Vivitek H9080FD - Performance-5

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Art Feierman

Vivitek H9080FD Image Noise

I mentioned it elsewhere, I did see a few glitches handling HDTV signals, but the projector was clean on Blu-ray. Basic image noise seems a little better than the typical DLP projector. There are a number of image noise settings available, but I never felt the need to try or use them. It's possible one of them would solve the once in a very long while image breakup I spotted with HDTV, but I do think that's more of a firmware issue that likely won't exist on production units.

H9080FD Audible Noise

Interesting, very interesting! The Vivitek H9080FD projector is pretty quiet. That's certainly true compared to other single chip DLP projectors. The manual doesn't provide a noise figure, but a call to Vivitek, and the product manager says the official spec is 28db. That said, this projector's noise has a higher pitched whine type of sound as part of the mix. As such it's not going to be quite as unnoticeable as, say 28 db might be on another projector, but then many projectors are still noisier at 30 -33 db. (the quietest are down just under 20 db.) Certainly its overall noise is not any worse, than say my JVC, which has more overall noise, but lower pitched. I wouldn't consider the whine to be a problem except for those who are the most adverse to audible noise.

One more thing, this is a pre-production unit. It just may well be that the whine will be still lower, or gone on a production model.