HD20 - Overall Color & Picture Quality

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Art Feierman

Bottom Line for Overall Picture Quality and Color Handling: Very good color, extremely good shadow detail, and mediocre black levels. All considered, however, being only $999, the HD20 does provide very good value, in terms of the picture itself. Spend more for better, but, hey, if you plan to watch movies in a room that can't be fully darkened (and especially if the walls/ceiling are light colored), much of the superior black level advantage of more expensive projectors will simply be lost. This is one reason why I refer to the Optoma HD20 as a projector that should be a very good fit in a family room type of environment, as opposed to a more dedicated room with full lighting control and dark surfaces. We'll finish our look at comparative images of entry level 1080p projectors with the crew image from Space Cowboys. First is the Optoma HD20, followed by the Samsung, then the Epson Home Cinema 6100, followed by the Sharp XV-Z15000:

HD20

SP-A600

Epson_6100

XV-Z15000

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Optoma HD20 Projector: Performance, HDTV and Sports

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Not a thing wrong with the HD20 when it comes to watching my favorite college and NFL teams. Sure, you can have a brighter projector, but even the brightest under $3000 projectors are only about 20-40% brighter in brightest mode, while many others have only 2/3 or 3/4 the brightness of the Optoma.

The overall image is nice and sharp (sharper than a number of 3LCD projectors), which is always a plus. I got to watch at least 10 hours of football, and the HD20 did just fine. Friends passing through were impressed. They thought it reasonably bright - and they come over for the football, not to look at projectors. So far, everyone has liked it. While black levels may be an HD20 weakness, no one worries about black levels for sports, and for that matter most of regular TV and HDTV programming, because really dark scenes tend to be hard to find (except on movies).

The Optoma HD20 works very nicely as a low cost, hi-res projector for your sports and general TV, HDTV viewing. End of conversation!

BTW, one more, from the same Penn State vs. USC Rose Bowl game last year. I was at the game, and saw the Stealth bomber flyby, (very, very, cool) but lifted this image from my recording of the game: