Optoma H31 Home Theater 480p DLP Video Projector
A great bargain in the home theater projector maze
I did a lot of research before buying a projector and DVD player for our basement theater. I have run 16mm and 8mm films for 30 years and was leary of video projection. I finally decided on the H31 because most of what we watch are old 3:4 black and white movies on DVD. I don't like TV and have no interest in watching HD programming. I did purchase the upscaling Oppo 971 DVD player to get the film-like look. <br /> <br />The projector was a huge disappointment when I first got it. I bought a Gray Wolf II screen to go with it, and I discovered that I could not put the projector on a table or in my projection booth (about 4.5 feet off the ground. If I did the image was projected on the ceiling. When they talk about a 35-degree lens offset, that means a huge amount of upshifting of the image. We put the projector on the floor and still had to point it at the floor for it to fill the screen, which hangs down from a 7 foot ceiling. <br /> <br />I bought a ceiling mount from eBay and it is a piece of garbage. It will not hold the adjustment, although it is made of aircraft grade aluminum. Don't fall for that garbage. It's a lightweight, overpriced mount and it doesn't work. It cost $20 to ship it and cost him $4.30 to actually ship. Take my advice, bit the bullet and buy the Optoma mount. <br /> <br />After fussing around and drilling about 10 sets of holes in our ceiling, we finally got the projector in a spot that doesn't produce huge amounts of keystoning that can't be fixed. This projector has very limited zoom and lens shift controls, so measure carefully because you will not have much in way of flexibility. The image is still a little cockeyed on the screen, and it bugs me, but no one else seems to notice. <br /> <br />They are blown away by the image quality. This projector requires absolute darkness and no more than a 92-inch diagonal screen. Turn on the lights and it's really bad. Use a larger screen, and it gets bad. Also, you should have a ceiling at least 9 feet tall to use a mount. WE are really hurting for ceiling space in my installation; I had planned to put it in my projection booth, but that just doesn't work with this huge lens offset. What were these people thinking when making the offset so large? <br /> <br />For the money, this does give a very good image. It works well in our small venue. It's not the projector to buy if you want the lights on, if you want a huge image or if you have a ceilng where you can't drill a ton of holes trying to find the best location that doesn't produce a cockeyed image with a lot of keystoning (keystoning controls only do so much and it seems to cut off a portion of the image when using them). The lens shift feature on the projector is worthless (cuts off portion of the image. <br /> <br />It runs hot but isn't noisy. Focusing seems sloppy and the zoom is pretty lame. But again, it's only $600. I figure we'll use it for a couple of years and toss it when the bulb burns out. By then, the HD projectors will be $500.