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Display Review: Optoma HD81

May 1, 2007 12:00 PM, Reviewer: Jeff Sauer

With its anamorphic lens kit, this 1080p projector is primed to display cinematic content.

What's your idea of the perfect screening-room projector? No doubt you'd want lifelike color, smooth motion, sharpness, clarity, and rich blacks. If you're an arts or educational organization, you probably also want it to be affordable. And you'd probably also want something that looks great displaying a variety of content and different aspect ratios.

That sounds like a tall order, but Optoma's new HD81 comes enjoyably close, even in terms of having multiple native aspect ratios. The HD81, by itself, is a good value at a street price less than $6,000 with a native 1080p resolution, a wide variety of connection options including multiple HDMI inputs, and Gennum VXP image processing. But Optoma also offers a mechanical anamorphic lens kit option that can turn this native 1080p projector into a native 2.35:1 cinema-wide projector. And the bundle price is still less than $8,000.

The HD81 comes in two parts — three if you count the anamorphic lens kit. The projector itself has no control or navigation buttons on its white, curved-front chassis — not even a power control. Instead, it connects to Optoma's Gennum VXP-based scaling and video-processing module via a single HDMI cable and an RS-232 control cable.

That two-part design may seem a little clumsy at first glance, but I suspect it will be a major asset in most environments. Moving all connectivity to the video-processing module affords many more connection options than could physically fit on the rear of a projector. In this case, you'll be able to connect two BNC component sources, two more RCA component sources, multiple composite and S-Video feeds if necessary, as well as up to three HDMI sources. Naturally, with all those connection options it makes a lot more sense to have the physical ports closer to where the source components are located rather than, for example, up on the ceiling with the projector.

And that's the second reason for the two-part design: It ultimately allows much greater placement flexibility. Admittedly, that advantage is offset to a degree because Optoma offers only a 1.2:1 zoom lens and no lens-shift function. Along with manual-only focus and zoom, those are cost-saving measures. But these missing functions mandate that this projector is going to need its own place in a room; all the more reason to minimize the cabling to the projector itself.

The “more” in anamorphic

Anamorphic lenses are nothing new, of course, but using them with native 16:9 projectors such as the HD81 makes a lot more sense (for video, anyway) than coupling them with native 4:3 projectors, as in the past. With a widescreen projector, an anamorphic lens can display 2.35:1 content without a letterbox, and Optoma's moveable lens bracket means the HD81 can offer native viewing of the two most common movie aspect ratios.

And it's not just about getting rid of the black bars. After all, masking the light from the black bars could essentially serve the same purpose. The real benefit of the anamorphic lens is that it leverages the projector's full vertical pixel resolution. Consider a 2.35:1 movie on DVD: 12.5 percent on both the top and bottom is encoded as black bars, effectively losing resolution at the source — and then more at the display end if the projector displays the black bars.

An anamorphic lens, which literally stretches the image horizontally, allows the projector to stretch the image vertically to use its full 1080 pixels, translating to a better, sharper image. Anamorphic DVDs with 2.35:1 content do one better by encoding the picture already stretched to fill a 16:9 frame. The anamorphic lens optically un-squeezes the image into the proper proportions.

Admittedly, there are a few caveats. First, all the stretching means interpolating, and potentially changing, the information. On the other hand, scaling and image processing is an almost inevitable part of displaying any video image, and if done well, it usually aids the final quality. For example, a 480-line DVD usually looks better displayed on a 1080p projector than on a 480p projector.

Image softening from a second piece of glass is another theoretical issue to consider, but it's ultimately a subjective call. With 1080p resolution, it's certainly reasonable to argue that a little softness might actually improve one's perception of the image, giving it a more film-like look. In the case of the HD81, fine detail is ultimately more of an issue with the VXP processing than with the lens. I noticed artifacts on 1×1-pixel patterns from an Extron VTG 400 pattern generator more than I noticed any loss of resolution from the lens.

Using an anamorphic lens also blocks some amount of light and spreads the remaining light over a much larger area, thereby decreasing overall brightness. In the case of the HD81, I measured a decrease in center-point brightness of approximately 4 percent with the anamorphic lens put on (going from 598 ANSI lumens to 573 ANSI lumens). Yet, because that light is being distributed over a screen area that's roughly 32 percent bigger, the entire image appears dimmer. Fortunately, Optoma's lens decreases the projector's brightness quite evenly across the grayscale range, so contrast ratio is largely unaffected (I measured 1770:1 and 1758:1 without and then with the lens).

The bigger issue in dealing with the anamorphic lens is pin-cushioning (when the image appears concave) and brightness uniformity (less than 60 percent with the lens, 71 percent without), both of which become visible when projecting against a flat screen. The ideal match for a projector like the HD81 is a slightly curved screen.

More better picture

The real benefit of the anamorphic lens is simply seeing more of the HD81's excellent picture. I tested a variety of content, including native HD, standard-definiton DVD, and upconverted DVD to 1080p from an Oppo Digital DV-981HD DVD player, and the results were consistently impressive — especially for a sub-$6,000 projector. Indeed, some of the HD81's best marks come from its effective scaling of lower-resolution content, making it look natural and full on a large screen — although that in no way discounts its very good HD performance.

I found Optoma's color accuracy to be very good. Primaries and, especially, secondaries were nearly spot-on, and that translates directly into a richer image. Grayscale tracking was good, too, particularly for a single-chip DLP model. However, as with any single-chip, there's just not enough light to get both deep blacks and great differentiation in the shadows and lower grayscale shades. I also noticed a bit of an awkward color temperature shift toward magenta from about 68 IRE to 80 IRE, which seemed to translate directly to some minor posterization in gradients at the top end of that range. However, the overall image quality of the HD81 is very strong.

The Optoma HD81 is not the only 1080p projector to break the $10,000, or even $6,000, barrier. Yet it is part of a group of products that makes a huge statement about just how far projector quality has come, in terms of both resolution and image processing. Optoma truly puts the hammer down with the HD81 with the mechanical anamorphic lens kit. Sure, it's an extra $2,000 with the bundle, but try to find a similar package elsewhere for less than double the price. Or, better, just sit down and enjoy the show.

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bottomline

Company: Optoma
www.optomausa.com

Product: HD81

Assets: Native 16:9, two-part design enables flexible installation and input options, low price especially with the anamorphic lens bundle.

Caveats: Modest scaling artifacts, some degree of brightness non-uniformity.

Demographic: Anyone needing an affordable, high-quality screening-room projector.

PRICE: $5,999 (PROJECTOR ONLY); $7,999 (PROJECTOR AND LENS KIT); $3,999 (LENS KIT SEPARATELY)

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© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.