Optoma HD 72 Bulb just went... I Think... - Page 9

Mine was working great for a long time with a lot of daily use but now it is doing the same thing - the bulb does have a LOT of hours on it - maybe even 3000 - but - with only 23 days of warranty left I wonder if indeed it is the bulb.

I have had my hd72 for almost two years. About 6 months ago the HDMI port quit working. They gave me an RMA but I decided not to return it as I was using a component connection (which gives 720P resolution). Then last night (10 days before my warranty expires) I put the lamp in "bright mode" and after a minute it went out. When I turned it on again, the lamp went on for about 20 seconds. I removed it from the ceiling mount and tried to fire it up right side up and still nothing. I also got no warning screen, no red light and the fan seems to be working (although not as loud). I got the RMA today and lucky I still have ten days left so I sent it back. I still have a spare lamp in case it is the lamp. I do have over 2000 hours on the lamp, so I am not sure if I can complain, but the lamp seemed too bright to me to be going out. I will update when I hear from them.

I am thinking of getting this PJ. Optoma told me the bulb problem is a thing of the past, as it came from substandard parts from a bad vender. If thats the case, is there any reason not to get one, as I have read that it puts out a great picture. I have the Optoma H31 now.

Reason #1. Terrible and slow customer service. If you're unlucky enough to deal with them, you'll know what I mean.

Reason #2. See reason #1.

If they are telling you substandard parts from a bad vendor yet were telling so many of us we had to pay $400 because it was a bulb that is even more reason I would never buy Optoma. Course I will never have an Optoma in my house again unless I get it free. And even then it will only be here long enough for me to sell it on Ebay!

They get substandard parts from a bad vendor yet don't stand behind their product when the customer has a defective unit. Terrible company. Good luck...

Bad bulbs happen. The warranties suck on them for a reason. It just seems like we had a bad run of them.

was it bad bulbs or bad lamp balasts ?

Optoma told me it was a bad lamp driver. Talking to them again, it was mentioned that though it was a bad part, no new ones were made since then, so they are all of the same batch. I am glad I finally got that out of them.
I have had a trouble free 2400 hours on my H31, and its still going strong. For the same money, I am going to get the mitsubishi hc3000 to tide me over until the price is right for a 1080p PJ.

It seems like the bad bulbs went out of spec more quickly that expected. I think the lamp driver fix was more to deal with that problem than anything else - but it only gets you a few hundred hours extra.

I think you aren't enthusiastic enough. I rather think we could come up with at the very least one thousand hours of more each. Wich is, everyone would agree, extremely considerable.

Just got my pj back from optoma. Because the hdmi port wasn't working they replaced it with a new main board. When it came back the lamp was working and when I called I was told that even though it still worked it wasn't up to specs, so I replaced it with the spare and everything seems great. I found them to be very quick and efficient and I never had a problem talking with someone at customer service/tech. Also I had 1600 hours on the old lamp and was frequently running it in the bright mode (screen is 120" width and 6ft. high.) After doing research it seems many of the other projectors also do not have great lamp life and that 1600 is respectable for that model. So it turns out my experience with Optoma exceeded my expectations. And I really feel it's a great value for the dollar.

OK, here's the deal. I've had my HD72 for almost 2 years. The bulb counter was at 1410 hours. I ran the projector with Image AI on. I calibrated the projector when I first got it using Calman.

At about 1200 hours I noticed the bulb was not as bright as it use to be so I adjusted the contrast up a bit to compensate.

At about 1300 hours, occasionally, the light would go out after 30 seconds. Only happened about once a week. Then, as time went on, it would happen more often until last week it happened every time I turned on the projector.

I turned off Image AI and bright mode. The bulb would stay on without a problem. The only issue is the picture looked horrible. It was dull and the colors were faded.

Last night I replaced the bulb and returned the projector to all of the original calibrated settings. It looks fantastic!!! Nice bright picture and the color and contrast are awesome.

Here is what I think. Even though the bulb still works after being used for large amounts of hours, the brightness output diminished quite a bit. It's very well possible that the projector is sensitive to bulb performance. When the bulb starts going bad, the projector acts up. Whether or not this is an actual fault or by design is hard to say. People here are getting different replies from Optoma about the bulb issue.

Personally I think changing the bulb was the answer. Even though there may be a fault in the projector, the bulb was on its last legs. Brightness output was greatly diminished and quite frankly I would rather have a nice bright display than trying to drain every last drop from an old bulb.

I do think there is a problem with the lamp counter. I'm pretty sure I had well over 2000 hours on the bulb which would take it to just about its operational limit.

It will be interesting to see how long this new bulb lasts. I hope it doesn't start giving me problems after 600 hours as some of you reported. Only time will tell.

EDIT: One other note. I had dirt smudges appear on the screen after about a year of use. Simply removing the bulb and carefully blowing out the assembly with compressed air (both the bulb and the projector) fixed the problem.

Update: so far, I have ~800 hours on my new (2nd) bulb without any problems, and this time I've been running with AI on instead of economy mode.

(except for the fact that Optoma returned my PJ with 2 dust blobs in the middle of the picture )

Hopefully these new bulbs are indeed better.

add me to the list @ 1600hrs bulb shuts off after about 15-30secs. Interestingly this is my 2nd HD72 - Optoma replaced it immediately after I bought it due to the colors being off back on 6/30/2006. Guess Im right out of the 2yr warranty so cant wait to hear what they want to do with this....

A couple of points: 1600 hours is not what I would consider at all respectable. MAYBE it's respectable FOR THIS MOEL if there is some defect with this model that makes all the bulbs blow early. Kind of like 5 mpg might be respectable for a car IF that model car has something seriously wrong so that all of them get about 5mpg.

Bulbs in many projectors around this price point (even other optomas) easily average 3000 hours. Half the average (not half the max, half the average) is not respectable.

The other thing (and the one that worries me) is that I think the prloblem is the ballasts that wear the bulb out quickly. This would explain why your bulb was below spec at only 1600 hours... it had been warn by a bad ballast.

The really bad news: If that's true, your next bulb will just suffer the same fate and you had to eat the cost of the lost life on your first bulb.

This is what really gets me... Optoma actually replaced my ballast on an earlier RMA for no apparent reason. Well now I know it's because they had bad ballasts and mimne seems to have chewed up my first bulb (at around 600 hours!) Optoma's response was to give ma $100 discount on a new bulb so essentially I PAID for their bad part chewing up their bulb

I have now to hope that they really did replace the bad ballast with a new good one but my hopes aren't high. Especially since excuses of all kinds seem to be coming from Optoma including statements that the original bad batch is the only batch out there thus even us with replaced ballasts still have bad ballasts potentially chewing up our second bulbs!

Add me to the list. Not sure on hours as mine just said zero, but certainly less than a year. I would guess around 1000. Runs for a few minutes and then goes black. Great picture for a couple minutes though. To note when the projector first starts it does make mention to replace the bulb, but the light indicator on the unit doesn't show. Otherwise great projector, just have to bite the bullet and pay 400 for a new bulb. But this yearly investment makes me a bit sour. Might look at a new 1080p unit with a longer bulb life. Anybody know of one? Does lumens affect bulb life?

If this is the first time, RMA it to Optoma and they'll fix the lamp driver...and sneak you a few more hundred hours out of the bulb.

I would definitely call Optoma about it and see what they can do for you. If they try to tell you that this doesn't happen and you must have done something let me know, I will dig up my case number where the exact same thing (sans bulb warning) came up.

I am not confident that they really fix much with the lamp driver but if they do have a fix or a better driver to swap in, it's in your interest to get it so your second bulb doesn't meet the same fate as your first.

You know this is funny!!!!!!!!!!! Optoma loves to tell people they have never seen their type of problem before. Yet when you get on a forum such as this you will find multiple incidents of the same or identical in nature. I say as was thought of and mentioned by another member in my thread ---Warning!!! Hd65 have bad optics --- thay people with Optoma brand PJ's post their case #'s in a single thread whether be mine or here or in the Optoma reveiws section. That way others will have ammo against this shady business practice.

I had one of the very first of these projectors and had this problem about a year ago. I got it fixed, although I wasn't really sure how they fixed it, and kind of suspected that they simply replaced the bulb.

Just now, the bulb turned off shortly after startup. I turned it back on and switched it off of bright mode, and about a half hour in, so far so good.

Am I right in thinking that if I buy a new bulb all my problems will be solved?

I don't know how many hours were on the bulb when I first sent it out but I've put 800 hours on it since.

EDIT: Here's my real question: Has anyone still had this problem with a brand new bulb? Thanks.

I'm at 1150 hours with my new bulb. So far so good, knock on wood.

it could really be a faulty bulb

Thanks for the info. The problem hasn't occurred since that one time, but I decided to buy a new bulb to be ready when I needed it.

While waiting for UPS to arrive, I was watching a movie and noticed that the image was flickering. This was definitely a projector problem, because it occurred even when no signal was being displayed.

I decided to install the new bulb, and started freaking out when it initially started flickering as well. But after a minute or two, it was fine.

I compared the two bulbs, and noticed that the old one was starting to get cloudy, with a grey spot on the glass.

The new one was noticeably brighter. I tested it out with a light meter. I don't know how accurate the meter is, but I was getting about 11 fL on the old bulb, and over 13 on the new one.

I also kept an eye on the lamp hour counter. I reset it shortly after installing the bulb, and had it on for about 8 hours. But at the end of the night, the counter read 4 hours. This makes me think I got over 3000 hours on the other bulb, which is more than acceptable to me.

Altogether, I'm glad I bought a new bulb. But I am still worried about the flickering.

I posted a new thread today basically saying what people have been saying all along in this thread ( I searched and found this thread after I posted the other one )

Basically, my projector has 1050 hours on it and last week it started doing the turn off after 1 minute thing (it's all been on bright mode, but that's still a short number of hours). There's been no warning lights or anything, it just shuts off with the fan still running.

I bought my projector and got a promotional deal in which I get 2 bulbs in the first 3 years for free (it's been two years since I bought it, so I still have a year to get the bulbs)

I'm thinking of getting one of the bulbs and replacing my current bulb and then trying my projector again. And if that doesn't work, then sending it in to Optoma and dealing with their nightmare customer service in case it's a lamp driver issue.

What do you guys think, should I go this route? Or should I just send my projector like this into optoma in case it's a lamp driver issue?

I am also having this problem. Image would go blank after 1 minute. I switched from Brite to Normal mode and it is working again. I am sure it is temporary. My warranty is long expired, so I am not sure what I will do yet.

However, with all the complaining going on, I will say that my primary display device is my Xbox 360, so I am pretty use to something in my setup not working. :-)

AAARRRRGGHHHHHHH!!!!!

I knew I shouldn't have said anything cuz I jinxed myself.

Bulb #2: 1200 hours and now it's crapping out again.

I will never buy Optoma ever again!!!!!!

Ouch Dragon - 18 days after your post.

Has anyone confirmed the issue with the lamp hours counter? I guess I could test my projector, but I am too lazy right now.

Yeah. I really shouldn't have expected it to last considering how poorly my first bulb fared, not to mention Optoma's stellar customer service <---- SARCASM.

Nobail, as you have already done, I switched my bright mode to off, and so far it's ok. But this will most definitely be a temporary cure. Let us know how much longer your bulb lasts in this mode. I'm curious.

As for the lamp counter, some people have reported inaccurate counts. I've checked my own usage on a couple nights, and the lamp counter was correct for me.

Did your second bulb go out after only replacing the bulb and that's it? Or did it go out with replacing the bulb and also sending it to Optoma and having them fix something else too?

I have a new bulb coming soon and was thinking to try replacing the current bulb first and see if that works and not send it to Optoma if it does.

It just doesn't seem like it's the bulb though. Light goes out 1 min after the projector is on. Bulb only has 1000 hours on it.

Besides the fact that it should get more hours, aren't there signs that the bulb goes out like the popping sound or the picture not even coming up at all in the first place?

These things are what makes me think it's more the lamp driver, in which case a new bulb wouldn't make a difference at all.

When I had this same problem with my first bulb, I sent the pj into Optoma to have it looked after. Weeks later, they diagnosed that I needed a new bulb only. According to Optoma, there was nothing else wrong with the pj.

There has to be something inherently wrong with the HD72. A design flaw or something. Because I think that you should get more than 60% use out of a bulb before it needs to be replaced. Not only that, but the bulb itself has not "burnt out." In fact, the projector brightness has not diminished at all IMO. It just won't stay on for more than a minute.

And, getting Optoma customer service to admit to anything but a "new bulb" is futile. If you do send it in for service, you'll most likely be told that all you need is a new bulb.

Good luck. But unfortunately, you (and I) bought a lemon.