Just Purchased Viewsonic Pro8200 Refurb- pixel blur??? defective???

Make sure AUTO-Keystone is turned off and Keystone is at 0, and make sure you have the 16:9 vs. Auto setting configured correctly or you may lose 1:1 pixel mapping. Also, there is by default some Overscan that you need to turn off. The Benq w1060/w1100/w1200 is probably sharper if that is what you are after.

All that said, there is a little chromatic abberation with some cheaper DLP's even with no keystone, this is due to cheaper optical assemblies. Some DLP's suffer from poor focus uniformity instead of CA, so pick your poison. The yellow bleed however sounds abnormal. My Pro8200's only real issue is a slight color uniformity issue but it's invisible in ALL viewing (the left side has 20% more red tint to it then right side). I am very impressed with the PQ this projector can produce, and the contrast is actually fairly decent at this price range.

The Viewsonic Pro8200 is pretty sharp for a cheap DLP once you consider how good the focus uniformity is. It is true that a projector like a Benq w6000 or Mits hc4000 has less CA and will focus tighter at the most focused point, but even the Mits has a focus uniformity issue that makes it not much better in sharpness than the Viewsonic overall (Mits is a tad better at sharpness, and the Benq is even a tad better than the Mits).

However, I cannot say if your unit has some variance beyond the normal Pro8200's, I am not sure. Pixels will rarely be perfect looking on a projector when you walk right up to the screen, what is important is how sharp it is from seating distance. You can take a picture and show it to me, and I might be able to tell you if it looks about the same as mine.

You also need to focus about 1/3rd into the screen (not the middle) in order to acheive the best sharpness.

The Viewsonic Pro8200 isn't as sharp as a JVC RS-45/RS-55/RS-65 and not quite as sharp as a Mits hc3800/hc4000, but it's about equal to an Epson 5010 or maybe a tad sharper than the Epson. Hence, it's plenty sharp for what most people would require. It is basically like a sharp LCD with very good convergence, but it is not as perfect as the sharpest projectors (but few are). Buying a DLP does not guarantee you will be getting one of the sharpest projectors, certain DLP's are better than others.

I am not sure overscan really would make that much difference, but you can try.

Change to S-VIDEO or any non-used input, turn off overscan, set noise reduction to LOW, and then change back to the source you were on. The setting should be retained. For any setting that is not adjustable (greyed out), you should be able to do this same procedure.