Optoma H79 DLP Review
ultimate AV has a review of the Optoma H79 DLP projector. The H79 contains Texas Instrument’s DarkChip3 technology, for better blacks. It includes an 8-segment 5x-speed colour wheel, and has a resolution of 720p. The H79 has a contrast ratio of 4500:1 and puts out 1000 lumens of light. It has a DVI connector, but no HDMI.
It is a quiet projector, which is great news for those who might end up sitting near it. It has a vertical lens shift feature, which is great, but no horizontal lens shift. Lens shift allows you to place the projector higher or lower than the middle of the screen and still get perfect screen geometry.
Mr. Stone seems to like it:
To my mind—and eyes—the H79 qualifies as the first single-chip DLP that delivers acceptable home theater performance. Not only can it produce a stunning, virtually noise-free picture through its DVI inputs, but it does so without inflicting visual fatigue even after more than five hours of continuous critical viewing. Sure, it occasionally displays rainbow artifacts, and it doesn’t have as black a black as a good CRT projector, but its wide contrast range, exemplary shadow detail, superb color delicacy, and extremely low mechanical noise level make it hard to deny its seductive allure.
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August 30th, 2005 at 12:13 pm
Hi, when you say the colorwheel is 5X speed, what do you mean? Here is a guess … a typical frame refresh rate is 60Hz. However, color break-up (rainbow) artifacts make this unacceptable. Some DLP TVs use up to a 240Hz frame rate, which would be 4X the usual 60Hz, to minimize rainbow artifacts. Does 5X then mean a 300Hz refresh rate which would minimize even more the rainbow artifact, and hence produce less eye fatigue when viewing (as per Mr. Stone’s comment on 5 hours of viewing)? Thanks.
August 30th, 2005 at 1:22 pm
Yes, I think you’ve got it, though I’m not up on all the DLP details.