Big Picture, Big Value
A short time ago, in a galaxy not far from here...
PRICE WARS!
It is a period of civil unrest and economic uncertainty. In the face of falling hardware prices, movie, music and gaming fans comb the internet for affordable projectors on which to display the latest high definition content. Long thought to be merely the stuff of legend, whispers of 1080p projectors infiltrating the $1,000 price bracket begin to circulate. Confirming the rumors, Optoma brings the HD20 to market - the industry's first 1080p machine with a sticker price of only $999. The HD projector bargain battle is officially underway.
(Sorry, my 6-year old is all about Star Wars these days. What can I say?)
The new poster child for high value home theater, Optoma's HD20 Home Theater Projector is a bright, highly portable, DLP-based projector featuring 1080/24p support, dual HDMI inputs and a 1.2x zoom lens. Its lack of lens shift means careful planning is needed for installation, particularly for ceiling mount applications, but the HD20's shockingly low price tag goes a long way towards eliminating those installation headaches. With the money saved on the projector, you can afford a decent mounting system.
The Hook-Up
As mentioned, the HD20 has neither horizontal nor vertical lens shift. To be fair, very few single chip projectors (at any price) offer much if any lens shift as there is generally less room to play with in the light engine than you have with 3-chip LCD, LCOS or DLP designs. This means that the lens offset needs to be factored in when planning a ceiling installation; you also need to make sure you can horizontally center the lens on your screen. That said, the 1.2x zoom lens does at least provide some throw distance flexibility. A 100-inch diagonal image can be achieved provided the HD20 is placed anywhere between 11 and 13 feet from the screen. One could whine about the HD20's lack of lens shift, but is it really such a surprise? The fact of the matter is you're getting a 1080p high definition projector for under $1,000 here. If you want rock bottom, entry-level pricing, you can't realistically expect many bells and whistles.
Connection options on the HD20 are surprisingly good. For $999, I wouldn't be surprised to see one HDMI input and little else. Instead you get two HDMI inputs, a component video input plus composite, VGA and a 12v trigger. I used Monster component video cables to connect my Panasonic RP91 for HQV Benchmark testing and a BetterCables HDMI cable from my Panasonic DMP-BD35 for Blu-ray evaluation. One thing I noticed is that the HD20 never stops trying to find a source signal; it constantly cycles through its inputs searching for video. In the setup menu, you can check or un-check the inputs you plan on using. After making those selections the HD20 will limit its search to only those inputs you checked off.
Remote, Control
Holy blue buttons, Batman! In addition to taking home the Best Value trophy, the HD20 also receives the award for Brightest Remote Control. Ever. I often knock manufacturers for skipping the remote backlighting to save a few bucks, but I never thought I'd have to go the other way. The HD20 remote is too bright - much too bright. Buttons glow with a blinding blue light and it takes a moment to adjust to it when you're in a darkened home theater such as mine. Making matters worse is the fact that button labels are not backlit. Instead the buttons feature icons, only half of which make obvious sense in the dark. Apart from its cryptic iconography and retina-searing powers of illumination, the HD20's remote is perfectly adequate with a solid cursor pad layout and one-button access to each input.
On-screen menus are simple, straight-forward and intuitive to navigate. Like the projector itself, the menus contain little more than the bare essentials. Video settings feature traditional slider adjustments, but I found their quick timeout and disappearance somewhat frustrating during calibration.
Picture This
Out of the box, the HD20 put forth an attractive picture but it definitely needed a little tweaking. I started with "Cinema" as my starting point and this out-of-the-box color profile yielded relatively good performance. But there's always room for improvement.
Running (OK, crawling) through a SpyderTV PRO video calibration, I confirmed that Brightness was too high, colors were a bit over-saturated and (like the remote) the image was throwing up too much blue. I was able to rein in Brightness, but it should be noted that black levels on the HD20 are average at best. As a matter of fact, if I didn't know better I would have guessed this to be an LCD projector due its penchant for charcoal gray. On the bright side (literally), this projector is capable of some serious light output when desired. So while this may not be a videophile's first choice for a light-controled theater, it's ideal for gaming or rooms where ambient light is an issue.
To help refine grayscale, I was pleased to see that the HD20 offers independent red, green and blue adjustments for both cuts/bias and drives/gains. This allowed me to dial back the blue and achieve a more natural shade of white. When I was done, the 10-step grayscale ramp looked respectable enough, but I've certainly seen better. Have I seen better at this price point? Definitely not.
With the video calibration out of the way, I next fired up IDT's HQV Benchmark 2.0 DVD. With my DVD player outputting 480i video, I put the HD20's video processor through its paces. The results were decidedly mixed. Although the HD20 did a good job with noise reduction and picking up the 3:2 24fps cadence in the race car film clip, it did a sloppy job with the 2:2 30fps video clip of the same race car. Also, the "jaggies" tests in the Video Resolution section were marginal at best. The waving flag showed a fair amount of stair-stepping and the moving rectangles in jaggies test #2 showed plenty of unwelcome waviness.
The Real World
Shield your eyes! This backlit remote emits some blue rays of its own.
Test patterns are a good indicator of video processing prowess, but they don't tell the whole story. More to the point, a display that fails to nail every torture test can still paint a highly engaging picture - and that's just what the HD20 does.
Switching over to some real world viewing material, I fed the HD20 some of HBO's "True Blood" on Blu-ray as well a few scenes from Fox's Blu-ray edition of Drumline. Although some detail did get lost in the shadows of "True Blood," Sookie's skin tones looked quite natural (especially next to that of her vampire boyfriend) and outdoor, daytime scenes around Sam's bar were bursting with color. Drumline exhibited equally impressive skin tones and the 1080p image displayed an often startling level of picture detail and impressive overall sharpness.
One HD20 feature I experimented with, and ultimately abhored, is ImageAI. When engaged, ImageAI adjusts lamp output based on what the image is calling for at any given moment. This is different from the auto-irises found on some of the more expensive machines out there. The problem is, ImageAI is slow. Cutting from a nighttime exterior shot to the brilliance of daylight, the HD20 would wait a second or two before bumping up the light output. Not only is this lagging brightness change a visual annoyance, but fan noise also fluctuates and gets quite loud at times. Bottom line: you'll want to leave ImageAI switched off.
Last but not least, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the rainbows. As is the case with many DLP projectors featuring a 4x-speed color wheel, the HD20 does exhibit the dreaded "DLP rainbow effect" for viewers who are prone to see them. I liken this phenomenon to a dead pixel on your computer monitor. Some people never notice it and live in ignorant bliss. Others know it's there and find themselves constantly looking for it. In truth, I only saw a handful of rainbows in my time with the HD20 and they were nowhere near as prevalent as they can be on projectors with 2x-speed color wheels. But, if you are prone to seeing DLP rainbows, and if they annoy you, the HD20 may not be for you.
Turn-Ons:
Turn-Offs:
Final Thoughts
For $999, Optoma's HD20 represents a giant leap forward in home theater projector value. Although its blacks could be blacker, lens shift is unavailable and you're apt to notice a few jaggies here and there on standard def content, the HD20 still manages to create a large, bright and color-rich HD picture for very little money. Factor in its portable, lightweight design and a refreshingly long lamp life and it's easy to see why the HD20 is on the short list for high value home theater shoppers everywhere.
Specifications from the Manufacturer:
Manufacturer's Contact Information:
Optoma USA
715 Sycamore Drive
Milpitas, CA 95035
Telephone: 408-383-3700
Fax: 408-383-3702
On the Web: www.optomausa.com
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