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Optoma HD80 and HD8000: 1080p Home Theater Projector Review – Image Quality

Posted on October 15, 2007 By Art Feierman

s indicated in the first pages of these two reviews all testing was done on an HD8000, and that the two projectors are technically identical, except for the HD8000 having two additional modes: ISF Day, and ISF Night, for calibrators to set up. Both reviews will share two pages, this one (image quality), and general performance.

Optoma HD80 and HD8000 Home Theater Projector: Skin Tones

The HD8000’s out of the box performance leaves a good deal to be desired. In reality, out of the box, it does a bit better job than most previous Optomas we’ve reviewed.

Fix it yourself (using a calibration disk, like AVIA – less than $50 and available at most online projector specialists), or hire an installation company (or independent calibrator) who can tune the HD8000 for you.

This is a projector that needs to be adjusted, I don’t consider the default settings to be acceptable, and I doubt you will either.

However, once you have it properly set up, the HD8000 produces one fine image for its rather reasonable price.

Now, this time around, I didn’t shoot “before” and “after” adjustment images, but…

I did do that with my last Optoma review, the HD81-LV, their top of the line 1080p projector. I will say now, that the HD81-LV was probably a little worse out of the box than the HD8000 is, but overall, let’s say that both “need work” and are similar in terms of color balance, with green being too strong. Consider these images from the Optoma HD81-LV review:

Even with the HD8000 a bit better, you can imagine that “something must be done”. The HD8000 projector needs adjustment. Once done, though, the skin tones become very good.

Let’s look at a number of images taken after adjustment of the HD8000. All are from HD resolution movies off of Blu-Ray DVD, unless otherwise noted:

And, of course, a couple from House of the Flying Daggers, which offers some truly spectacular production qualities:

The HD8000 does very well on movies that are supposed to be grayscale, or done in monotones such as the sepia flavored second image below:

First, from the beginning of Phantom of the Opera (Blu-Ray), then an image from Sin City (standard DVD):

Optoma HD8000 Home Theater Projector: Physical Tour
Optoma HD80 and HD8000: 1080p Home Theater Projector Review – Image Quality-2