Optoma H76 - The Real Story (1 Viewer)

[RobS]

There are a lot of stories circulating on the release/delay of the Optoma H76. I have been on a wait list for almost 2 months. During this time I have heard many versions of why and when. Earlier this week I contacted Optoma directly and received the following information from the General Manager and head of Product Development. Hope this clears things up. I for one am looking forward to seeing it perform in my HT soon.

I requested answers to the following (abbreviate below):
o Are there product issues? I have heard everything from case/feet problems to issues with the faroudja chip.
o Is the delay just a marketing tactic to increase demand?
o What is causing the delay?


---- Optoma Response ----

Let me address a few things first.
1. There are four adjustable feet on the H76 and they have worked perfectly since the beginning
2. We have never had a Faroudja issue because there is no faroudja processor in the H76. It uses a 10 bit Trident deinterlacer.

To answer your questions:
1. This was not a marketing play.
2. There were real issues with the first product that we have which caused this delay. The issues have been overcome and we are planning on seeing the first shipment from Taiwan on the 21st of this month (give or take a day or two)

The issues that caused the delay are 2 fold.
1. The main board had to be relayed out since there was a problem with the DVI connection that would have been serious had it made it to the field. With the old design you couldn't use a dual link DVI cable without the H76 causing damage to the video source connected to the H76. This problem caused the biggest delay and was the primary reason for the 6 week delay.

2. There were 5 "A list" firmware bugs that I felt should not hit the consumers, so I blackflagged the project until they were solved. Now that they have been tackled, we are feverishly mopping up smaller bugs so that the firmware edition our customers get works as advertised. One of the major bugs that the H76 had was that the Pixelworks 465 scaler that we were using was not properly programmed. That MIGHT have been the source of that rumor you spoke of. Since this is not a hardware issue it was just a matter of finding out what went wrong and fixing it.

---- End Optoma Response ----

Hope this helps set the story straight. I have been doing a tremendous amount of research and this IMO is going to be a winning projector at a very cost effective price point - no I'm not affiliated with Optoma .

Thanks,
Rob

 

[Parker Clack]

Rob:

Thanks for the detailed response from Optoma on this projector. I know a lot of people have been waiting on reviews to be posted to see how it performs real world. I am also glad to see that Optoma cares enough about their product line to put out a piece that works right to their best ability instead of just dumping it out on to the market place and then waiting for the consumer to find out after they have received the product that it has bugs.

Parker