Review: Optoma Movietime DV11 projector

Create a home cinema with the minimum of fuss

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Price: 599

Manufacturer: Optoma 01923 691 800

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Verdict

Pros: Easy to setup; good pictures even in partial daylight; built-in DVD and speakers
Cons: Noisy, component adaptor costs an extra £15
Overall: An excellent introduction to home movie projection at a good price

Chris Cain, Personal Computer World 09 Aug 2007

Splashing out on a big screen TV can help you create a cinema at home, but you just can’t beat a projector for that true Odeon experience.

Unfortunately, the hassle of setting one up is usually enough to put most people off – especially if it means rearranging the furniture.

Optoma’s Movietime DV11 is specifically designed to make your home cinema as hassle-free as possible to setup. With a built-in DVD player and stereo speakers it really is plug and play – power up, pop in a disc and you’re ready to roll.

Additional connections let you hook up a PC, set-top box or games console, and Optoma provides a VGA to RGB Scart adaptor in the box. Annoyingly, this cable doesn’t include a breakout for audio but you do get a digital output for connecting a surround-sound system.

The projector itself is a DLP model based around Texas Instruments’ Darkchip2 with a native resolution of 800x600. It can’t display high-definition material, but it will happily accept 720p and 1080i signals and scale them down, with good results.

A small remote and push button controls allow for tweaking, and we didn’t need to do too much to get things to our liking. Keystone correction is provided but a lack of a lens shift means you can’t have the projector off to one side of your screen. Our unit was also quite noisy, although this is drowned out once things get going.

Image quality, however, is great. While a dedicated screen is recommended, we got great results from a simple white wall even in partial daylight. Sound is also surprisingly beefy for such a small system, and a 50W subwoofer is available as an optional extra.

The Movietime DV11 is a truly mobile movie theatre that will make you rethink the ideal of a projector at home.

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