Projector Review | Too low to display Optoma HD20 High Definition 1080p DLP Home Theater Projector (Grey)

Product Description

The Optoma HD20 brings a new level of flexibility to your High-Definition home theater/multi-media experience. With true 1080p resolution, the HD20 delivers excellent color saturation and subtle details for superior image quality. With its sleek design and weight of 6.4 lbs, the Optoma HD20 is perfect for sharing big-screen movies, sporting events and concerts or for taking your video gaming to the next level by connecting the HD20 to your favorite game console.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #734 in Home Theater
• Brand: Optoma
• Model: HD20
• Platform: Windows
• Format: CD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 3.82" h x 12.76" w x 9.21" l, 6.39 pounds
• Native resolution: 1920 x 1080
• Display size: 300

Features

• True High Def 1080p Resolution, 1.2x Manual Zoom and Focus
• 1700 Lumens Brightness, Lamp life: 4000/3000 Hours (STD/Bright), 4X speed (RGBRGB) color-wheel
• 4000:1 Contrast Ratio (On/Off), 500:1 ANSI Contrast
• 37.6" to 301.1" Screen size,Offset: 116%,16:9 Native, 4:3 and LBX Compatible
• Two HDMI, VGA-In, Component Video, Composite Video and +12V Trigger

From the Manufacturer

 

Optoma HD20 High Definition 1080p DLP Home Theater Projector

The Optoma HD20 redefines the high-definition home theater/multi-media experience with a new level of flexibility and quality. With true 1080p resolution, the HD20 delivers excellent color saturation and subtle details for excellent images. With its sleek design and diminutive size, the Optoma HD20 is perfect for sharing big-screen movies, sporting events and concerts with friends or taking video gaming to the next level.

At a Glance: Home Theater at its Best

• Superior image and video quality (1080p resolution)
• Vibrant life-like images and videos (1700 lumens)
• Sharp, clean text even in bright rooms (4000:1 contrast ratio, 1700 lumens)
• Designed for large group viewing (Up to 300-inch screen size)
• Readily portable (6.4-pounds)

 

Delivering High-Definition Performance for Under $1,000

The Optoma HD20 delivers ultimate flexibility and performance to create a high-quality home theater experience without the high-end price tag. Sleek and stylish, the HD20 is readily portable to allow you to share content at parties, family gatherings or any get together. A favorite of gamers, the projector allows users to play video games at home or with friends.

HD20 represents a significant breakthrough for consumers

Bright and Versatile

The HD20, a DLP projector, sets the performance bar with high marks for crisp sharp images and video, delivering excellent color saturation and subtle details for superior image quality. With 1700 ANSI lumens of brightness, the HD20 will fill your home theater room with bright, vivid, lifelike images as large as 300 diagonal inches with high contrast ratio. The projector features a native 1080p resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels), while it also is compatible with most computer formats (UXGA, WXGA, SXGA+, SXGA, XGA, SVGA, VGA resized, VESA, PC and Macintosh). The unit can also accept common global video inputs and video formats up to 1080p (HDTV, EDTV, SDTV, NTSC, PAL and SECAM).

Lower Cost of Ownership

The projection lamp is rated to last up to 4000 hours in standard mode or 3000 hours in bright mode to provide long-lasting performance. The HD20 also incorporates a rapid shutdown feature that further reduces ownership costs. A one-year parts and labor warranty, with 90-day lamp coverage, is standard.

Leading the DLP Market in the Americas

Optoma's product line offers products designed to meet the needs of any kind of user, from mobile professionals, gamers and home theaters to much large theater installations. Designed and built to deliver reliability, usability and image quality, Optoma projectors help users get the most out of their digital content, encourage collaboration and communicate clearly and effectively. Optoma projectors are designed to provide the features that you need today and a path to grow into other capabilities as you need them.

State of the Art DLP Technology

Optoma Technology is the leading manufacturer of Texas Instrument's DLP projectors in North and South America. Texas Instrument's DLP with BrilliantColor technology supports multi-color processing to produce stunning, vibrant colors on the screen. Unlike other technologies, which use only the three primary colors (red/green/blue) to produce the image, DLP Technology with BrilliantColor projectors use up to six separate colors for superior color quality.

Green by Design

As an Optoma ProJect Green projector, the HD20 has been designed and manufactured for eco-friendliness, to:

• Use less than one-watt power consumption in standby mode—Up to 75 percent savings compared to regular standby mode.
• Limit energy use, with automatic shut down and remote management and control.
• Employ long-life materials and components.
• Use components that are lead-free on all printed circuit boards.
• Use no polystyrene foam in the packing materials
• Comply with RoHS standards to phase out the use of hazardous materials.

What's in the Box

Standard Accessories: AC Power Cord, Composite Video Cable, Remote Control, Batteries for Remote, Lens Cap, User's Manual, Quick Start Card and Warranty Card.

Which Optoma Home Theater Projector is Right for You?

	HD20	HD66	HD65
Resolution	Native 1080p	Native 720p	Native 720p
Lumens	1700	2500	1600
Application	Home theater and multimedia	Home theater and gaming	Home theater
Image Size/Quality	300-inch /4000:1 contrast	300-inches /4000:1 contrast	348-inches / 4000:1 contrast
Product Dimension/Weight	12.76-by-3.82-by-9.21-inches / 6.4-pounds	11.28-by-3.98-by-7.6-inches / 5.1-pounds	10.2-by-2.9-by-7.4-inches / 4-pounds
Inputs and outputs	Two HDMI, VGA-In, Component Video, Composite Video and +12V Trigger	HDMI, VGA-In, S-Video, Composite Video, Stereo Audio-In and RS-232	HDMI, Component, VGA, Composite, S-Video, USB, 12v Trigger
NVIDIA 3D Certified	No	Yes	No

Want to Enhance Your Experience with Accessories?

BL-FP230D	BM-5001U	DS-9092PMG+ and DPMW9080A	BK-4028
Replacement P-VIP 230-Watt Lamp	Mounting kit (ceiling mount) for projector	Manual pull-down screen (white) Manual pull up screen (Matte White) 16:9 aspect ratio for home theater or professional use	Durable and lightweight case to protect your projector

How Big a Room Do You Need to Get Big Screen Images?

Projection Distance (Feet)	Maximum Diagonal (Inches)	Minimum Diagonal (Inches)
6	55	46
8	73	61
10	92	76
12	110	92
14	129	107
16	147	122
18	165	138

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

207 of 209 people found the following review helpful.
1080p Goodness for the budget-minded!
By Christopher Pike
I first wrote this review on another site, and now that I've had more time with this projector I have added and changed a few things and am reposting the review on Amazon. I think more people will look to Amazon when purchasing this projector, especially since the other site is not stocking it anymore. Hopefully this review helps those of you who are on the edge about purchasing this projector.

Pros: Good looking, gloss-white finish. Low-noise fan on normal-bulb mode. 4000 hours lamp life on econo is greater then most projectors! Good enough to use in bright mode to use with lights turned on in the room. In the dark, it looks simply amazing!

1080p content looks very good. Blu-rays played from a PS3 (or other blu-ray player) look awesome. I watched Kung-Fu Panda and was "wowed" by what you can notice on a much larger screen. I just watched Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen on it last night and I was amazed at the details and I noticed things I didn't even notice when I saw it in IMAX. This might have been because in IMAX you have such an insanely huge screen that you miss some things you might not have noticed before since you have to actually turn your head to look at the entire screen. Still, blu-ray content is amazing to see with this projector. I find it very hard to believe you can buy this for under $1000.

Video games look awesome. It works well with PS3 and 360 consoles. You get a huge advantage over other players when you can see them off in the distance before they could actually see you on a normal HDTV. This of course all depends on the size of the screen you use. I'm using a 92" diagonal white screen by EliteScreens. Not the greatest of screens but will get me by for a year or two until I get the funds for a good, fixed screen.

When using my PS3 with my tv I set the RGB color-spectrum to limited range in the display options on the PS3. On the tv, with the setting on full it would be far too dark and black out way too much shadow detail. On this projector you can turn on full-range and make use of the entire spectrum and it will give you better blacks and whites this way. If you put this projector on the bright pre-set setting (not high lamp mode) then you can blind yourself by the whites this thing is capable of in the dark. Bright setting should really only be used when you have a lot of ambient light to fight with. Otherwise the Cinema, Reference, or your own custom settings with the help of a calibration disc is probably best.

There are lot's of options for adjusting brightness, contrast, sharpness, etc. Everything you find on current HDTV's seems to be a setting you can change here. I personally find cinema mode is about perfect for use in dark environments where you can shut off all the light and enjoy a movie. Sharpness is used differently on this projector then it is on many HDTV's. With my tv I took the sharpness down to zero, because all it was doing was adding pixels to make the picture appear sharper and it would actually take away from the realism of the picture. On this projector the default value is 7 and if you lower it you are actually softening the picture and going negative with the sharpness effect. I found the sweet spot to be 10. At the value of 10 I get extremely sharp, crisp looking text in all my games and the picture looks better at that setting then at the default of 7. Anything below 7 would turn too soft and look blurred... like looking through a water covered windshield.

The Optoma features automatic shut-off which you can adjust. By default I believe it is turned off. I set mine for 15 minutes. This feature will automatically turn off the projector after no signal is detected for "xx" amount of minutes. Very useful if you are not the only one using the projector and have fears of friends/family leaving it turned on.

Cons: I have been used to using a Samsung 46" LN46A650 model tv, and then going to this, there is a very noticeable difference in black level. You will not get the deep blacks with this projector that you can on a good HDTV, but thankfully it doesn't ruin the experience. Black level detail is there, which is good, it just does not produce an inky-black. It's more of a very dark shade of gray. I messed around with the Digital Video Essentials blu-ray for the contrast/brightness adjustments for a while. I was not able to get the entire line-chart to display. Either the whites would get too washed out and too bright, or the darks would get too dark and force the white sections to get dark. The projector seemed about correct with out-of-the-box settings on cinema.

I did not mess around with deeper menu's such as the gamma, and film modes, or try changing the colors yet. I'm not experienced at self-calibrating, so don't take my word for it, but I could not get the contrast portion much better then it already is out-of-the-box.

Auto-focus would have been a nice option. It's not a big deal if you get this projector mounted and won't have to keep moving it. You can just find the right spot and leave it there, and it should be fine. On that note, if you are planning to leave this on a coffee table it will probably work alright. At first, I tried to shelf-mount this projector to save having to buy a ceiling mount. I had it about 5 feet above ground-level and I could not get a picture I was happy with. I had to angle it way down by rotating the back legs so they were fully extended and then adding a couple slim-cd cases to raise the back even further. I adjusted keystone all the way and it was still off and looked like a trapezoid. Unless you plan on using this within 3 feet of the floor, I would expect to be ceiling mounting this baby! There's your warning to anyone wondering about this.

None of my cons knock a star off my rating on this wonderful product though. You can't really say too many negative things about a 1080p projector for <$1000!!

I am very glad I bought this! At first I was worried that 92" might be too big for me, sitting back about 9.5 ft away, but having used it a while now, it is perfect. The projector will utilize up to a 300" screen, so I cannot wait till I move into my first house and have a nice area to set up for a 150" screen! I think that would be idea.

*** Update 3/5/10 ***

I've now owned this for about 5 months, and I have yet to run into any problems with it. I have over 300 hours of use on the bulb now. Once the bulb has had proper time to break in (200+) you will notice a better black level than when it was brand new. I still don't have any gripes with the performance of this projector. Everything has been fantastic. You really get all of your moneys worth with this sub-$1000 HD projector. I haven't been to a movie in the theater at all this year, and I was the guy who usually went almost every Friday. I can stay home and get the same experience now.

222 of 226 people found the following review helpful.
Initial impressions, very pleased
By Tustinfarm
This was an upgrade for me from a 720p, DLP projector (Mitsubishi HD1000u). Initial impressions are very positive, based on about 10 hours of viewing & tweaking. Very quiet, and plenty bright running in low power mode. The high resolution (1920 X 1080) approaches that for a typical 2k digital cinema, so my 145" diagonal screen, viewed from about 15 feet distance, provides a very pleasing movie experience. That said, the increase in resolution from 720p is an incremental step, so it is not the be all and end all of image quality in projectors. More specifically the source material you feed it is what really brings out the quality. Many HD feed materials (from cable or satellite) don't ever approach the inherent resolution of the projector, so at this point only blu-ray source material will really give the utmost in high resolution detail (and not even all disks, depending on the original mastering, etc.). Black levels are similar to my previous DLP projector, so if you are obsessed with having pitch black star fields, you should opt for a pricier DLP or LCD projector, which may more closely approach jet black in those situations. I don't worry too much about this aspect, reminding myself that even film projectors don't provide jet black when the screen goes blank, so the HD20 actually matches the real cinema experience more closely (how's that for rationalizing why a cheaper projector is better!) . At this price level (<$1000) it is hard to imagine a bigger bang for the buck in terms of image quality. Finally, I highly recommend you check out www.avsforum.com , where there is an extensive discussion thread about this and competing projectors.

52 of 57 people found the following review helpful.
Calibration is tougher!!
By Anupam K. Nath
I have been playing with the HD20 for last couple of days. I am still not sure what to say. Unlike any of my previous projectors(Optoma HD31 and HD70) it gives u too many options to calibrate. I guess that is a good thing. However,I am still struggling with this process and seems like quite overwhelming to me. Good thing is picture is much bigger and brighter than HD70. Super wide is a nice option. However, in terms of picture details I am still not sure what to say especially with the downloaded HD content. Apparently it needs lot more tweaking( and hard work) to calibrate it properly. I was reading different forums and there I read that it actually needs 100 odd hours for the bulb to settle down. So that might be the reason too. Hence, to summarize, in terms of size and brightness, the improvement is significant. But as of now sadly I cannot say that in terms of picture quality and details. I will keep u updated as I keep continuing the calibration process.

Update: Finally I have managed to calibrate it properly. Now the picture looks fantastic and the quality is significantly better than HD70. Now I have 20 odd hours on the lamp. I guess that also helped to have proper picture quality. So as of now my conclusion is that the picture quality might not meet your expectations out of the box. However, it eventually does meet your expectation and perhaps some more. Enjoy!!