Short picture time when starting Optoma HD72 projector

It sounds like you bulb is ready to die. First clue is picture quality. That happen to me and a new bulb remedy the problem. Bulbs are expensive though.

Despite the relatively few hours on the lamp, the fact is it's over 5 years old. It is not uncommon for a lamp to age and be too weak to fire. Replace the lamp, you should be fine.

I had the same problem with flashing colors after playing for awhile. The following helped:
1. turn off bright mode from menu.
2. keeping the back side of the projector flat. I had it raised up about 3" on the backside before, not sure why but it worked fine when flat.
Hope these help you also.

AS regretable as this sounds component failiure was my first thought .. It's not the bulb temp sensor as the fan is opperating and that usually cuts all power .
You may find that as you have a bulb ( usually worth more than the units they reside in ) rather than a repair another unit of Ebay would be a safer and more economic conclusion ... Regards Vortash

The projector is sensing the amp draw from the bulb and shutting down due to out of spec draw...replace the bulb.

Most problems with the lamps are covered in the manuels for these projectors , however none user technical difficulties are not .. ie where it is needed to open the unit not recomended to the untrained as a screwdiver in the wrong place can cause irepairable harm let alone death ?
To check if it is your bulb simply take the unit to an engineer for an estimate usually free at least you will know whats wrong and can go from there .. and if you do have a working bulb an ebay replacement is probably the cheaper conclusion to your problem ... regards Vortash

i don't know if this will work but..... I have an Optoma h27 and we were having problems with the color and ours is mounted on the ceiling in inverted also; and after two years we started having color problems, come to find out that on the menu there is a option for high altitude and that had been turned to the "off" position (probably by our kids resetting all the options and not turning this one back on)..... after taking it to a tech that cleaned it for $97.00 and said there was no problems he could find, we played around with the remote/menu and came across this high altitude option and when we saw it was on the "off" position, we put it to the "on" position and another fan inside the projector came on and that helps to keep the inside of the projector cool at all time and helps from the color becoming weird..... Try this on yours and hopefully that will solve your problem.

Have your projector professionally cleaned. It is dust in the inside optics. You should not attempt unless you are very skilled. if you are going to do this yourself have a lot of compressed air on hand.

In the menu you can change the phase of the signal or the tracking. In Menu - Setup

This is NOT a bulb problem unless your "lamp" LED is lit, which you say it is not. Many people have reported this problem with the Optoma 72. You can send it in for warranty service (it has a 2-year warranty) to get the lamp controller chip replaced, but the problem may recur. Optoma does not appear to have a permanent solution to this problem. My projector has broken exactly like yours TWICE in a year. I haven't even needed to replace the original bulb yet. :(