Optoma HD66 2500ANSI Sale 2012

I bought this projector 3 weeks ago from Amazon. Delivery was prompt and on time. The projector came in the usual Optoma box but without a carry case. Of course I knew that, but one would have been nice anyway. I had already printed out the manual (at work of course) from the Optoma website.
Set up was easy enough but a little time consuming as the settings where totally off. I believe everyone using this projector primarily for home theater will and should set the bulb to standard. The extra lumen will come in handy however when using the 3D glasses to view 3D content.
Once calibrated, picture quality was very impressive for a 720p projector. Blacks were black enough, color and shadow, rich and detailed. The projector does a good job (imo) of scaling 1080p content. I have two Blu-ray players and the projector showed Blu-ray content a lot better with my Philips player so like everything else the source is important.
Overall I'm very happy with my purchase. Couldn't convince the wife at this stage to let me spend the extra money on a 1080p projector, so I was already looking at the HD65. I was encouraged by what was being said by the very early adapters that had pulled the trigger on the dedicated AV forums (God bless them). Early veiwings included Iron Man and Transformers, and Walle and UP for animation, all in Blu-ray on a 72" 16:9 screen and I'm truly impressed. The harshest critic is too, the wife. Picture is as good, if not better, than my Sanyo 42" 1080p plasma. I'm English; my wife is American so were now looking forward to the World Cup being shown in 3D. By the time the tournament begins hopefully the price of active shutter glasses will have fallen enough so were not passing one pair around the room to everybody.
If you have bought this projector from Amazon just post a review good, bad or indifferent. I was compelled to do so because for a long time the only one posted nearly caused me to pass on the HD66. $700 is a lot of money (to me at least), so I utilize reviews all the time without giving back. This was my first one ever, hope it helps.
Very nice projector, good colors, brightness and black levels. This is not going to compete with a $2k projector, but for its class, it does a really impressive job.

I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because out of the box, the settings make the image look quite poor, complete loss of detail in faces, skin tones are definitely off. After some quick calibraiton, Specifically:
- I turned down the bulb to standard
- turned "Brilliant Color" way down
- reduced the contrast to about 42-45.
- I also turned down the brightness to 43, but after doing a THX optimizer, brought the brightness back up to the standard 50.

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