness for rooms with ambient lights.
and also say " greater room light requires a brighter image"

hd33 projector and 100" screen 1.3 gain

does it mean i need an ambient light or not? or how can i fix this problem?

you never NEED ambient light. in fact, you should have as little as possible.

maybe you don't understand what ambient light is. it's light sources in your theater room besides your projector (windows, lamps, other lighting, etc). generally speaking, the darker your room is, the better the image quality because light from the other light sources will reflect off the screen and wash out the picture. therefore, you want as little ambient light as possible.

so if i dont need ambient light, then what does it mean on the comment?

recommend image brightness for rooms with ambient lights.
and also say " greater room light requires a brighter image

It's pretty much undo-able to work that flimsy joystick, one has to wonder why Optoma doesn't provide this software out of the box.

There is one real negative effect to this, the sync seems to change with different sources. I'm switching between a PC and PS3, and constantly feel the need to adjust the parameters on the glasses, some content has strong ghosting (especially if you tilt your head upwards) whilst other has none. Though I've seen ghosting in the cinema as well, I wonder whether it has to do with the glasses or the actual 3D content.