Optoma HD81-LV Discussion/Reviews - Page 5

Have there been many other AVS Members who have purchased the HD81-LV who are lurking here but less inclined to post than Jeff & Mr. HiFi?

If so, please weigh in on your experience with the HD81-LV.

Mr. HiFi/Jeff,

If you had your money back in your wallet from your
HD81-LV purchase and had no unique room/installation offset/throw distance prohibitions, would you buy a different 1080P Projector from the Fall 2007 crop of Q3-Q4 units that have been announced or are shipping now?

Guitarman so Im clear on what you are saying if I went with a 144" wide X 61.25 High 2.35:1 screen the offset would be approximately 20" above the top of the screen?
Do I have that right?
As far as going back I have 21 feet to go back

61.25 x 36% will be 21.96" center lens above the screen.

Mine is being installed some time this week, replacing the HD81. I'll keep you posted. It looks very nice with its sparkly black case ... much better looking than white!

Murray,

Since you asked...

1. Bought my LV on 8-15-7; installed it myself around 8-20-7. Physical installation was no problem as I had already ceiling mounted 2 other PJs in the same spot over the past 5 years so I already had the video cable in place and pulled in the control cable while waiting on Brown to bring the PJ and mount.
2. Fortunately, my room sets up OK to use the lens and zoom capabilities...barely. I am just about at the extreme of the zoom range with my ~15' throw and 80" wide screen. Fortunately, when I first bought my Stewart Electro-mask Trapdoor screen, I got a 4x3 screen. So, I had enough screen height, masking height, and motor range to accomodate the (IMO) extreme fixed vertical image offset. Actually, the viewing height is very comfortable for me and very close to the bottom of the original 4x3 PJ image.
3. I have found it harder than I thought it might be to get all the setup knobs tweaked. There are plenty of setup adjustments and enough to make for a great picture with almost any kind of equipment and physical layout you might have. And enough to exhaust your thought process if you let them get control of you. I think you will find that turning fewer knobs is better than tweaking a lot. For color, in my opinion, all you need is the 'user' temperature controls, RGB contrast and brightness. For black/white balance, I only needed to turn the basic brightness control to -8 (I think). After that, it's only a matter of how much light you choose to shoot across the room.
4. My remote control has already died as of last night. It began with backlighting staying on all the time, which of course killed a set of batteries in about a day's time. After putting in new batteries, it worked for about 30 seconds until the backlighting freezes again and the remote becomes useless as it no longer will control anything. It doesn't appear to be a stuck button but whatever the reason, it is useless. So, today I e-mailed my RMA request to replace the remote. I hope the complicated stuff lasts longer than the remote. I can't remember any other remote I have owned failing and I've had a bunch of them.
5. The PJ puts out a bold picture--high def stuff looks awesome. I had already been using my HTPC to scale SD DVDs so I can't tell much scaling quality difference for them but they are still better than with my old 1366x768 PJ that is now headed to one of my children. A million pixels makes a big difference.
6. If it keeps working, I am gonna like it--A LOT!

Dan

What did the Optoma HD81-LV replace?

Take a look at the screen shots of the LV I posted a little ways back. Yeah I tuned it with colorfacts but it didn't need much help. OTB the grayscale test for HDMI 1080 looked pretty close to perfect. Those pictures are some of the more natural and high ansi contrast pictures I've posted. Same shots done many times with other projectors. The LV does look aweful good. It must be the colorwheels RGBCYM. Even a colorbars pattern showed excellent color tones for RBY - Green was slighty tinted with yellow but that's understandable with this level of brightness. Overall excellent for all types of video. enjoy

Here they are -
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/hd81lvfifth4.jpg
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/hd81lvfifth3.jpg
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/hd81lvglad2.jpg

http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/hd81lvd65k.jpg
__________________

Murray,

The last PJ I had mounted was a Sanyo PLV-80...3000 lumen, 1366x768, 3 panel LCD, 1000:1 CR large venue HD projector. It actually did a very good job but I could not resist doubling the number of pixels and improving the contrast ratio by a factor of 10. Before that I used a Sanyo PLC-XP21N...2500 lumen, 1024x768, 3 panel LCD, 700:1 CR and it was also a great projector when I bought it.

Them DLP 1 chip / no covergence devices can show some of the sharpest pictures you've ever seen. enjoy

Why do you think our buddy Greg Rodgers always mentions, very nice but not near as sharp or high in ansi as the 1chip DLP's I've tested.

If one was thinking about getting a projector as well as a
50"-65" plasma to deal with some ambient light for content other than movies, with some lights on, such as watching sports, is the HD81-LV an "all-in-one" (no plasma) solution using the units 2 different brightness modes for daytime-sports / nightime-movies use?

With any front projector you need to tone the daylight down in the projector room. But you have a good shot at having a bright image with contrast with some light using the HD81LV. It doesn't have to be pitch black. I could watch football on Sunday in the day with some light in the room.

I just got mine on Monday. I still need to buy a screen, speakers and receiver, so I will not be much help until I get those. I will be happy to post once I am up and running, but it will realistically not be for a couple of weeks.

What about dead/stuck pixels? What is the tolerance number of dead pixels before a unit is replaced?

I guess it should be 0, because a dead pixel would immediately show on a 1 chip DLP machine...

Thanks,
Martin

can anyone tell the minimum amount of space needed above the projector?
Still trying to figure out screen size.

Thanks

Using a flush mount like the chief mounts the projector lens center will be near 6" down from the ceiling, leaving enough room for ventilation between the projector bottom and ceiling. 36% offset of the screen height plus the 6" the mount adds to figure what screen you can fit and where it will sit on the wall between the floor and ceiling.

While we all know you can't get everything in one product, is anyone who is contemplating buying the HD81-LV at all concerned that (A) it uses a DarkChip3 and not the newer DarkChip4, and that (B) it employs HDMI v1.2 and not v1.3a?

Is there one or more spreadsheets from which these calculations were derived?

The manual on the Optoma webstie.

Thanks.

Forgot, projector central has a nifty screen calculator for each projector. The match up for the HD81LV is accurate.

Mr. HiFi, Jeff R., and other early HD81-LV adopters,

If you had your money back in your wallet from your
HD81-LV purchase and had no unique room/installation offset/throw distance prohibitions, would you buy a different 1080P Projector from the Fall 2007 crop of Q3-Q4 units that have been announced or are shipping now (i.e. Infocus IN82, JVC RS2, others)?

I did not meet the criteria of your statement mkerdman because after 4 projectors, asking me to open my wallet and throw good money after bad would have been a deal breaker. Would I select an Optoma HD81-LV over other units available today? I have not been shopping but based on my experiences with Optoma's reliability, the difficult installation process and the fact that I do not use the 2:35 external lens, the answer is probably no. If I were going to use an external lens, the answer would be yes based on Jeff's experiences. The many nice things that attracted me to the HD81 have become far less important in a year. The main reason i selected the 81 was the VXD3000 external switcher/scaler. The latest crop of processors like the Integra 9.8, have Reon scalers and lots of HDMI inputs. You would not need the external switcher scaler which would be part of the Pre/Pro.

Lastly but very importantly, getting a satisfying picture with all the interactive picture controls is very frustating. Not since the Kloss Videobeam have I run into any projector that requirs so much fiddling. To get acceptable Color saturation and acceptable hue, you must stop adjusting Brilliant Color and even the Edge Enhancement. Raising these have a not sublme effect on hue and color. Often, I wind up starting all over again after 20 minutes of fiddling. Also, forget trying to get a decent picture out of an S or video/analog ginput. WAY TOO MANY Variables to adjust.

No, I would not go through this again. The only positive side has been meeting some awfully nice guys like Jeff and Tom. Misery does love company. M., this has not been unlike the year we went through trying to get LG to fix the LST-3410A. I would not buy one or even 3 lie I have now if Ihad known that the guide would not work and that the machines would requir an unplug/replug cycle evry day or they freeze up and become useless. Nevertheless, like the 3410, you tend to love the 81 because once you get everything dialed in correctly, it is like good sex where the experience is so good that you can't wait for the next time. Enough.... My final words.

Art

That was a very sincere post.

I too owned a Kloss porjector, but mine was the Advent Model 750 and after a few bad CRT's the unit proceeded to work for over 15 years without a problem.

From what I understand the LG LST-3410A still has fits and starts.

I moved and am using a Panasonic AE1000 as a "placehoolder" projector.

However, I previously owned an InFocus 7205 which delivered superb images and no problem over an extended period of time. I had to sell it with the house.

For that reason, and for the fact that the next 24 months will probably bring a torrent of new tech (LED, Laser etc.) at ever cheaper $/lumen/CR, I am now considering the InFocus IN82 or the HD81-Leither the HD81-LV.

I have no idea if IF is having the IN82 manufactured to the same standard or by the same subcontractor as the SP 7205 that served me so well.

The IN82 does not have Brilliant Color, the newer color wheel design or UShape tech from T.I., and yet it is reported to be very bright and fullfill my desire to have a Day/Sports as well as a Night/Movie projector in one device which might allow me to not have a flat screen LCD/Plasma in the room behind a motorized screen.

I plan to use the Panamorph UH380 and motorrized sled in a 16:9-2.35:1 with whichever projector I get next.

On paper the HD81-LV makes a tremendous amoujnt of sense, but, I do not want to go through even 10% of what you did with your Optoma projectors over the last year as mine is a ceiling mount install and I do not have the temprament for latent defects in expensive electronics that I used to.

So, I now have my LV installed, replacing my original 'standard HD81'. PQ out of the box is impressive, bright as reported and much improved blacks. Only one problem, I have already suffered three complete shut downs. I had suffered the blue screen issue (due to overheating) with the standard 81 but never a complete shut down. With my previous experience I decided to run the PJ in bright mode (with the 81 we had cool air being force fed in to the PJ and an exhaust fan sucking out the hot air and yet still had to run in bright mode to avoid blue screen!) and so far this seems to have solved the problem. I'm bummed as I thought Optoma had solved the overheating issue with this version and was looking forward to being able to run the PJ in its quitest mode!

I'm going to give this thing a thorough test and decide if this is even worth keeping over my standard 81 (which was boxed up ready to ship back to Optoma!) and perhaps await the newly announced LB version. I do like the added brightness and better black levels though, so if this is purely an overheating issue I may just keep it and accept that I will still have to run in bright mode and put up with that added fan noise.

I'll report back!!

MCB

"I'm bummed as I thought Optoma had solved the overheating issue "

They found the blue screen/heat problem to be a hardware fix on the HD81. I thought anyone with the problem would send it in for the fix. The LV shouldn't have the old hardware that started the problem. Keep testing it maybe it's a RS-232 or HDMI problem.

What exactly is the newly announced "LB" version?

Yeah, what is the LB? What gives?

There doesn't seem to be an "LB" version - therer are a few posts on the net mentioning an LB, but these are all from earlier this year and they are typos! They were referring to the LV...

I just hope there will not be an evern newer version already, now that I should receive my new LV tomorrow... ;-)

Regards!

Sorry, my typo ... what I meant was when we get to hear of the announcement of the new LV (i.e, v2) which I had hint of at Cedia, albeit down the road a little bit yet. Optoma were conspicuous by their absence at Cedia, but rumours were flying, in certain circles.

MCB,

Sorry to hear you have a problem with your LV. Remember that my first LV died. The second one has shut down once. I run it on low blower. SEND IT BACK. If you are near sea level, and you have allowed 10cm of open space between the ceiling and the projector, it should not be turning off.