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Optoma HD81 Home Theater Projector Review – Image Quality-3

Posted on October 16, 2013 By Art Feierman

You’ll note that the HD81seems to favor reds in the dark areas, which matches my measurements in the Calibration section. Spending a bit more time on the color balance of the HD81 should solve that problem (or get that ISF calibrator in to really tune your projector).

Moving to HD-DVD, here are images from Phantom and again, the first is normally exposed, the second, significantly overexposed so you can see how much detail the HD81 can resolve in dark

HD81 Phantom horseLarge
HD81 Phantom horseOverLarge
BenQ W10000 PhantomHorseOverLarge
Panasonic PT-AE1000U PhantomHorseOverLg
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Click to enlarge. SO close

So, what do you see? Beside the color shifts between the projectors, look at the wall stones on the near right, also the darker parts of the frescos painted on the stone under the lights on the right, and in the fireplace. And the lower stones in the arch…. Actually what you are probably seeing, are three enlarged images, that all have very similar shadow detail capabilities. Overall, the BenQ W10000 (on this image, has the advantage, with a slightly higher contrast look that makes details stand out more. As to the Panasonic, this is the type of frame, that does allow the dynamic iris and lamp, to do their thing, and as such, the Panasonic rises up and performs extremely well, in shadow detail.

This image below, from the beginning of Phantom, is in black and white and is extremely dark in the movie. The HD81 handled it extremely well.

Click Image to Enlarge

My overall opinion is that the Optoma has a very slight advantage in black levels, over the W10000 (if the iris is in auto – dynamic), but the W10000 has a small advantage when the (noisy) auto iris is off. Again, this assumption is based on the viewing I did. Professionally calibrate these two projectors, and the results are likely different, but still comparable. The point is, however, that they are, again, very close.

Optoma HD81 Home Theater Projector Review – Image Quality-2
Optoma HD81 Home Theater Projector Review – Image Quality-4