Optoma GT720 Projector - Image Quality

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Art Feierman

Optoma GT720 Out of the Box Picture Quality

General tendencies right out of the box, include decent color, and a bit too much contrast. Fear not, almost all can be adjusted, for improvement.

Click to enlarge. SO close

For that reason, the GT720 is watchable, and definitely playable, right out of the box. Pete did all his first playing with the GT720 for his gaming blog, without touching a setting! We invite you to try the settings we publish for the GT720, on the Calibration page. For those who care about improving the image quality, our settings should provide a real benefit. Not night and day, but a more enjoyable picture, nonetheless.

Click Image to Enlarge

Optoma GT720 Projector - Flesh Tones

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Not the best, but very reasonable, especially with our settings used. Hey, the GT720 does at least as good on flesh tones, as the flesh tones you see at Best Buy on most of the LCDTVs they have on display.

Above and below, our usual suspects - Gandalf and Arwen, from Lord of the Rings, on Blu-ray.

Below are our three James Bond images from Casino Royale. Each has a different lighting scenario, the first - full sunlight, the second image; indoor fluorescent, and finally, filtered sunlight in the third image. And as one would expect, that causes each image of James Bond - Daniel Patrick - to have different looking skin tones. All look pretty good!

It should be noted, that use of a lot of Brilliant Color makes skin tones less natural, as there seem to be less colors available, and therefore a flat (mottled?) look on skin tones as in not enough shades of those skin like colors.

Consider these two images, varying by the amount of Brilliant Color. The second one has BC at 10. Start with the shades in the hand holding the iPhone (or even the fingertips. Don't look for huge differences, but ones that make a difference:

Brilliant Color = 10

Brilliant Color = 6

Note, the difference in the hand. Also, you see a good deal more detail in the boy's hair on the right, with the lower BC, due to more natural looking contrast. Colors are also a touch over the top with BC at 10.

Optoma GT720 Black Levels & Shadow Detail

Click to enlarge. SO close

Next, is the starship image from The Fifth Element. All the images are a good bit overexposed. This allows you to get a better handle on the black levels. If the starship's brightness is about the same, from image to image, then the projector with the blackest blacks in the letterbox and stars background, is the one with the blacker black performance. (A lot of bright stars in its own right may just reflect gamma differences. It's the blacks you want to be watching).