I purchased an optoma ES520 DLP projector and after all the regular backplane and lamp based issues I finally started getting white pixels on my screen. This is a problem that keeps getting worse day after day until you change the DLP chip in the projector.
The big issue is
1 – Optoma will ask for $500 for the replacement part (when the projector itself was close to that price)
2 – The DLP chip will most likely not be in stock
3 – Even though the chip is made by Texas Instruments, no one will give you the TI part number for you to procure the chip from outside.
What I finally did was, that I disassembled the projector myself till I got to the DLP (Believe me, you should not start doing this yourself, please believe me). Then I noted down the part number. And then I ordered the DLP chip from China. If you ask me nice, I will tell you reliable people who can give you a chip that worked for me.
Next, after the DLP chip arrived in a week or two, I put the projector back together, but it had some new issues related to lines on the image etc. I correctly figured I had not put the projector back properly and I took it to the Optoma service people to stitch it back. They charged me ~$70 just to put some screws back on which probably took them 10 minutes and zero expertise, kept it with themselves for 2 weeks for “testing” and then gave me back a working projector.
I will add another part of the story wherein a second projector I bought later, the HD20 also gave me DLP problems and Optoma MEA refused to support me as it was only under Optoma US warranty. The parts were again $500 or so and not available. I am trying to open this projector now to get the part number of the chip. Optoma has been extremely unhelpful to me through all of these crises in spite of writing to every single email id that I could get hold of and speaking to Optoma US support for hours (from Dubai) and writing a 100 emails to them.
Compare this to Amazon, who sent me a replacement kindle without even asking for the old kindle back, just cause I explained the problem to them in detail and I really thought I should be eligible for warranty on a product that failed for no fault of mine.
And if you’re wondering why I bought the projector from the US, its only because the price difference is about 100%. I know the logic and marketing behind all these systems, but it is utter nonsense and a very unethical ploy and very poor support from Optoma for these warranties.
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