Optoma HD25-LV Projector – Image Quality

Optoma HD25-LV Projector - Image Quality

Optoma HD25-LV Out of the Box Picture Quality

Out of the box, the HD25-LV projector is decent but far from wonderful.  It’s watchable in the sense that buying an LCDTV, bringing it home and watching it in the “store demo” mode, which is optimized for dynamic, and wow, at the expense of right, and accurate.  The tendencies aren’t exactly that, out of the box, but the point is that it’s watchable, but this projector improves immensely post calibration.

The HD25-LV needs calibration settings, more than most in the price range, but still respectable for the family room, casual viewer.

If you become a real enthusiast, get the HD25-LV calibrated.  Or to save money, try our settings.  Again, right out of the box, the HD25-LV is pretty watchable, but it becomes a serious projector with calibration (and hopefully, if there’s not much variation from lamp to lamp), by just using our calibration numbers that we provide elsewhere. Good luck.

Optoma HD25-LV Projector - Flesh Tones

For a family room projector, picture quality (notably skin tones), are very pleasing, post adjustment.  Sometimes too much red often surfaces though, normally in less bright scenes with faces, especially if you are using the default settings. I’ve found the HD25-LV is a little forgiving when viewed, but not a lot.  I wasn’t overly thrilled with the brief time I spent with a standard DVD, much better with Blu-ray, or even HDTV.

Leeloo (The Fifth Element) looks fantastic!  Here it appears that the HD25-LV can really have really good skin tones at times. I would normally say that the film is a touch thin on reds in this scene, which come out nicely with the HD25-LV’s tendencies. The use of Brilliant Color, and the image noise issue, keep the projector from being considered natural in terms of look and feel.   Calibrated though, I’m overall happy with the skin tone handling, even if it could always be better.  Keep in mind this is still a low cost projector, even if it’s a good cut above entry level!

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 Craig – to have different looking skin tones. All look pretty good!

More images we like for considering skin tones:

I do not know where this yellow orange is coming from in the priest image below from The Fifth Element.  Take a close look, as this is about as bad as the HD25-LV manages to look on a skin tone.

I’m talking about the issue that needs a closer look, which is is the affect of image noise on close ups of faces.  You can see that colors in the face are harsh and limited in the image above (Priest from The Fifth Element).

We discuss this further on the Performance page (next) under Image noise. You’ll definitely want to check out the images there.