Optoma HD8600 Projector - Image Quality-2

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Art Feierman

Optoma HD8600 Black Levels & Shadow Detail

Years ago, DLP's were the first projectors to produce high contrast and dark blacks. Over the years, though, the advantage has been lost. Today, JVC's LCoS design seems to be the best for black level performance, but other LCoS brands don't fare as well.

It seems also that a couple of the 3LCD projectors, while still not up to the JVC RS25 and RS35, are able to produce slightly better blacks than the best DLP's I've reviewed of late. Still, most of those better LCD projectors and the best DLP's (all using dynamic irises), are in the same overall performance class (ultra-high contrast). While the Optoma can be beat, it does perform very nicely, and should rival the Planar PD8150, which to date, has had the best blacks of the DLP projectors.

comparision

Image time: We start with the starship image from The Fifth Element. The first photo is way overexposed to show the blacks in the letterbox as dark gray. As you can see, to lift the blacks that much, the starship itself is terribly overexposed. In the image immediately below that, you are still looking at the same image, but only slightly overexposed.