Digital Trends

Optoma Bigvizion HDBV3100 October 19th, 2006 | by Dennis Barker

Conclusions

While Optoma's BigVizion is not inexpensive at $30,000, it does fill a specific niche in the market. The creative engineers at Optoma saw a specific market need and found an innovative way to fill it. For that buyer who wants the "the Big Picture" and has the bucks to spend, the HDBV3100 makes a lot of sense for several reasons. Image quality was superior from all sources and can be viewed in a lighted room—a big bonus. While sitting in a darkened theater is nice for watching a movie, you don't watch normal TV in the dark. With regular room lighting, the images were still bright, crisp, and robust. You can't do that with front projectors, or even plasma TVs, for that matter; like their projector brethren, plasma displays look better in the dark.

Here's another reason to think about the Optoma BigVizion to fill that big wall space. Unlike a very large plasma display, it's upgradeable! As better video processing chipsets comes along from Faroudja, DVDO, Gennum, or Silicon Optix, for example, they can be easily incorporated by the custom installer, making for a continued revenue stream—both the installer and the customer benefit from upgradeability. This is something that I found very compelling. With other displays, once you've bought it, you're locked into time. This is not the case with BigVizion. As technology changes, you can change right along with it without having to toss out your old display. You can't do that with any other flat-screen display.

Also, BigVizion is not just for the home theater enthusiast. It could easily go into boardrooms or any corporate setting that requires a screen. It could also go into commercial venues that need "the Big Picture," but won't suffer from plasma "burn-in" issues or LCD blurring/lag of response time. I was also told that some cruise lines will be putting BigVizion on their ships, as it's very secure against the turbulence of the seas and can fit into more settings than other types of displays.

Lastly, if 100 inches is just too big for your installation, Optoma also offers BigVizion in 80-inch (HDBV3080, $22,999) and 90-inch (HDBV3090, $24,999) versions for the smaller household.

So, all in all, Optoma's BigVizion is a worthy contender for "the Big Picture."