I’ve been fascinated with projection technology since I was kid. A family friend had one of the sweet looking front projection TV’s at their house. It baffled me how 3 color guns could create a picture, it wasn’t the best picture, but even still it worked.
When I had my first apartment all I dreamed of was playing Halo on a 90+ inch diagonal screen. Ugh, but projectors were thousands of dollars back in 2004. Well in 2010 they became significantly less and I could finally afford one. I went out and bought my setup (Optoma HD66). Called a few buddies and installed the greatest entertainment center that ever lived. Then I had to move:(
A year later I finally figured out how to install everything in a small spare bedroom. It’s 12′ x 11′ and it has my 100″ screen on one wall 😀 It took some planning and convincing of the little lady (Thanks pretty lady ;), but it’s in there.
I had it for 1 month and then I noticed a dead pixel. No big deal right? Just 1 dead pixel.
Until the next day, there was 2 and then day after 6 and then 15. WTF!? This thing isn’t that old. How? What? Why???!!! OH NO.
We don’t have a regular TV. The projector is our sole source of television so we found ourselves watching a not so pretty picture:
It was a sad sad day. I started to give up hope. I thought, “Well. I had my fun. Time to get an actual TV.” Then I said screw it. It’s already broken. I bet it can be fixed. I did some research and found out the DMD chip goes bad quite often on projectors. So, I went out and bought what I needed and went on my way. Watched this very very helpful YouTube video that helped me get past some parts and actually locate the part that I needed to replace. Now, it’s all good and I can go back to watching way too much Seinfeld. Here are some pics of the parts I had to take out. It was scary at first, but turned out to be pretty easy. Hopefully this helps somebody.
The results were great. It’s been about a week or so and no problems. Hopefully it doesn’t get jacked up again.
