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May 9th, 2008 Art Feierman
OK, time to pick up where I left off. We’ve already discussed a bit about 3LCD’s strengths in terms of more color per lumen, and in color accuracy at full power. There are, however other issues which came up in our discussions. One of those was the cost of maintenance.The guys on the other side of the isle - those DLP proponents at Texas Instruments, claim a big advantage in terms of cost of maintenance. So, let’s investigate. This isn’t about reliability, but about routine maintenance. The DLP folks point out that that most DLP projectors do not require dust filters, because DLP projectors use a sealed light path. 3LCD projectors require filters, and therefore, frequent changing of them, because dust can be a problem, and can even mar the image with what are called (aptly) dust blobs.
The 3LCD folks counter, that many of today’s 3LCD projectors don’t need filters cleaned any more frequently than they need lamp changing. If that were the case, they would have a strong case. As I said to the 3LCD folks, hey, you don’t have to be better at everything. I said that, because I do think DLP has the advantage here.There are basically two scenarios. Projectors that are placed on a table top, and those that are permanently mounted. Since cleaning or replacing a filter is a very quick thing, if you have easy access to the projector, using your projector on a table top, negates any real advantage of projectors that don’t need filters changed frequently. Ceiling mounting is a whole different story. Often, accessing a ceiling mounting projector requires at least a ladder. And it can be a real challenge if you have really high ceilings. In some commercial applications, reaching the projector can be daunting, consider many church sanctuaries, where the projector could be 50 feet up in the air, or perhaps a small auditorium, large multipurpose room, or hotel ballroom. not only a pain, but expensive timewise, especially if you contract out, or have a support department run as a profit center. Read the rest of this entry »
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May 6th, 2008 Art Feierman
What a whirlwind trip. Japan and back in four days (from San Clemente California). Overall, the trip was a bit brutal, a lot of fun, and, actually rather enlightening. I’ll give you a taste of the travel schedule, and then get into the substance of the trip.
The brutal aspect of the trip started with a 10.5 hour flight from LAX to Tokyo’s Narita Airport. I’ve got to thank the 3LCD group for dropping the big bucks on Business Class. Those seats are the size of a small car, and really do open up into a flat bed. Amazing. Of course I had to leave the house 3+ hours before the flight, and once landing, there was the almost hour to get luggage, and take transport (90 minutes) from the airport to the hotel in Tokyo. Ok, that doesn’t sound so bad (if a 10.5 hour flight can ever be good - the food was).
The killer, though, was we left LA on Monday, and arrived Tuesday (crossed the international date line), around dinner time at our hotel, only to have to (after some catch up sleep Tuesday evening), meet in the hotel lobby at 7am on Wed morning, for a ride to another airport and a “short” two hour flight to northern Japan.
Once arriving on the island of Hokkaido (near Sapporo), it was a short ride to Epson’s automated 3LCD plant, located right off the airport grounds. Read the rest of this entry »
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April 16th, 2008 Art Feierman
Looks like late this weekend before the review posts (too much fun on vacation and trade show). In my two days in between, I spent 6-7 more hours watching the HD71 in my viewing room. Overall, I’m extremely impressed. This is a great projector if you must have some lighting on. It cruised with low lighting, where my JVC (still pretty bright) would have me running to turn off most of it.
Finally, we have here a serious alternative to the Panasonic PT-AX200U, for those looking for a bright projector.
This gives those that favor DLP a nice, bright alternative.
Overall, I found the color balance and skin tones to be very good, although I had to drop the color saturation a little. But, even slightly oversaturated, they look good, and that extra saturation comes in handy with some ambient lighting.
That’s pretty much the gist of it. To me, it is a “on your short list” 720p projector. If it will work in your room from a placement standpoint, and you can live with a not especially quiet DLP projector (and DLP projectors tend to be the noisiest), it is an excellent value that should please most.
Optoma made a “gud-un”. -art
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April 4th, 2008 Art Feierman
So far, so good! As many of you know, I’m a big fan of brighter is better when it comes to home theater projectors. Most of today’s home cinema projectors can barely handle the larger screens - greater than 110″ diagonal, when new. And then, the lamp dims over time.
I’ve really been looking forward to reviewing the Optoma HD71, and was thrilled to see it arrive on Wednesday (two days ago). Normally, I need at least a week to do a review, but, unfortunately, I’m leaving for three weeks of travel, starting with family vacation tomorrow, then a trade show, and finally Japan, on business.
As a result, I’m going to use this post to give you some initial impressions. My plan is to post a more comprehensive review on our website, late next week (4/10/08). I should note, however, that I will not get the opportunity to do as much viewing of the projector as I would like, and will not have time to do the usual set of screen photos. The review will be finished late April, when I return, but there should be plenty of substance for you all to consider, between now and then.
So far, I have watched an hour or two of the projector, before any calibration. Then, yesterday, I calibrated the HD71 and took all the usual measurements. Last evening I managed to log a few hours watching the calibrated HD71.
OK, here’s what I’ve learned, so far:
Out of the box performance is not overly impressive, in terms of color accuracy. This seems to be typical of Optoma’s home theater projectors. Calibrating made major improvements. Unlike many home theater projectors, though, pre-calibration measurements were a bit unusual. With most projectors, the various grayscale measurements - from white -100 IRE, to dark gray - 30 IRE, are fairly consistent, or there is a definite steady shift in color from light to dark. Typical might be a projector that has a color temp of 6900K for white, becoming warmer and shifting down to perhaps 6300K by 30 IRE. Not so, the Optoma HD81.
Instead, the HD71’s color temperature, through the range is more of a roller coaster. This made it more difficult to get a great calibration, but, the end result was definitely pretty good.
The other issue, is that Cinema mode defaults to Warm color temperature, which produces a way too warm image. Initial measurements had measured from a high of just under 6000K (6500K is ideal), down to just under 5000K by 30 IRE.
I decided to change the basic color temp setting to Cool, and calibrate from there. The end result was a good, but not spectacular range from 6253K to 6831K. “Close enough for government work!”.
I also adjusted the Bright mode. the range was a little wider, but again, not bad. Had I more time to spend, I’m sure I could have further improved the color balance for Bright mode.
That brings us to brightness! Are you sitting down? The HD71, with lamp on full power, and in the calibrated Cinema mode, produced a really brilliant 1040 lumens. Now most home theater projectors in their equivalent modes, tend to fall between 350 and 500 lumens. There are only a couple of projectors, including the roughly $8000 Optoma HD81-LV, that are brighter. That means this is truly an exceptionally bright projector, for home theater. For once, while watching on my 128″ firehawk, I actually put the projector in low lamp mode, as I had the lumens to spare.
In the brightest measured mode, the HD71 measured just over 2000 lumens! Of all the 720p resolution projectors out there, only the Panasonic PT-AE2000U beat the HD71, (by a few hundred lumens). But, the Panasonic, in its best mode topped out at 672 lumens, no match for the Optoma. In the Panasonic’s brighter Vivid Cinema mode, it did 1110 lumens, making the two about equal.
I haven’t been able to spend enough time, so far, though to determine the overall picture quality differences between the HD71 in its cinema mode, and the Panasonic in its two cinema modes.
I can comment briefly on fan noise. DLP projectors are typically the noisiest, and the Optoma is no exception. Even in low lamp mode, its noise levels are not particularly quiet. Those who are noise adverse probably won’t find this projector acceptable even in low power. In high power, the projector is definitely loud when compared to most non-DLP projectors. It is definitely noisier, for example than the Epson Home Cinema 720, which is probably the loudest of the 720p home theater projectors. Consider, though, that more fan noise is something we probably must expect on a DLP projector this bright. An interesting trade-off!
To finish up my viewing so far, I did get in a couple of hours of post calibration movie watching last night. I started with Casino Royale, and I was overall, very pleased with the color balance. I am not yet prepared to comment on black level and shadow detail.
In other words, stay tuned!
So far, though, I’m very pleased with the HD71. It’s about time the Panasonic had some serious competition for those that need lots of lumens for large screens, more than a little ambient light, and general sports viewing.
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March 18th, 2008 Art Feierman
Greetings All!
It has been brought to my attention, that the numbers I cited, in this blog, and in the report, relating to the Panasonic rebate, are incorrect:I reported that the new Promotion was going to be $400 mail-in cash rebate, and a $250 Blockbuster rental card. Well it turns out I screwed up. I see now (from the new banners just received from Panasonic’s ad campaign, and a couple of emails from dealers), that the campaign is actually $650, consisting of $400 in Blockbuster rentals, something that many folks will value as being worth far less, and $250 value for an extra year extended warranty! I checked an email received from Panasonic, and it too said that.Unless I were to value the $650 of blockbuster rentals and warranty, as about the same as cash (and I know many don’t like the Blockbuster cards), that should put the Panasonic in the $2000 - $3500 range.
Here’s how I’m going to treat things:
The awards, as they sit, will remain. Afterall, for those that will value the Blockbuster card as useful, and extra year warranty, it could just barely be rationalized that the PT-AE2000U still makes the top of the lower price category.
But more to the point, if I do not leave it there, I need to change the price point, so that I have at least three projectors in the Entry level category, which might mean making the lowest category $2400 and under, or something like that. That would move a couple projectors over, and force me to redo both the Under $2k and $2K to $3500 sections. All that would occomplish is moving back all reviews a couple of weeks. I just don’t have the “strength” to redo it all. Sorry!
I will, however alter some of the text in the report to correct about the rebate, and I will factor in the different rebate, in the current one-on-one comparisions that are in progress right now, including Panny vs Sanyo, Panny vs HC4900, Panny vs. Epson Home Cinema UB, and assign it a different value proposition.This will delay posting them a couple of days, now probably Thursday night when 6-8 comparisons will now post, as as three of the four I have already written, but not posted, involve the Panasonic.
Again, my apologies, for a grave error on my part. I can’t even blame it on Panasonic. I spoke with them, misunderstood, and then didn’t look closely at the email they sent me, which properly stated the program, so the fault is all mine. -art
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March 9th, 2008 Art Feierman
Most of you have seen the back and forth, about the reported convergence problem on some Epson Home Cinema 1080 UB and Pro Cinema 1080 UB projectors. One of the forum dealers reports a very high failure rate based on their QCing of Pro UBs. On the other hand, four medium to large online dealers of the Home Cinema 1080 UB, which should have the identical light engine, report only normal return rates. Here’s what I just posted on AVSforum, after querying 4 Epson dealers, and having spoken with Epson..
Greetings! this is my follow up on earlier postings and my promise to shed whatever light I could.
Sorry, this is LONG! -art
Before I get going, I’ve spent a lot of time on this. If the Epson Home and Pro Cinema 1080 UB’s were an average product, with a dozen other competitors out there, believe me I wouldn’t be spending all this time on it. However, the Epson is considered by most reviewers, to certainly be the best performing LCD projector around, and many of us favor it over the best of the price comparable competing DLP and LCoS projectors.
Personally, it is my top pick, and the one I recommend most highly to my friends. So, I’ve definitely got a bias.
OK, here’s what I have back so far, re convergence. I’ve had responses from four dealers - however these are all Home Cinema 1080 UB dealers - which Epson tells me, as far as the light engine is concerned, is identical to the Pro version.
Unfortunately, one of the larger of the four dealers hasn’t given me any firm numbers. I’m still asking and they are still checking to see what they can do.
I’ve received feedback from Epson, and it significantly conflicts with the numbers AVS is reporting, however I’m still asking (not that I’m likely to get it), for a ballpark return rate. As of early last week, my Epson contact was not aware of any quantity of projectors being returned from dealers (like AVS), but then, since they (AVS) buy (I think) through distribution, and I think, from Jason’s email, most were still at his place, they aren’t back in Epson’s system yet.
However, here is the general info I have received back, including 3 of the 4 dealers polled.Combined they (3) have sold a minimum of about 180 units and a maximum of about 250. I expected none of them would give me absolute numbers, so mostly I asked for their sales to the nearest 50 units. (One dealer did give me precise numbers). Of those the three dealers report a combined return rate from Epson owners as, as high as “less than 4%”, and as low as “less than 2%”.The fourth dealer (possibly the largest of the 4 - definitely with sales of 100-200 units so far indicated emailed me back that “there has been no significant percentage of issues with the new Epson UB models”. - that is a quote from them.
So, from a standpoint of regular, Epson authorized AV resellers of the 1080UB, with combined sales of somewhere between 280 and 350 projectors sold, can probably safely be said to be less than 5%, and perhaps far less.Now, of course the dealers could be lying, but I find that unlikely. I’ve known some of the people I work with at these companies for at least 3-4 years and in some cases much longer.
Let me come back to that in a minute.
Consider - first, a 2-4% failure “DOA” rate, for whatever reason, isn’t a great rate, by any means, but on the other hand, it also sure isn’t a 50% failure rate either.
Second, Many people with issues, may not report back to the dealer they buy it from, but rather go directly to the manufacturer. Let’s consider that:
From my own experience, is based on being a dealer over many years, most notably with older Panasonic HT projectors (AE700u, AE900U), Sanyo (Z3, Z4), lamp problems with BenQ PE7700’s (ultimately almost all lamps failed before 1000 hours and most in the 300 - 600 hour range, before BenQ found and fixed the problem, and replaced or repaired everyone’s projector, that was sold in the first 7-8 months after launch.)Based on that (and multi-years of sales of 200+ home theater projectors a month), I believe that at most, somewhere between half and 2/3 of customers may never notify the dealer, and go directly to the manufacturer. At any rate, that’s my best guess.
Therefore, if we take worst case - “less than 4% return rate” from the big Pro AV dealers, and my worst case (2/3 of the customers will never notify their dealers), that still leaves a maximum failure rate of “less than 12%”. Now that definitely wouldn’t be pretty, but still far shy of Jason’s 50% number.
In addtion, in speaking with Epson product management, they have told me that they have not seen any dramatic problems with the 1080 UB projectors, overall, and indicated (no numbers - I’m still trying to get a DOA rate), that they are not hearing back of any wide scale problems.
Perhaps most importantly to those of you reading this, Epson did want me to pass on that year after year they are the top rated projector manufacturer for reliability and support. (This was certainly true, when I was a dealer), and that they are extremely focused on that, and that is why they have the best warranty, and that their goal is to make sure that their customers are properly taken care of. (Based on the general feedback from AVSforum, that seems to be the case of just about everyone who has sent in their units.)
So, what could cause such a huge difference in unacceptable units, between Jason/AVS, and some of the much larger dealers out there (two should be much larger, one slightly larger, and one smaller?
1. AVSforum customers are more demanding than consumers (of projectors) at large, and as a result, Jason is being overly picky - QCing out units that are converged well enough that a typical home theater buyer wouldn’t notice a convergence problem at normal or even slightly closer than normal seating distances. Just follow the threads - many people are asking something like - “here is the misconvergence on my projector… I can’t see any problem when normally watching it, but is it defective - should I return it?”
Now, personally, I suspect this is at least part of the case, but it would be for good reason. Everyone reading these threads should understand by now that many AVSforum posters represent, the pickiest of all customers (and this has always been the case. As such, Jason is wise to set his QC standards to a level that would reject any projectors that are likely to come back from the pickiest owners. (ie anyone with a misconvergence of even a 1/2 pixel in each direction or even perhaps more, but less than a full pixel). I don’t think anyone is going to argue that a 1.5 or 2+ pixel misconvergence is not a problem). As you can see from the threads on the forums, some are definitely complaining about convergences that they admit can’t be seen from normal seating (except maybe with a test pattern) and not on normal content.
(Side note, as a dealer, probably back in the 2003-2004 (or perhaps it was 2002-2003) time period, I did some advertising on AVSforum. I was a dealer sponsor (with the little microbanner on the AVSforum masthead, some regular banners running, and also text ads on the bottom of the pages). We didn’t advertise there for long (probably around a year, maybe less), quite simply because our experience was that many AVSforum folks really were hyper-critical compared to the rest of our customer base, and we ultimately considered advertising on AVS to be a poor choice for us, we felt that the complaint rate/return rate, was much higher than the rest of our customer base, and was eating up too much of our resources. In other words, we concluded that we were “happy to give up the potential biz from AVSforum advertising, because it consumed too much of our resources.” (source - me!)
2. Jason told me that his QC’ing was across what I seem to recall was 7 separate shipments of projectors, which tends to make his problems based on a particular batch seem unlikely.
3. Because AVS is selling the Pro version, they are getting them from distributors (I’m almost certain), rather than directly from Epson’s warehouses. (of the 4 dealers I polled, three get their shipments directly from Epson). This means that most Pro dealers projectors have an extra shipment in the loop. (Epson - Distributor - Dealer, vs Epson - Dealer) This leads to more chance of damage (afterall, convergence is a very physical issue, as is unevenness in background color). Perhaps the carrier(s) used to get the projectors from the distributor, to Jason’s warehouse, is particularly brutal on the boxes…? Since larger shipments (20+) are most likely to be shipped on wooden skids, heavy impacts would not necessarily mean that boxes are in any way damaged.
4. I know from reading the forum threads, that one local dealer pointed out that letters had just gone out to dealers, reminding them that they are not allowed to sell the Pro online. Certainly the postings show that AVS has sold units all over the country. The point raised was that AVS’s decision to stop selling the Pro because they weren’t going to be allowed to sell it any more… Take all that with a grain of salt (although it does sound like great dealer “spin”. (If I can’t sell it anymore, if I bad mouth it, it is easier to move customers to what I can sell.)
Problem with that theory, is that, first, Jason has said something like, that Epson is aware of their selling and has no problem with it. The second issue, is that AVS seems to be widely considered to be credible, both by customers, and industry.
BTW my product management contact at Epson, (whom I’m still hammering for some approximate return rate data), isn’t particularly aware of AVS and they way they sell. He’s not aware of any Pro dealers being allowed to ship nationally, but then, he’s a hardware guy, and not a sales marketing type.
Anyway, draw your own conclusions.
Next, where does this stand now? It’s still one hell of a projector. As a consumer you have basically several ways of looking at this:
1. Assume the failure rate out of the box is approaching 50%, but Epson is replacing at no cost to the consumer, units being sent in with “convergence problems”. So at worst case, you might have to ship yours back in, and get another.
2 Assume that the larger direct dealers numbers are more accurate - somewhere between 2% and 12% depending on the ranges you choose above, and realize there is still a very small chance that the projector you buy will have a problem, but still know Epson will stand behind it.
3. Buy some other projector that also meets your needs, even if not quite as good, or is more expensive, but in some ways better, because it has no QC issues reported on avsforum. (you know the drill, Sony VW40, BenQ W5000, JVC RS1, Panasonic PT-AE2000U, Optoma HD81-LV, etc.4. Spend a lot more for the local dealer - highly QC’d products from brands like Marantz, Runco, Vidikron, SIM2, etc… Of course spending 3-5x for a projector that may not be significantly better (if at all, in some cases), probably doesn’t work for most of you.OK, that’s it for now. If I get better numbers from dealer 4, and anything more concrete from Epson, I will, of course update!
Disclosure.Some or most of this, I think is in my profile here, and some or most is also on my website under About/Contact Us.
For your convenience though, here’s what you get, when you consider my writings. This is my background, draw your own conclusions:
1. I started and owned what was the first online reseller of projectors: Presenting Solutions. We sold our first projectors online in Feb of 2005.2. My company sold over 20,000 projectors online.3. Due to near disaster with the dot.com collapse, followed by 9-11 and the recession, my company suffered financial problems. In 2003 another company bailed us out: Alliant Solutions. They renamed the website from presentingsolutions.com to projectorsolution.com. I continued to work for the new company (part time) until Dec. of 2005, primarily in online marketing, sales training, and working with large accounts.
4. Although I had registered projectorreviews.com in 2000 (I think, you can check), I really didn’t start putting much content on it until the 2nd half of 2003, when Alliant took over and I went to part time there.) At the end of 2005, I really started doing far more reviews, as projectorreviews.com became my full time company. What you see is what you get.
5. Long time ago, I was an Epson employee - way back in 1982-1986. They were the same hard core engineering focused company back then (when they owned about 80% of the world’s dot matrix printer market), as they are today, as the #1 projector seller in the world (their numbers). They, of course, make the LCD panels for all other brands, except Sony, who no longer sells panels to other manufacturers.As such, I have always liked Epson. I honestly believe that their combination of warranty, customer support and service, is unmatched.They were also my largest product line for many years, although in the last couple of years I was involved, they were surpassed in the Home theater segment, by BenQ Optoma and Panasonic. BTW, we also were authorized for JVC, Marantz, Sanyo, and a few others.
As my daughter would say: “whatever”.
Enough, back to work for me. -art
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