[spylab]

Optoma Greece kindly gave our small but very active forum
one of the first production models of optoma 81...............

http://www.avsite.gr/smf/index.php?topic=14167.0

[spylab]

We tested with DVDs.......

[spylab]

[spylab]

And we tested with HD-DVD (TOSHIBA QOSMIO G30-153 HD-DVD laptop ) in HD 1080 p

[AngelEyes]

go on, spill the beans

[spylab]

The team .............

[spylab]

Some HD-DVD

[AngelEyes]

Have you compared it to a similiarly priced 720p projector? Curious to know if 1080p is worth it yet?

Thanks,

Adam

[spylab]

No time and no space for good photos ............

With 1080 we will not speak for pixels and screendoor any more.

The most solid picture (in HD) we have seen so far.

Fell free to ask any questions ( yes in English) here

http://www.avsite.gr/smf/index.php?topic=14167.0

[spylab]

AngelEyes , we will soon do a side by side with a 720
and i will take good closeup photos...

There is improvement (obviously) and a bit more than i expected
but someone with a 720 pj like 72i will not go back home feeling
sorry for his 720 machine

The step from dvd to 720 is the bigger one , but the 1080 desktop
is really stunning

This will be a very hot winter with all the 1080 that are comming
and 1080 will be a new era in image quallity, far better than any
cinema.........

[AngelEyes]

Thanks Spylab

[gandley]

Is the unit very noisy? And did you find the lamp modulation aggressive in the auto iris mode?

[Bacus]

Spylab, Great first pictures !! keep up the good work, MORE pictures now needed. I am so tempted to get this projector,its great that it has the seperate media (kinda) box !!

[Zag]

Spylap

What sort of audience feedback are you getting on this projector regarding the rainbow effect?? Does the 6 speed 7 segment colour wheel of the H81 improve upon the likes of the H79, (5 speed 8 seg) or H72 (4 speed 7 seg) in terms of observable RBE???

Would be very interested to know how many of your audience observed rainbows during your demonstration.

[dream_GR]

As our good friend spylab, already mentioned www.avsite.gr and 25 lucky members of this forum, had the priviledge to be one of the first worldwide to see in action the new baby from Optoma.

The Themescene 81 was, το simply put in as few words as possible: "just stunning".

Quality of picture just followed what Optoma has already made them well known for, that is good vibrant colors, sharp images, good response in action and fast moving images, correct and accurate color palette, bright picture w/out washed out or "burned" or saturated images. These qualities I have been enjoying on my HD72 and having been a fan of Optoma, I can say these guys have taken something good and made it excellent.

The Optoma was also connected to the Toshiba Qosmio equipped with HD DVD Rom and we watched scenes from Swordfish. This was a fantastic experience that resembled celluloid film, or even according to my eyes even beat it. The other experience was the Toshiba Win XP 1920x1080 desktop that was displayed on 120" and made it the larger and clearer computer monitor my eyes had set eyes on.!

The Themescene 81 is a true beauty to look at and to watch movies with. When feeding it with HD material through HDMI (Satellite Tv Box & HD Media Box) in 1080p we got an image that nearly made our previous 720p HD experiences seem like mere SD projections!!!! The images were coming in 3D, spectacular, and I can say that this little beauty is the best Projector I have seen in my life so far. The price, the valus for money and the image quality make it a must for any viewer wanting just the best that he can buy at he moment, without having to rob the bank first!!!!!!!!!!

I give it a score of 9.9999 out of 10 and would be impressed to see other competitors finding a way to beat this baby...!

More Photos will follow guys!

[dream_GR]

Originally Posted by Zag

Spylap

What sort of audience feedback are you getting on this projector regarding the rainbow effect?? Does the 6 speed 7 segment colour wheel of the H81 improve upon the likes of the H79, (5 speed 8 seg) or H72 (4 speed 7 seg) in terms of observable RBE???

Would be very interested to know how many of your audience observed rainbows during your demonstration.

We had some very stuborn LCD fans, who insist they see rainbows even with the PJ switched off!!!! Just looking at a DLP projector makes them dizzy!!!

To put you in the true perspective we gave a 3 hour test to the Optoma Themescene 81 and rainbow/headache results on these "funny" guys were minimal. They insisted that some very minimal rainbow was visible but it was not nerve racking!

Personaly i own just like Spyros (spylab) the HD72i and i have no problem with RBE's. the 81 was just so much clearer and gave a near 3d image. The depth of field of all HD films were so enhanced that vieweing was just extraordinary. Images were comparable to the Sony Ruby, but price of the 81 makes it just excellent value for money.

[dream_GR]

Toshiba Qosmio Hd DVD Rom desktop in action.

The largest 1920x1200 computer monitor I have seen

[dream_GR]

Optoma Themescene HD81 and its included hideaway scaler

[dream_GR]

Photo of the Algolith Mosquito's antialising, block and digital artifact remover.

This little gizmo was also used during our demo of the Themescene 81 and it works wonders, removing all "parasites" from our image!

[spylab]

Gandley it was not a quiet room to tell for sure but i think 81 is not noisy
at all , i believe the external scaler helps (many electronics out).
There is also some noise from the auto iris i think.

sikenny the separate unit is a scaler-switcher with the top end chip
VXP of Gennum (not a media box) and this is a BIG plus .

Zag our 3 human RBE meters say that rainbow was less than usual for them,
one if i am not wrong said that did not see almost at all but had some
dizziness after

I will say again that with HD RBE is still less and when HD DVDs are common
it will be much less of a problem

Dream gr is a bit overenthusiastic when he says < our previous 720p HD experiences seem like mere SD projections >

There is improvement but 720 is still HD after viewing 1080

In few days we will put 1080 Vs 720 side by side ................

gandley from the day before pj was isf calibrated -(we lost the settings )
so day of testing was like out of the box- and the calibration was done
with iris on ,so we may had it only with iris on
i will ask and come back about lamp modulation

The price of this pj is very good (5500 euros)

Less than BenQ 8720 of one year ago WITH the scaler-switcher !!

[spylab]

Few months back we had Projectiondesign Action Model III and
Crystallio II scaler with Samsung BDP-1000 BR
Projectiondesign Action Model III 1080p.....

Now optoma 81 with Gennum scaler and HD DVD

Both times for aditional HD source Pixel magic HD media box

So 25000-30000 euros Vs 5500 euros

By memory i can tell that optoma 81 holds ground very very well

Unfortunately Samsung BR and lack of BR software was the weak link

But in any way at this moment in picture quallity/price 81 is far ahead

How will 81 stand next to Infocus 777?

I believe (i use to say otherwise) that the higher res will win the some better
picture

I think in 1080p the solidness , extremely detailed backround and superior 3d feeling will win over the superior picture of 777.


And i believe this will be obvius by all ........ we just may need some time to
realize it.

We will soon of course find out with the next available 81 next to the waiting
777

[mikeaitch]

Great review, Spylab!!

Did you run it without the Agolith ?

Edit- sorry, just seen, you said ALSO tried it...

How do they compare with and without- is it worth the extra?

[spylab]

As i said the day before the gathering the pj was isf calibrated for 2,5 hours
(next day we lost the sets )

The comments of our elite team (4 guys) for dvd was very positive (like <HDlike>),but next day we did not see anything new in Gladiator DVD

One thing we did see is in the scene when the camera fly over Rome
the exelent smoothnes-fluidity of the paning shot
that we have seen so far with Denon A1 dvd and Crystallio scaler.

[dream_GR]

The projector was run as spylab mentioned, out of the box. No real tweaking of its settings was done, and the lamp also was running its first minutes not even hours. That means that projected quality was not at 100%. However we used a great variety of sources. HD and SD, and through a great spread of hardware configurations.

We had the joy of the 3 main players that most users will use.

Toshiba Qosmio equipped with the HD DVD ROM drive, so this is the HTPC of the future.

Pioneer 969 DVD Player that represents a very good choice of SD DVD players upscaled at 576p

and finally the HD Media Box that represents the Sigma based Multimedia streaming players that are the second alternative choice for living room players.

All 3 performed very very well and managed to hive us a very accurate idea of what the 81 is capable for. Even the normal DVD used played rather exceptionally and showed well on 120 inches.

As spylab mentioned I was (still am) rather over-enthusiastic about this new machine, and can tell you that presently for its price it is the best value for money in Projectors.

Will keep you posted when we put it in test with the HD-72 or even the HD73 when we get it in...!

[spylab]

mikeaitch we did compare with and without the Agolith
with the Vertical limit superbit DVD.

It does remove noise and dots without adding other digital artifacts
but it costs too much to worth the extra 3.500 euros.

In HD it is not really useful .

[spylab]

By <HDlike> they may mean this

That is a DVD picture taken from the US AVforum ( photo and calibration
by guitarman )

Try all and view the same frame at your display whatever it is ..........

Whith my optoma 72 and HD ( no DVD) Gladiator i cant say that i see
much more detail and that is a bit strange..........

[mikeaitch]

Originally Posted by spylab

mikeaitch we did compare with and without the Agolith
with the Vertical limit superbit DVD.

It does remove noise and dots without adding other digital artifacts
but it costs too much to worth the extra 3.500 euros.

In HD it is not really useful .

Thanks, that's a relief...

[Avi]

Originally Posted by dream_GR

We had some very stuborn LCD fans, who insist they see rainbows even with the PJ switched off!!!! Just looking at a DLP projector makes them dizzy!!!

To put you in the true perspective we gave a 3 hour test to the Optoma Themescene 81 and rainbow/headache results on these "funny" guys were minimal. They insisted that some very minimal rainbow was visible but it was not nerve racking!

Personaly i own just like Spyros (spylab) the HD72i and i have no problem with RBE's. the 81 was just so much clearer and gave a near 3d image. The depth of field of all HD films were so enhanced that vieweing was just extraordinary. Images were comparable to the Sony Ruby, but price of the 81 makes it just excellent value for money.

I'm demoing the HD81 tommorrow. I also spent a couple of hours with the Sony Pearl yesterday and it was very impressive with DVD, HD DVD and cable source in both 50/60hz. What also struck me was the unit was very, very quiet to the point that I could not detect any noise even sat directly at the side of the unit ! The other good news is the cost was under £3550.

There's going to be some great choice of 1080 PJ's

AVI

[AngelEyes]

AVI

I am considering the Pearl and the HD81 so it would be great to hear your findings.

I guess that upgrades wise the HD81 is more promising because of the seperate scaler / de-interlace thingamy-wotsit, but the Pearl looks great and has the horizontal (albeit clumsy and manual) and vertical lens shift.

If I am missing any other obvious feature differences between the 2, please let me know

Adam

[Avi]

Originally Posted by AngelEyes

AVI

I am considering the Pearl and the HD81 so it would be great to hear your findings.

I guess that upgrades wise the HD81 is more promising because of the seperate scaler / de-interlace thingamy-wotsit, but the Pearl looks great and has the horizontal (albeit clumsy and manual) and vertical lens shift.

If I am missing any other obvious feature differences between the 2, please let me know

Adam

I already have a Lumagen thingamy-wotsit (not VXP based though). My main concern on the HD81 is RBE, how well the DI works (got a poor review albeit on a pre production sample) and noise.

AVI