About Movie

Two months ago both Optoma and Vivitek announced the availability of 'below $1000' home 1080p projectors. Both these budget projectors are expected to fly off the shelf during the holidays. Till this announcement, the lowest price you could get online for a 1080p projector was about $300 higher.

These projectors may not have the rich feature set of the higher priced projectors but if you are just planning to view a movie with good image quality and have a small budget (like many of us), these projectors will be more than adequate. The higher prices for marginal improvements may not be worthwhile.

The Vivitek H1080FD has a native resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p), 1800 lumens of brightness and a contrast ratio of 5000:1. It includes multiple input options; most notable are the two HDMI ports. The others are Composite Video, S-Video, RS-232c and a 12v Trigger. The projector uses the DLP chipset from Texas Instruments. It has an estimated lamp life of 3000 hours.

The Optoma HD20 also has a native resolution of 1080p, 1700 lumens and a contrast ration of 4000:1. Optoma states the ANSI contrast ratio, a better measure of contrast, is 500:1 which puts it in the same league as more expensive projectors. The input ports match those of the Vivitek H1080FD (S video port is absent) but the computed lamp life is 4000 hours, about 33% higher.

If you are on a budget and a home theater enthusiast, you cannot go wrong by buying either the Optoma HD20 or the Vivitek H1080FD. And, by the time you reach the end of life of these lamps, newer, cheaper, technology would have arrived in the market.