From what I can see the projector looks pretty decent. It gets 4 stars on Amazon.

I have been using this projector in my basement in our home theater setup. Love it since day one. I have had some problems with it though after about 2 years, cost me about $150 to repair (out of warranty). Also had a bulb explode on me ($200), but that can happen with any projector. Picture quality is fantastic, but given that I've paid $999 3 years ago and it was new, I'm not sure if this price is so great for a refurbished unit.

I paired this with a 110" electric screen from htdepot and feel like ive got a great system. With some budget in-wall speakers, a polk sub and an entry level yamaha receiver tweaked just right it really impresses for about $1500 all told. Prometheus on blu-ray really shows what this projector is capable of.
One small gripe is the lack of audio return, which means you will likely need to run hdmi and an audio cable from your source instead of just one hdmi cable.

Biggest concern is that it's refurb (90 day warranty) which in and of itself may not be a big problem except the bulb has only a 30 day warranty, strongly suggesting that the bulb is not new. Bulbs seem to be the most fickle part of a projector.

bubbachuck wrote:Biggest concern is that it's refurb (90 day warranty) which in and of itself may not be a big problem except the bulb has only a 30 day warranty, strongly suggesting that the bulb is not new. Bulbs seem to be the most fickle part of a projector.

I would be really surprised if they were not new bulbs. I think this was answered before a long time ago, but it would be good if a Optoma rep could verify that all the refurbished projectors have new bulbs in them.

The guys at AVSForum talked about this projector when it came out a couple of years ago, marketed mainly at Cosco, and at least one person bought one from woot! and stated the bulb counter said 5 hours.

Revision3's HDNation did a nice video of the Optoma HD180 versus a $6500 projector and reviewed the HD180.

Review of HD180 starts at 4:41.

eastcobbler wrote:I paired this with a 110" electric screen from htdepot and feel like ive got a great system. With some budget in-wall speakers, a polk sub and an entry level yamaha receiver tweaked just right it really impresses for about $1500 all told. Prometheus on blu-ray really shows what this projector is capable of.
One small gripe is the lack of audio return, which means you will likely need to run hdmi and an audio cable from your source instead of just one hdmi cable.

At first I was thinking someone had a valid gripe with the projector, but why would you ever want to have audio return from a projector??? This is the END of the HDMI pipe, and the audio should be pulled off by your switching receiver BEFORE the projector. This is definitely not a disadvantage for any Home Theater installation.

We got this same projector two years ago as a refurb here too and absolutely love it. For those of you concerned about the lamp being new or not, I believe our bulb had zero or less than five hours on it. We actually used this to project onto a light gray painted screen and you can't even see the wall texture in the image.

We only decided to replace ours for their newer 3D model, but never had any complaints on this one!

We have this projector in our basement and it's brilliant. (We got it about a year and a half ago.)

The bulb said 8 hours when I first fired it up and we're still on the first one.

With the right set up, there is no need to go to the theater to watch movies.

Think of the money you could be saving!

I bought one of these new on Amazon a couple months ago, and have been loving it to death. I'm using a 120" pull-down screen and blu-rays look amazing, as sharp as the high-quality digital projection you pay extra for at movie theaters. Having tested it for movies, games and as a second display for my laptop, I found the quality is stunning on all three; small text is easily readable and you have to squint to make out pixels.

No thank you. I would like to get another BENQ Ultra Short Throw

Other than than being 1080 vs 720p, anyone know why I would buy this over the hd66 by Optoma? $534 on Amazon, really want to pull the trigger on one soon, and 1080p would be nice, but will it make that much of a difference and the HD66 has better contrast and can be brighter which might be nice for trying to watch with more background light.

http://projectors.findthebest.com/compare/40-41/Optoma-HD-180-vs-Optoma-HD66

http://www.amazon.com/Optoma-HD66-2500ANSI-Lumens-4000/dp/B002ZWU33U

timmalia wrote:At first I was thinking someone had a valid gripe with the projector, but why would you ever want to have audio return from a projector??? This is the END of the HDMI pipe, and the audio should be pulled off by your switching receiver BEFORE the projector. This is definitely not a disadvantage for any Home Theater installation.

I had to re-learn home theaters to update to hdmi hardware. Maybe the issue I describe has to do with my laptop which is the blu-ray source. We'll see if the same thing happens when i buy a dedicated blu-ray player. It was just a gripe i had during setup.

Fearful of the short warranty I had a screen mounted and waiting for the projector to pop back up on woot. otherwise id buy it and it would sit unvetted while the 30/90 days expired. luckily i only waited about a month before woot put them up again.
My bulb timer said 12 hours when i hooked it up, and reads about 200 now. but i believe you can just go in there and reset the timer at will.

eastcobbler wrote:... but i believe you can just go in there and reset the timer at will.

Yeah, this is why I wonder if the bulbs are new and they just didn't reset the timer or if they actually just have a few hours on them.

Owned this for over a year. Makes my friends jealous. Just 2 days ago, however, the display was purple. Not sure if it was a problem with the DVD or with the projector. I could not reproduce the issue. Also, the projector is a great choice for high res stuff (PS3, blue rays, etc), but it makes the Wii look like crap. I think that's more the fault of the Wii.

How come the only wooters for this deal are in the snow-heavy regions? Don't they enjoy playing outside in the blizzard?

bubbachuck wrote:Biggest concern is that it's refurb (90 day warranty) which in and of itself may not be a big problem except the bulb has only a 30 day warranty, strongly suggesting that the bulb is not new. Bulbs seem to be the most fickle part of a projector.

The bulbs in question usually have a MTBF of 3000+ hours on continuous high power use. The average household uses their projector 2 - 3 hours/day (via a study done on Projector Central). This would roughly equal 3 years of use on the lamp for daily use.

This is an average lifespan, and we have had many cases of users getting more than double the life out of the lamp depending on use.

All our refurbished projectors are thouroughly inspected for any and all defects before getting a quality approval. All of this is done here at our clean rooms which are inside our Headquarters in USA.

theguruguys wrote:Yeah, this is why I wonder if the bulbs are new and they just didn't reset the timer or if they actually just have a few hours on them.

To maintain integrity of the product, our techs never manipulate the lamp life timer.

You can't go wrong with an Optoma Projector. I own the HD20 which is HD180's brother, and have about 3200 hours logged on the original lamp. It still looks as good as when we bought it new. The HD66 as someone previously compared the HD180 to is 720p and has less segments in the color wheel this means more brightness and sacrificing rich colors. I see HD180 at Costco for nearly $1,000. This, in my opinion, is a fantastic deal. Contemplating getting one for my man cave.

Resolution on a projector makes a HUGE difference. Going from a 37 to a 47" TV is a reasonably small change, but with a 19 or 20 ft throw this thing will probably spread to around 160", so the difference in resolution is monumental. 3D however, is totally worth skipping IMHO. Just not enough content, and how many pairs of glasses are you going to keep around and charged up???

So... New bulbs? The answer from what seemed to be a rep didn't really say anything other than the people who posted the got one last time they were for sale on Woot had less than 5 hours on the bulb, and that the hours on the bulb are never adjusted.

All that means is that they didn't reset the hours, not that the bulbs were new...

Any chance a rep can reply to this and say, "Yes, each projector will ship with a bulb that has less than 5 hours." Or whatever the actual number is.

If the bulb is new, I'll buy within 5 minutes of reading the response.

Many sites list this in the top projectors for under $1000. Amazon has it new for $850. If I buy for $600, then have to buy a $150 bulb... I'd rather pay the extra $100 and get it new.

eastcobbler wrote:Fearful of the short warranty I had a screen mounted and waiting for the projector to pop back up on woot.

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I would say you may have reason to be concerned. Generally, 9 in 10 refurbs will be outstanding when you use them. My last woot, I got the tenth one. Refurb with 90 day warentee. It failed at the end of the warrentee but after going the route of contacting the manufacturer, then a repair station, then woot, the warrentee was up. In short I just ate $200, no warrentee.
So I will say its a gamble, 1 in 10. How lucky do you feel? Or get the extended warrentee to protect your buy.

A friend has this model and it ok. You still need a dark room to get the benefits. My old In focus 7210 blows this out of the water picture wise. Perhaps not a fair comparison for Infocus packed allot of technology into the 7210. I paid 900 for it 3.5 years ago and have only gone though one bulb and replaced it with an OEM bulb for 100 bucks.

I bought one of these refurbs last time. It's been perfect. Great deal for a quality projector.

apdmello wrote:Owned this for over a year. Makes my friends jealous. Just 2 days ago, however, the display was purple. Not sure if it was a problem with the DVD or with the projector. I could not reproduce the issue. Also, the projector is a great choice for high res stuff (PS3, blue rays, etc), but it makes the Wii look like crap. I think that's more the fault of the Wii.

You might have a little dust on the color wheel sensor. It will probably get a little worse over time, as mine did. Just google it and there are tutorial to take the projector apart. Takes about an hour and problem has not come back in the months since. That has been the only problem with the projector, and picture is amazing.

rklockner wrote:So... New bulbs? The answer from what seemed to be a rep didn't really say anything other than the people who posted the got one last time they were for sale on Woot had less than 5 hours on the bulb, and that the hours on the bulb are never adjusted.

All that means is that they didn't reset the hours, not that the bulbs were new...

Any chance a rep can reply to this and say, "Yes, each projector will ship with a bulb that has less than 5 hours." Or whatever the actual number is.

If the bulb is new, I'll buy within 5 minutes of reading the response.

Many sites list this in the top projectors for under $1000. Amazon has it new for $850. If I buy for $600, then have to buy a $150 bulb... I'd rather pay the extra $100 and get it new.

All Optoma refurbished units will have some life on the bulbs as our techs will test the unit thoroughly for some hours before repackaging and shipping out.

We cannot legally state that the bulbs are "new" since the whole unit is refurbished. However, within the warranty period if you notice that there is difference in the image displayed, our customer service department can help you further.

So does that mean the only hours on the bulb are from testing? In other words before refurbishing the unit, was a new bulb put in the projector?

Or does it mean that the bulb in the projector is the one that was in it when it was sent back to be refurbished?

dwijster wrote:All Optoma refurbished units will have some life on the bulbs as our techs will test the unit thoroughly for some hours before repackaging and shipping out.

We cannot legally state that the bulbs are "new" since the whole unit is refurbished. However, within the warranty period if you notice that there is difference in the image displayed, our customer service department can help you further.

rklockner wrote:So does that mean the only hours on the bulb are from testing? In other words before refurbishing the unit, was a new bulb put in the projector?

Or does it mean that the bulb in the projector is the one that was in it when it was sent back to be refurbished?

This is directly dependent on whether the bulb was working when the unit was returned/deemed not fit for sale as is.

If the bulb is in full working condition, it will be that original bulb.

Although we cannot specifically state what the hours of use will be on each and every unit. It is safe to say that the bulbs will have had minimal use.

optomacsr wrote:This is directly dependent on whether the bulb was working when the unit was returned/deemed not fit for sale as is.

If the bulb is in full working condition, it will be that original bulb.

Although we cannot specifically state what the hours of use will be on each and every unit. It is safe to say that the bulbs will have had minimal use.

FYI: When I purchased the HD20 (exact same bulb as HD180) refurb it had about 6hours on the lamp life. Like I mentioned earlier, I am now at a little over 3200 and the bulb is still going strong. I think there is too much emphasis on the bulb. These bulbs are tough and are built to last.

I just realized this is the 180 and not the hd20. It would seem the savings is roughly the cost of a new bulb... not sure it is worth the gamble.

dwijster wrote:FYI: When I purchased the HD20 (exact same bulb as HD180) refurb it had about 6hours on the lamp life. Like I mentioned earlier, I am now at a little over 3200 and the bulb is still going strong. I think there is too much emphasis on the bulb. These bulbs are tough and are built to last.

I got one of these a couple years ago and it works great and has a nice picture but has a color uniformity issue I suspect why it was returned in the first place. On a white background, the color shifts pink then green as you move to the right. Looks terible on a white background game screen or some bright scenes. I know I would have returned any new projector that did this. They just reboxed it and shipped it to me. Check for this issue, I don't think this is acceptable. Was working 2 jobs at the time and did not have time to deal with the issue. I am hoping a new bulb will fix it, I don't see how a color shift can be in the electronics.