Optoma MovieTime DV10 - Image Quality - 2

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Art Feierman

The MovieTime does a great job. I found it annoying that it even did a marginally better job on a few scenes than my own, higher resolution (and far more expensive) BenQ PE8700+.

This is the first projector I have tested since I recently acquired the DVD of Sin City, a movie done mostly in black and white, with just splashes of color added on some scenes. Here are images of two dark scenes from Sin City - but unfortunately my camera does not capture the full intensity that the Optoma projector was able to put on the screen.

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Performance was also very good on Hi-Def. The shot below of the Chrysler building at dusk, comes out a bit darker, and with a bit less of the pinkish hues that the image calls for, but my reference for viewing this scene, is Marantz's $14,499 VP12S4 home theater projector. The fact that the Optoma projector is even in the game is impressive.

The MovieTime projector has 5 modes which will be discussed in the Menus section in the Performance - Other section. All the images photographed from DVD and Hi-Def were shot in Cinema mode. The Chrysler building image may have performed better had I selected the Image AI mode which is designed to enhance dark scenes, but appears a bit lest contrasty (a higher gamma) in the low to mid bright areas.

Overall, I found the MovieTime to do a sensational job, however, I did view Independence Day, and the Hi-Def content side by side with Optoma's new H27 projector which sells for $999. My impression is that the H27 did a slightly better job on images like the Chrysler building. In the comparison shot , the H27 projector is on the left, the MovieTime DV10, on the right. Again, a different setting should bring the two closer together. Another reason for the difference. The H27 appeared to be the brighter projector on all the sources I viewed as you can see in this image from Independence Day.

In summary, fleshtones are excellent (out of the box), shadow detail and black levels are very good, and images are generally bright and well saturated. I found that the MovieTime has enough "horsepower" to fill my 128" Firehawk screen, (which has a gain of 1.3), and that would indicate that the MovieTime DV10 should be able easily handle a standard matte white screen of 106" diagonal, and that's one nice large theater-like image from a small, entry level "all-in-one" projector.

Lets look at the other areas of performance, including layout of the control panel, menus, the projector's remote control and many other features.