Optoma HD131XE Projector - Image Quality

Out of the Box Picture Quality

Most of the modes are pretty watchable, however, none are really very accurate.  There's a tendency to too much red in faces, although that tends not to show up on very pale faces, such as Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games.  On some of the Bond images, faces have more of a slight green yellow, than red.  I can't quite get a handle on the whys, but let's say that it didnt calibrate well, so different things happen in different brightness ranges.  In most  modes blue skies take on a blue-green color, not looking really believable, but some of the modes are better than others.  Overall, none of the preset modes looks better than the others on all content.  This is going to be a "use which ever one looks best to you.  Greens can be on the strong side.

In this image, Charlie Rose's skin tones look a little off.

Click Image to Enlarge

Skin Tones

Skin tones sometimes look good, sometimes do not, at least from my experience.  That's true not only of Mike's calibration efforts, placed in User, but also the default modes.  Unless someone else has better luck calibrating this projector (without "hacking" into the service menu, which should void the warranty, that is).

Black Levels

Black Levels and Dark Shadow Detail Image

Here's a closer look at this very dark night scene from The Hunger Games.  Even the brightest parts of their faces are still relatively dim, and only look bright here because this image is intentionally, significantly overexposed so that you can make out the letterbox, and the darkest details.

All considered black levels is the one area where the HD131Xe really excels compared to the competition, which includes assorted projectors from Acer, Epson, Viewsonic, Vivitek and others.  The comparison with the Epson above, gives you an idea of the extra pop dark scenes have when black levels are better, but often, better blacks also come with not quite as good dark shadow detail

On this image look for the darkest shadow detail in the dark almost circular area just left of center and going from the bottom of the screen to the angled log above.  You can also back and look at the comparison between this Optoma and the Epson on the side by side image above.