Optoma HD700X - DLP High Definition Home Cinema Projector - With HDMI

After much research I chose this superb projector. Small, neat, quite easy to use with a great picture quality. No rainbow effects, no fan hum and no fuss of any sort. Will project from any device I care to think of. At the moment it's running off a cheap Asda HDMI DVD with old computer speakers and it's wonderful. Clear picture even in normal daylight. Draw the curtains put on Lord of the Rings and the world becomes a better place. Great product at a good price.I'm updating this after a year and a half of ownership. all of the above is still true, until it goes wrong! The first time something called the colour wheel packed up. Out of the one year guarentee and a bill for over a £100. The Optoma service department is in the stone age. No Secure payment service and they still want you to use a fax. The mind boggles. The second time it went wrong was when the bulb blew. And I mean 'Blew' sending glass fragments into the machine and destroying something vital. Once agin the glacier slow Optoma repairs dept. finaly fixed it, this time for £120.Great viewing pleasure as long as it does not go wrong.Another update now three years in and all is well, The picture quality is still pretty good. Nothing else has gone wrong and still on first bulb. The fan seems to have got very slightly louder but not so that you really notice.Almost six years on and it's still working well and somehow still on the first main bulb.

The Optoma HD700X is a great piece of kit for home movies and PowerPoint presentations. My key reason for purchase is making presentations at client sites. I've used a lot of business projectors over the years and this knocks spots off all of them in terms of performance, ease of setup and original cost. The brightness of the projected image is great for all but the most sun infested office environments. If you're on a budget you do not need to buy a dedicated office projector for general usage; the manufacturers have segmented the market to get money/cash out of you - it's a con the DLP technology is perfect for business use. It will handle up to 1600 x 1200 or 1280 x 720 wide screen with an analog input and 1920 x 1080 with a digital input hence the term "HD Ready".It has a nice black boxy shape just right for office use - you don't want to turn up for a meeting with a white plastic lump or weird looking oval shaped kit - you'll get laughed at. It gets hot but there's about 200W blaring away in a small container - the fan is efficient at standard setting and unobtrusive, put it on high speed and it's more noticeable but still not an issue.I use it with a variety of laptops: HP, Sony Vaio and Asus netbook they link up very quickly compared to many business projectors. The linking is automatic the HD700X searches all the ports for a connection or the machine can be locked to a single port, generally the VGA port. I've also used it with a MacBook but you'll need to buy a mini-DVI to VGA convertor, these cost about $8. The PowerPoint images are crisp and clear and it's a simple button press on the remote to remove the dreaded keystone effect. If you have a PC or laptop with an odd output signel there is a tracking feature that will eliminate any onscreen visual noise. It's supplied with lots of cables VGA, SVideo, Scart convertor to VGA, US and UK power leads but you'll need to buy an HDMI lead for your techie input.Oh nearly forgot, DVD movies, games or BBC iPLayer are just great played through a good laptop or PC - I project onto a light painted wall the, resulting image is very good; no sign of any colour aberrations even with a film such as "Tell No One" (great French movie) with some hand held shots. Even AVI files at 700Mb size play very well through this kit. Optoma HD700X - DLP High Definition Home Cinema Projector - With HDMI

The good things about this projector were it's excellent image quality and ease to set up. The bad: it was reasonably noisy, had a very narrow range you could have it away from the screen, and it failed after not many hours. It developed black vertical lines down the screen, so after trying different power supplies, it was into the bin with it. A bit of a shame as it was quite a good projector and we only used it for the occassional movie night during the summer holidays.

After much soul searching I decided to replace my ageing Projector, although I would have liked full HD I can't justify the cost right now, maybe in a few years. The HD700X fitted neatly into the gap between SD and full HD.So what about it?Smaller than I was expecting for a start, you almost miss it hanging on the ceiling.Once installed the most noteable thingy was the lack of noise.. I was expecting to hear it blowing away like a jet engine and as it was right above where I was sitting I was very suprised to note is was nearly silent in operation. The only realy noise the fan makes is when it shuts down giving 10 seconds of extreme air movement in advance of the shut off.I had a bit of a nightmare finding the setting to rotate the image (when mounted on the ceiling they are upside down) but once found it worked very well.Plugging in a HD source was a real eye opener as with SD the image looks a little washed out and blurred, even for me, but plug in a HD source and the picture becomes so much better.Overall I'm very impressed with it my only niggle is the rainbow effect I get when watching programs that insist on using the shaky cam. Although that could be just me. One thing I do love is the remote lights up for a breith time when you press a button, but hey I'm a sad git. Brightness is pretty good with it viewable during the day and in near full sunlight, but at night it truely shines ;)So I would give it 85/100 overall.Well recommended and has made Rock Band nights enjoyable again :)

Bought this to future proof our club where it would get little use. Had it just over 2 years with 12 hours indicated use and it went faulty. Amazon didn't want to know but Optoma helped with just the standard charge.