Optoma HD8300 Home Theater Projector Review

In Europe the price is 2500 euro (3400 US dollars), a price lower than the competitors Pana 7000 (2600 euro), jvc R45 (2990 euro), Epson 5010 (probably 2800-2900 euro), Sony HW30 (2800 euro).

Anyone on avs forum uses this model?

I use the HD83 (Eu version of HD8300) for 3D together with a JVC RS45 for 2D. I can recommend the Optoma, especially for 3D.

Thanks for feedback. Being disappointed twice with two consecutive Optoma hd33 projectors both suffering from lens flaw which was causing picture distortion, I made decision to upgrade to HD8300. Additional advantage over the hd33 model that I expect is better control of projector brightness thanks for one of best in class iris.

I bought HD8300 and was hoping the iris will help blacks, but now I'm not sure I like the way it does it.

Brightness pumping is not a problem, don't see it in Cinema1, and rarely in Cinema2.
It's not loud either, don't hear it during watching movies, unless sitting right near the projector.

The iris indeed helps blacks, but at the same time it makes colors muddy because of dynamically changed gamma. I read about this effect, but in real life It looks worse than I expected.

I still haven't decided yet how is better - with or without iris.
Maybe I'll leave it on, the blacks get nicer and the colors are not that bad.
On the other hand, after I did basic light control in my room (covered with black cloth white ceiling and one wall near the screen) contrast has improved very noticeable. Sometimes I feel the iris is not needed anymore. Well yes, the blacks are still grey, but its not very annoying.
(The screen is about 90" matt white, max distance, ~4.5 meters.)

Speaking of 3D, on this machine 3D is simply mind-blowing. The first several minutes I was literally watching it with my mouth open.
(ZD201 glasses).

More impressions later.
Edited by Ilya Volk - 1/4/13 at 6:38pm

Can't you calibrate the gamma at the specific IRE's that it is getting muddy to get rid of that?

EDIT
Disclaimer: Described below was caused mostly by wrong "Color space" setting.

---

Perhaps I didn't describe the problem correctly.

First, its not just gamma, its the iris itself who makes bright colors darker.
Second, PJ tries to restore original brightness by adjusting gamma. I can see how it works when switching the iris on and off manually when movie is paused.
It doesn't succeeds completely, bright colors are still dull.
Third, adjusted gamma squeezes dynamic color range. Bright details are lost.
Fourth, colors balance shifts slightly, not sure because of iris or gamma.

I don't know whether it can be fixed by calibrating gamma or not.

I found an old discussion on this problem http://www.avsforum.com/t/579460/gray-scale-the-dynamic-iris/0_100


I should say the things are not so bad. I've watched a whole film yesterday ("Largo Winch") with Cinema2. It's not a dark movie in general, but it has dark scenes from time to time. Also I watched "Moon" (2009) few days ago, with Cinema1 or 2, dont remember, with a lot of dark scenes.

Most of the time the issues described above was not distracting/annoying/obvious, even if I could say they are there.
Sometimes I was thinking "Wow its so dark!". But still, sometimes I saw that things are not right.

(Bright scenes look gorgeous btw. Punchy and contrasty. I was really amazed by how bloody black letterboxes look in bright scenes, considering the CR is only about 2000:1.)

So far I like dynamic iris more than I dislike its trade-offs.

The side effects get more obvious when I have to use subtitles. When I know exactly how bright colors should look. Letters are bright white in one scene and grey-muddy in next one. Not good. Perhaps I should develop my English listening skills. (Strange thing btw, I can understand 99% videos on youtube, but its gets much more difficult when watching movies).
Edited by Ilya Volk - 1/8/13 at 7:40pm

Hmm, maybe you're right, maybe shifted colors is just a question of properly calibrated grayscale. I don't have a calibration equipment yet, but I'll try to get it and report the results later.

Question about lens shift levers.
Does each one adjust in one direction only without affecting the other? For example, one moves picture precisely up or down, the other knob left or right. Or is it that they both affect each other. Is this how it works? Please let me know.

It's good to know that the iris is rarely detectable. I used to own an Epson 6500UB with basically the same exact results. The iris itself rarely induced any pumping and was virtually invisible but it had gamma shifts that did odd things to the way color looked. I felt the same way at first. To get better blacks it was worth using it even if the picture did look odd at times. After a few months I decided it wasn't worth keeping it and I moved on to something new.

I wonder, do all irises behave the same? People are praising Epson 5010/20, Sony HW30/50 irises.

You personally have written a lot about how good dynamic iris in PD8150. Does it have similar drawbacks? Or at least some of them can be fixed?

IRIS's all behave differently, it's all in the reactionary math programming of how they respond as the scene darkens. The Sony IRIS most likely uses a complex form of calculus derivatives and logarithmic responses, I think some of these IRIS's are probably done with simple algebraic plotting and fail. The Sony IRIS is the best, then either the Panny or Epson IRIS is close, then who knows. Although some say the Runco IRIS's are almost as good as Sony but I've never spent much time with one.

I have a chance to use HD8300 for two days now and first thing that stands off is amazing color reproduction in any scenes with high or low dynamic range of object brightness. I see no slightest signs of color dullness as described above. I watch in factory resets with cinema mode and dynamic black and results are stunning comparing to my HD33. I finally see the true "darkness" of the space. In opening space scene of "Prometheus" the spaceship looks like never before where darks are deep as I remember these from movie theater. The depth of the space give me this feel of fulfilling my expectations as to the black levels I have been looking for for a while. As to the color, I noticed that with HD8300, my Color setting is to +2 leaving plenty to move forward while on HD33 I had to set color to +12 to balance it. I am so positively surprised about Iris being so silent , I can't hear it. Being little concerned about noisy iris operation on other projectors like Epson, I found Optoma iris not even bothering me with its presence which is great.

I went through around 20 movies last night both in 2D and 3D mode and both looks stunning on hd8300 comparing to hd33, especially in 2D mode. 3D results are similar. My fear of having white ceiling which reflects lots of light from the screen is gone with hd8300 on play. I remember the days several weeks ago when I started my Optoma journey with 2D HD23 model finding black levels unacceptably gray with colors washed out without a way to adjust it. One thing HD23 had was perfect picture geometry - perfect rectangle from corner to corner. Which was not a case for two consecutive hd33 projectors I had. HD8300 also is not as good with geometry as budget HD23 but much better than hd33. After a while of playing with lens shift, I was able to achieve almost excellent geometry of test screen with just slight pinch/barrel distortion on top/bottom edges of the picture. With 106 inch displaying area for watching just movies (no PC desktop needed ;-) it is good enough not to complain.

But above of all, I finally was able to see the picture I always dream about, with amazingly clear colors, great skin tones and breathtaking blacks like never seen before. I had a feeling even in my living room I can get a picture I need, it was not easy but possible with hd8300. I can only imagine what this model can do in optimized dark man cave rooms. But this would have to wait till my basement is ready.

Can someone measure the lumens in 3D mode please?

http://www.amazon.com/Mastech-Light-LX1010B-display-Luxmeter/dp/B004K0A7I6/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1357656594&sr=8-3&keywords=lx1010b

$15 meter on Amazon will work ok for just a quick lux measurement, there is a spreadsheet you can use to convert it.

In 3D mode, what do you mean? Holding probe behind the glasses?
Seriously, all I can measure is white pattern screen in lamp bright mode. Everything beyond including 3D will be useless. Would you agree?

esdwa, whats your screen size and distance to it?

106 inch 16:9 screen gain 1.0
distance to PJ lens 140 inch

Apparently these effects were caused mostly by wrong settings.

While watching some test videos from AVSHD calibration disk I've noticed that 235-255 levels dont reach max brightness as they should.
I recalled that I have color space set to "RGB(0-255)". I changed it to RGB(16-235), and it helped a lot.

I'm glad to say that now those dynamic iris side-effects became MUCH less noticeable.

I can still see all that described above, but now it has reduced to the degree where it is not annoying/disturbing most of the time. Now dynamic iris is almost invisible.

Also, as you can imagine 2D image is now more bright and vibrant in general.
Edited by Ilya Volk - 1/8/13 at 7:40pm

It's the best I've personally seen. The Planar (or Runco LS-5 which is a refined PD8150) doesn't use dynamic gamma when the dynamic iris is functioning. Colors look great all the time. Just like the Sony's it uses complex algorithms to smartly adapt to each frame and scene. It reacts VERY fast to cut down a small amount of light through the light path when a dark scene hits and if needed will close down even further very slowly without you noticing on particularly dark scenes. I've actually had the iris out of the unit still connected to the main board and have seen it working. It's pretty impressive.

The units I've owned with dynamic iris are (and in the order from best to worse in implementation): Planar PD8150, BenQ W5000, Epson 8100, Epson 6500UB, Mitsubishi HC7800D. All but the Mitsubishi were at least decently implemented and useable. The Mitsubishi was god awful and way too noticeable. I've heard similar things about it's flagship model too; the HC9000.

I've never owned a Sony but have demo'ed a Sony 95ES in a showroom. Not having extensive time to play with it I can't fully comment on how it's iris performs. But I didn't notice it working once throughout the ~20 minute demo I was given, which in my opinion means it works at least on par with the Planar I own.
Edited by Seegs108 - 1/8/13 at 7:51pm

Yah, I mean measure just like 2D except with the projector in 3D mode, I don't mean behind the glasses.
The reason we need measurements in 3D mode using a 2D lumens technique is because most projectors drop way off in lumens in 3D modes EVEN before the glasses.
For instance, the Benq w7000 can do 2000 lumens in torch mode, but the 3D torch mode is only 1000-1200 lumens, as an example.

I'm curious what the real Lumens of the hd83000 are in its 3D modes.

Well, measuring projector lumens in 3D would be just taking a reading off the "full white test" pattern at lamp bright mode, so I did for both my projectors.
Results in lumens after conversion from lux are below:

HD33: 925 lm
HD8300: 770 lm

I also measured for Lamp Std mode, here are results:

HD33: 740 lm
HD8300: 620 lm

Lamp in HD33 has 23 total hours, while lamp in HD8300 has 11 total hours only.

I used white test pattern from PJ menu. Not sure if this pattern brings up brightness setting to max to ensure proper measurement. Will test it tonight though to make sure was comparing apples to apples. .

Meter used:
Milwaukee MW 700 Portable Lux Meter

Can you comment please on How HD8300 iris turned off compares to HD33?

The measurements were taken with Iris OFF on HD8300.

I am not surprised with the results, since per manufactuer spec HD8300 is advertised to output 1500 lumens while HD33 is 1800 lumens. In my setup, HD8300 with lower output works much better producing less light which bounced from white ceiling back to the screen weakens the colors and lower blacks depth. With Iris activated HD8300 works even better. The HD33 is great projector but not perfect for this particular setup. In dark bat cave like room it would be best choice probably that I could consider. So although HD8300 with its monster size comparing to HD33 and black enclosure as hard to blend with the white ceiling is going to stay because of lower lumens output and iris which both contribute to much better blacks and color reproduction especially in 2D mode. In 3D mode both projectors are very much similar.

And when I compare both projectors side by side, I see it immediately. As my whole family does.
Edited by esdwa - 1/11/13 at 7:28am

So black level difference is noticeable between HD8300 and HD33 even with iris turned off? this is good thing specially for those who do not like the iris and makes it worth the premium.

Yes it is noticeable in my setup. But this could be also because of lower lumens output for 8300 which makes less bounced back light hitting my screen.
Sure this model has DC3 chip onboard which per spec produces better blacks. But budget 2D model HD23 has DC3 as well which I found producing absolutely no blacks at all making it gray without a way to adjust it mostly because if super high lumen output specified by manufacturer as 2000 lumens.

So every setup has different needs.Its good to keep that in mind when selecting pj for your ht.

One funny thing about "Pure Detail" feature. It actually should be called "Blurry detail".

While experimenting with it, I've found out: set to max (3), HD8300 just shows normal DLP picture as is, 1:1. But when using setting "2", "1", or "OFF" it adds some artificial blur to image.
Edited by Ilya Volk - 1/11/13 at 9:04pm

Other than that, HD8300 doesn't stop surprising me.

Today I have finally got a real screen, instead of temporary DIY paper screen. I've bought just an inexpensive chinese manual pull-down (MW 0.9), but wow, what a difference!
I expected an improvement, but didn't think it would be that impressive. NOW I see what HD8300 is capable of. Finally I see really beautiful bright clear colors, apparently paper screen was adding yellow tint.
Perhaps reporting my impressions before buying a real screen was a mistake.

What I totally didn't expect is another noticeable improvement of dark scenes with dynamic iris! Still, I can see some imperfections, but now I actually can say that I really like how the iris works.
Somehow crushed whites are inevitable I think, but bright parts in dark dont look so muddy and color-shited anymore.

Other thing I didn't expect is a positive effect of shorter throw distance.
At first I set the pj to the longest distance, for the sake of highest CR. Today I've decided to try shorter.

To my surprise, increased brighness actually gives an impression of higher in-picture contrast and punch. Not in all scenes though.
Second, it looks like dynamic iris produces even more better results with raised brightness. Again, I'm speaking of bright parts in the dark - they appear brighter and cleaner, and next to them blacks are giving an impression of being blacker. Night car chase scene from "Casino Royale" looks deep and drammatic.

I stayed up all night, watching my favorite scenes from my favorite movies and couldn't stop smiling.
Edited by Ilya Volk - 1/11/13 at 10:26pm

@Ilya Volk
Can you describe projection room? Is it typical living room with non dark walls and white ceiling or is it more like a dark bat cave? How big is the screen and how close is it to the ceiling? That kind of stuff.