The Perfect Vision
Optoma HD70 Additional Notes and Technical Ratings
Under the Hood | Adjustment Notes | Technical Ratings
Under the Hood
Many of today's Blu-ray and HD DVD players can send a 1080p signal via HDMI, but very few 720p displays can accept such a signal. Amazingly, the HD70 can, though it scales the image to a resolution of 1280x720.
In most cases, a 1080p signal is sent at 60 frames per second (fps), which can cause a slight jerkiness in a film-based picture because the movie was shot and stored on the disc at 24fps. The Blu-ray players from Pioneer and Sony can send 1080p at 24fps, but to avoid that jerkiness, the display must be able to accept and display it without converting it to 60fps. The HD70 amazed me with its ability to accept 1080p/24 and display it at 48fps, which eliminates any jerkiness in high-def movies sent at 1080p/24.
As I switched between the HDMI components (HD DVD player, DVD player, etc.) connected to my Marantz SR9600 receiver, which in turn was connected to the projector's single HDMI input, I was amazed to discover that the HD70 remembered the different picture-control settings for each component, even though they were connected to the same input. This is another very advanced feature for such an inexpensive projector.
Adjustment Notes
Out of the box, brightness was too high, but contrast was too low. In User mode, Brightness default was right on the money, Contrast was too low, Color was too low, and Tint was right on. I had difficulty adjusting the Color control until I turned BrilliantColor off. I couldn't induce ringing even with Sharpness cranked all the way up. Of the three color temp presets (labeled 0, 1, and 2), 0 was closest to correct. All three yielded very different peak white levels; 1 was the highest, though it was still lower than ideal, even with the lamp's Bright mode on. I chose Color Temp preset 0 as subjectively best-looking on normal program material, even though it produced the least amount of light.
The HD70 provides full grayscale calibration controls in the user menu, which I didn't adjust per TPV's policy for displays under $10,000; who would spend hundreds of dollars having a $1000 projector professionally calibrated? But if I owned this projector, I would calibrate color-temp preset 1 to achieve the maximum light output and accurate grayscale.
Technical Ratings
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