Optoma HD70. The new budget king.

What is a "low price" exactly?

Use google. Less then 1550$ inc.vat in UK

Yeah but what is the exchange rate with the currency?

I did recalculate pounds in $; original price is 794 pounds (=1550$). Now you can get it for even less. Cheaper then AE900.

So are we guessing the US equivalent is going to be announced at CEDIA? If a PJ is targeted as the budget audience, how quickly does the price tend to descend from the MSRP? With a MSRP of $1550 (and that's including Vat, maybe take 12% off that? I dunno) I'd think this puppy could be a strong contender in the <$1k segment, or am I just dreaming? Who can offer some perspective here?

I don't know but I just decided to delay my purchase of a PJ until the 1st of the year. I need to get a new computer desk and do something about an equipment rack before picking out a PJ. My HT doubles as a home office. Anyway I've been waiting 2 years for a larger tv so I don't think 4 more months will matter.

1000 lumens

This is the same idea as the Mitsubishi HD1000u

http://www.projectorpeople.com/homet...1000U&SID=QFRO

Canadian SRP at $1299, could hit lower on promo, or so I've heard...

If anyone is interested visual apex has it listed on their site for preorder at an awesome price!

That is a hell of a deal. Now we just need to know what the offset is, what speed is the color wheel and wether it has some sort of lens shift.

This might help. It was posted on the VisualApex order page for the HD70. This PDF seems to be the US datasheet for the projector.

It appears that I can't post the URL directly since I don't have 5 posts, but you can visit the HD70 page on visualapex and click the "specs" link to see the information.

Looks like I have 5 posts now

http://www.visualapex.com/ProductSupport/HD70.pdf

Hmmmm, I can see it now,

Cosco will offer this for $899 with Ceiling Mount and 106" GWII.

Can anyone tell what the potential difference between this projector and the HD72 would be? At this point it would seem as though one might only be losing the 48-pixel digital vertical lens shift that you get from the 1280x768 panel on the HD72.

I'm assuming that areas where they would have cut costs would be in the casing/optics/scaling chips. Could they have skimped anywhere else?

Wow I wouldn't be surprised if this price is the MRSP. The casing looks cheaper, it's true. Looks like CEDIA is going to bring prices down indeed - this'll definately force down the other prices, too. Exciting times.

Yes, indeed! I will wait to see what other products come to the North American market over the next year and read user reviews and reports, in print and around the web before making a purchase, though.

I don't see it on Optoma's website. Has anyone found out the offset and throw range on this? Thanks.

According to some of the uk sites it says offset is 135% and it has a 4x color wheel. Haven't found out anything about throw range.

This looks like its based off the same case and lens as the H27.....and that had an outrageous offset.

Sadly, that wont work for me........but maybe this means the HD72 will come down as well.

Throw ratio is included on the PDF visible at visual apex of specs indicate throw ratio of 1.58-1.9:1 (Distance/Width) and Projection Distance of 4.28' to 32.8' . Now I think we have almost all the details... other than real-world performance.

BTW the UK Optoma website notice I saw says "New purpose designed 5 speed, 7 segment colour wheel technology". The HD72 also has a 7-segment color wheel which as far as I know is the same speed. So it's not as bright, 1dB louder (28 still ain't bad), 4000:1/3000:1 (on/off) vs 5000:1/3500:1 in the HD72. It's 1.4lbs lighter, smaller in 2 of 3 demensions (a bit deeper) and consumes a bit less power - which makes sense given the 30% lumen differential.

The HD72 is also capable of native XGA resolution and has the 48 pixels extra vertical resolution to pixel shift up and down a bit. I guess most would agre HD72 is a bit better looking. All in all, at $500 cheaper (give or take) the HD70 looks awesome.

Still need to see that offset, thats the deal breaker for alot of us...

Yeah I understand - I was going on the assumption that the 135% offset info was accurate, but perhaps its not to be trusted - since the colorwheel info seems wrong. What was the specific offset of the H27?

Offset according to projector central for the h27 was 57% and 35% for the h31. I'm replacing a infocus 4805 which they say is 34%. So I hope it is going to be 35% or less.

Sweet, this might push down the price of the Mitsu 3100 (which is a bit more interesting with the darkchip3)

Does anyone know how to figure out the offset from the numbers nightfly listed?

There are no stupid questions, only stupid people...

What's offset?

Offset is the position of the projected image relative to the centerline of the lens.

So, on a zero offset projector the bottom of the projected image (assuming its sitting upright on a coffee table) is directly in line with the lens. If the lens is 30" off the floor, the bottom of the projected image is 30" off the floor.

But many projectors come with a built in offset that is not zero. A percentage of the image height usually.

This means the projected image doesn't start at the same height of the lens, but actually up higher by some X degree. This is so that people can put the PJ on a coffee table and not have to, say, prop the thing up on books or whatever in order to get the image high enough on their wall or screen to enjoy it.

But it also means that those of us who have our PJ's hung inverted from the ceiling have to have very tall ceilings the higher the offset percentage gets.

The Optoma H27 had a 57% offset, which is huge, and made that projector almost unusable for ceiling mounting unless you had really tall ceilings, or a really small screen.