Reddit mentions of Optoma HD25-LV 1080p 3D DLP Home Theater Projector

IS it the HD25-LV? New, that's a $1200 item.

If it's one of their ~$400 models, it can't compete with a plasma screen.

The quality in my opinion is great. I don't notice any lag at all. If you're into competitive gaming, you might notice something.

I have this projector. I got it when it was at $1200, but it has apparently gone down a lot since then. Jerks...

The main thing is light control. If you can't make your room dark enough, you won't be able to use it during the day. With this projector, I can use it in moderate light, but it's obviously better at night.

I don't even use a screen, just some 2" wide black felt tape stuck on the wall as a border. For all my purposes, it is fantastic.

I hope you've got some sweet surround sound to go with it!

Sure thing!

The Projector is the Optoma HD25-LV... For what it's worth, I didn't pay that price for mine. Not sure why that's $1800 now. I think I paid less than $700 brand new.

Screen - Elite Screens Spectrum 125-inch motorized

Speakers - Blue Octave... I had never heard of this brand. But I had a set of older sony speakers in there before and they were sounding tinny. So, I gave these a shot. I think I got them for around $100 for the set of 8, and they have been absolutely amazing. They sound great.

Subs - I don't have links to them. But they are both Sony subs. The one I got with a 5.1 set of speakers I bought a few years ago, and the other one is the exact same thing, I picked up at an estate sale for like $12. They're behind my seats.

Receiver - Sony STRDN-850 (current)... However, this arrived today. I bought this for 2 reasons. 1) We just had a pretty big storm roll through our area over the last couple of days. There was no lightning or thunder, but the power did surge a few times while I was trying to work from home in my theater, and at one point, the receiver shut down and wouldn't come back on. Then, after a while when it did, it wouldn't output video or audio. Audio has since randomly returned, but still not outputting video. 2) We recently spent a good bit of coin on our back yard, and have a nice area to entertain, which we plan to do more often. The new receiver will allow for multiple zones, and I'm planning on putting an outdoor theater out on our new patio

Gaming PC - Ryzen 5 1600x CPU, Asus Strix B350-f motherboard,Asus Strix GTX 1070, 16gb RAM built into a Rosewill 4u server chassis. I replaced the front intake fans with these to add some character. Single 250gb NVME SSD for OS, and single 525gb SATA SSD for game storage. 20tb of drives in a Windows Spanned Volume acting as a backup for the media server.

Media Server - Dell R710 with dual xeon E-5630 CPUs, 36gb RAM. Two 128gb SSDs in RAID 1 config for OS, then 6 (soon to be 8) 5TB Seagate drives in RAID 6 for data. 20tb of potential media storage.

The rack - I actually got this for free. I work in IT and a company I was consulting for had their entire IT staff just walk out one day, which is why I was there. Apparently, they had stockpiled the previous 5 years worth of the company's hardware refreshes in this storage room. One of the things we had to oversee was a massive e-cycling job to get rid of all those old PCs and things. They were going to pay this other company we subcontracted by the pound to haul it all away, so I talked to the boss and we both agreed that anything I took was going to ultimately save them money. So, I got like 8 SSDs, about 6 i7 CPUs, some RAM, 5 monitors, and then I took that roll-around rack, and two of my teammates took these brand new Dell 4-post racks.. I didn't have room for those giant things, so I let them take those. This has been great. The only drawback is the door is warped and won't close. So, it's currently taking up space in my basement.

As for what I like... It's hard for me to pick. The projector has an amazing picture once you get it dialed in. It has several options to adjust the image, whether it be keystoning, or image shifting of some kind. So, it's not hard to get it lined up. My only complaint is that it tends to move. This room is one of our basement rooms and is right underneath our kitchen and family room on the main floor. The projector is mounted right onto the joist in that floor/theater room cieling, so when people walk through the kitchen, it tends to bounce. I find myself having to readjust it about 2-3 times per month. An annoyance at most, and not at all a negative of the projector. What I love about the projector is what a stark difference it has made. Version 0.1 of this home theater, was a white sheet hung up with thumbtacks and about a 10-year old 720p projector I won at a company auction back in 2007-2008. So, that one was on it's last legs anyway. I'm pretty sure the bulb was dying. Add that to the brand new bright bulb in the Optoma, combined with the increase in resolution... Massive improvement.

I don't have a link to the chairs, we bought them from a dealer here in town. But if I HAD to pick a favorite item in that room, it's going to be the chairs. I spent a LOT more on them than I intended to furnish that room, and they're so big, I had to take the door to the room off and cut 2 studs out of the wall to get them in there (it was a narrow door). But, they have electric reclining, which is a pretty cool feature, and they lay waaaaaay back, almost completely horizontal. The headrests are also motorized to INCLINE. So when you ARE completely reclined, you don't have to manually hold your head up to see the screen... They're soft, and warm... They'll be in my house for a long time regardless if I have a home theater or not.

The subs add an element of immersion. I've had surround sound systems for years, but never have I had the space, time, money, and patience to 'architect' it from top to bottom like this before. So, the first time I felt the bass kick really good during a movie or game, I was pretty much hooked. Speaking of immersion, I added the dynamic backlighting behind the screen last summer. It's 2 Phillips' Hue LED strips. One running the length behind the top of the screen, the other behind the bottom. I use this free software called ScreenBloom to control the color of the backlight in real time. Since everything I do is via the gaming PC anyway, I just have it run there. The creator says it will work on all movies (which it does) and most games (though I haven't found a game it didn't work on yet). It basically takes a snapshot of your screen every X miliseconds and then generalizes the color and sets the hue to the closest matching color in it's range. You can set the refresh rate for it to fit your preference, and you can also set zones. So, if you have multiple Hue lights, you can assign that light to a specific section of the screen. It's a really cool piece of software. This adds a whole new level of immersion believe it or not.

While I love my lapdesk setup, it is not anywhere NEAR where I want it to be yet. I have searched high and low for a decent 'living room' lapdesk setup for gaming and while there ARE more and more options coming, the demand just isn't high enough for companies to dedicate resources to developing for it. So, over the last 18 months, I've bought and returned about 8 or 9 different lapdesks, and finally settled on this one from iSkelter. My criteria was, it had to have room for a keyboard, mouse, and a gamepad (all seen in the pics), and it had to fit across the arms of the chair. This lapdesk by itself was sufficient, but my gripe with it was having to completely get up out of the chair to put it down when I was watching a movie, and one of the dogs wanted to get up in my lap. I wanted something to swivel into place and out of the way depending on whether or not I needed it, and I didn't want to have to get up to put it 'away'. So, after some real hard thinking and strategic google-fu for pretty much a solid month, I stumbled across this company. They make electronic attachment brackets for police and military vehicles. I looked over their components catalog and liked what I saw. So, I emailed their sales and explained what I was trying to do. Within minutes, they responded, and asked for measurements of my chair, lapdesk, etc; then within 24 hours they got back to me with a parts list. The whole mount cost about $200. But, it has worked brilliantly. Like I said, this solution isn't QUITE done yet. The mount screws into the wood lapdesk right in the center, and it's wobbly. It will suffice for now, but I'm going to keep poking at that until I get it right.

I know I didn't quite answer what I liked or what my favorite part is. But, as I said earlier, it's hard for me to pic a favorite. The whole thing has been challenging to solve a host of problems one by one, but now that it's where it is, it's all so satisfying.

Feel free to ask if y'all have anymore questions.

Yeah, you wouldn't want darker than a light grey with that projector. Also, I have no idea how using a screen that's navy blue would work, you usually want a shade of grey, white, or off-white (like ivory). I see this projector is available for refurb for $650 (I wouldn't trust any of those used ones, sellers that just launched or have bad reviews), that will be able to handle a medium grey screen.

I can help you out with speakers/receiver after we get this sorted.

Ohhh mate, this is easily the projector you want: http://www.amazon.com/Optoma-HD25-LV-1080p-Theater-Projector/dp/B00BQWX1P2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1418022149&sr=8-3&keywords=optoma

I got it about a year ago and was really skeptical about it (I thought "no way could a projector be as good as a tv") and now it's completely replaced my tv. I use it almost all day.

I want to add one more thing to consider, though off topic a little: Projector.

Pros: Huge screen for reasonably cheap. I'm running about 150", and it's like having an IMAX in my living room.

Cons: Only good at night, requires a white wall to project on, takes time to "warm up".

So not good for general daily use, but great for movie night, or just watching Youtubes on the couch.

You can get 4K projectors, but they are still way too expensive ($4000 and up), but 1080p is well within your price range. I have, and really like, this 1080p projector Currently under $900. I have it hooked up to Amazon Fire TV, and a 1990's era stereo, and it really is a great theater setup.

This totally might not work for your needs, I just throw this out there as a consideration.

what resolution are you looking for?
I have the Optoma HD180 (out of the market for newer models)
the Optoma HD25LV
and the ML300

and I can vouch for them for movies as well as gaming.
The good thing about the ml300 is its small size but it has a max resolution of 1024x768 I think, although you can connect hdmi to it, but it's so convenient to carry around, it even fits a messenger bag without problem.

The HD25LV or similars are the popular models, being among the preferred choices for <$1000 projectors. 1080p, 3D-capable
Great image and luminosity on both.