Optoma HD65 Review & Screenshots

Here are some details on the new budget minded Optoma HD65. First it's very small, can fit in the palm of your hand, well almost. Weight is around 4lbs. But this little projector is a power house of brightness and features.

How bright, set in Cinema it's tuned well OTB for Film, it measured a high 18ft-candles which is around 600lumens on a 106" 1.0 diag screen, this is econo mode also. Bright mode adds 20% more light. Not so much light you say that is plenty for HT. Now the magic, put the projector in Bright video choice the Ft-candles measurement goes sky high to 38ftc, that's 1300lumens and in econo, add 20% in bright mode you get 1600lumens there abouts. Very close to spec. The best part about these choices is they're both tuned well and produce an excellent grayscale.

The HD65 uses a new colorwheel with RGB/CYM instead of typical RGB/RGB. It uses this in conjunction with Brilliant Color II from Ti. BC II with this color wheel produces high brightness while keeping the colors natural, specially flesh tones which was a slight problem with BC1.

One new feature Optoma is very keen on is it's (Super-wide) aspect choice. This is a feature designed for a budget constant height setup without having to buy a lens that's costs way more than the projector. Any 2.35 aspect movie when using Super-wide auto will be picked up by the projector and automatically set to delete the 2.35 black bars. What I did was use auto detect and then 1% overscan plus I raised the image with vertical shift. Since I have a electric screen I could just raise up the bottom to match the video area and bam now all my 2.35 movies will fill the screen with a larger scope type image, no bars. The good part is it does this without a drastic change in resolution, the image stays sharp.
Owners with fixed screen could figure some type of small mask to mask out the top or bottom or the now 2.01 screen setup.

On to some pictures, some with the Super-Wide enabled.
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/hd651.jpg
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/hd652.jpg

DVD shots done thru a Tosh HDA1 upscaled to 1080i.
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/optomahd651.jpg
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/optomahd652.jpg
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/optomahd653.jpg
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/optomahd654.jpg
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/optomahd655.jpg

http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/optomahd656.jpg
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/optomahd65nobars1.jpg

http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/optomahd65nobars2.jpg
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/optomahd65nobars3.jpg
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http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/optomahd65nobars5.jpg

Standard DVD shot with a question, who are those people?
http://www.cigarbest.com/sales/optomahd65whosthat.jpg

Any questions I'll try to get answers, thanks for looking.

Edit: I also should add Optoma's Top Guy in Taiwan Tzungilin told me there's another new projector they have which is considered a presentation model but is actually tuned and setup for Home Theater. It uses the same color wheel and has Brillant Color II just like the HD65. But it has a much higher lumen rating 2500lumens. It start price is $999 - there's the stats.
http://www.optomausa.com/Product_det...product_id=339

Edit: Here are some numbers that might look good for your HD65 if not just use your calibration DVD or THX optimizer to get the brightness/contrast and colors fine tuned.


"First off zero brilliant color, zero True Vivid, and using PC gamma which came closer to 2.2reference gamma.

HDMI/720p
Cinema
contrast -7
Brightness -6
Color 10
Tinit 0
Sharpness 0

Advanced Degamma PC
BC 0
TV 0
CT warm
AI off

RGB gains/bias
RG 0
GG -5
BG -7
RB -1
GB -1
BB 0"

Yeah sorry had a technical problem, my server company had me tapped out on picture level. Problem is I hit delete and deleted all my pictures for past threads not really a big problem the new ones are working now. enjoy

DK for know only the brightness stats, probably between 2000.1 to 3000.1, doubt if you'll see mfg stat of 4000.1. But the lumens are there for sure. I have it running right now in 1600lumen mode with a 49er's HD game going in full daylight. You can watch the picture it's so bright yet colors arent' washed out.

I can run that test with colorfacts but it has to be pitch black outside. Haven't even grayscale tuned it yet because it looks good right now. Actually matches my H79 which is grayscale tuned, matches colorwise. Looks like the niners wins this one.

It stretches the image to larger up and out a bit but it does this without softening an image. The cool part is when in auto it remembers and anytime you send a 2.35 image it goes into action. Send it a 1.85 and nothing happens. Thats with component or HDMI. Tzungilin said something about it adding resolution like 100pixels or so. I'll see if I can't get a clearer explanation about part.

Here I'll quote my friend in Taiwan so members can understand Super-Wide better.


"5. Super Wide is default at Off. To activate it, select Auto, then set the Zoom feature to 1. HD65 will then automatically detects the content, if 16x9, it masks off top and bottom 5% to show the "action safe" area with a near 2.0:1 ratio. If 2.35 content, it takes the 2.0:1 portion of the 2.35 and fill the 1280x640 area, so we get 100-lines more of vertical resolution than a plain 2.35:1 image (1280x544). So now we have "constant height" and "constant width" for both 16x9 and 2.35:1 movies. So the average consumer will no longer be confused as to why some movies fill the screen, and some movie has black bars at top/bottom.

6. The 2.0:1 provides a good wide viewing vista for more Cinemascope feeling without expensive 16x9 lens. With <$999, consumer gets a "budget minded CHT".

Super Wide works well, especially, with 1080i source, where 100-lines more resolution is used to interpret the 1080i/p contents.

It's best to use a 2.0:1 screen to mask out the unused pixels to enjoy the 2.0:1 Cinemascope feeling.

If user don't like it, they can always disable that, and HD65 performs like any 720p 16x9 projector does."

The coloring looks better to me, plus 1600 lumens can wear the paint off your screen.

You could be happy with a $500 HD70, if they were both the same price I'd pick the HD65.

I read Optoma will be selling 2.01 screens to match up with this feature. Nothing on the website yet about the screens or tech setup stats about the projector. I'd expect them soon.

Definetly a worthy feature for setup. Electric screen users can jump right in because they can vary the screen height by increments. Plus there should be 2.01 screens available in the near future. Optoma should add this option to other new projectors also. Not everybody likes the lenses, they do come with their hardships. This is the first time I've seen any mfg. come up with this idea, nice work.

I use to think like that till I saw how well the resolution stays with the superwide activated. Takes all the 2.35 movies and makes them larger than life. Looks good to me and I really don't miss the small percent on the outfields of widescreen video. The larger view makes the bigger difference for a full cinema effect.

"Yuck. This is as bad as pan and scan. I'd prefer not to crop my movies.

I thought I was the only one..."

No problemo, disable superwide and stick with 2.35 bars if that's your preference. I just think it's cool to have the new option, you should see it work, pretty neat.