As the world’s top manufacturer of small LCD projection panels—as opposed to the large LCDs used in direct-view flat-panel TVs—it’s only natural that Epson would offer projectors based on that technology. The PowerLite Home Cinema 1080 is the company’s first 1920×1080 model, and at $3000, it’s tied with the Optoma HD80 (also reviewed here) as the least expensive 1080p projector available. Even better, it’s a superb performer.

FEATURES The Home Cinema 1080’s white casing cuts a curvaceous figure, and flexible lens controls—including lens shift, zoom, and focus—help make placement easy. The remote is excellent, providing full illumination, dedicated input buttons, and direct access to commonly used controls such as aspect ratio and memory presets. One minor quibble—the cursor buttons are a bit too far apart, making navigation somewhat of a hit or miss proposition.

The menu system is very well organized. You can see the basic settings in the selected menu without having to drill down, though there are plenty of “deeper� controls—in fact, this projector offers more adjustments than many. Even better, the menu or control you select stays on the screen until you exit, which is great for making careful adjustments. You can also store preferred settings in one of ten memory locations and apply them to any input, which is more flexibility than you get with most projectors.

I did encounter one strange problem with the menu system—every now and then some of the settings would revert to their defaults when I switched inputs or switched between HDMI inputs using an external switcher. Fortunately, I was able to quickly restore the settings by reloading one of the memory presets.

Beyond that, my only other concern is having just one aspect-ratio setting for both the HDMI and component inputs. Several settings appeared in the menu, however all but the normal setting were grayed out and could not be selected, which meant I couldn’t expand widescreen movies in a 4:3 window to fill the screen.

PERFORMANCE Starting with Stealth on Blu-ray, the detail was exquisite—an aerial shot of Seattle at night was super crisp, as was the produce in the floating Thai marketplace (yum!). Colors were likewise gorgeous, including the multihued computer displays and deep blue sky above the flying fuel depot, though Thailand’s green foli¬age looked a little exaggerated.

Low-light images, such as the night scene just before the at¬tack on the hotel in Malaysia, lost very little detail to dark solid patches. I could make out the texture of buildings—the sort of detail that is lost on lesser projectors. And the black letterbox bars were totally unobtrusive. As usual, I cued up Chapter 8 of the Mission: Impossible III HD DVD to see how the projector’s processor handled this difficult scene, which starts with a pan across a long staircase.

There was moderate wavy distortion on the stairs—not the worst I’ve seen, but not great.  Moving on to Star Wars IV on THX-certified DVD, I was immediately drawn into the deep, rich black of space. Shadow detail in the Jawa transport and the bar in Mos Eisley was pretty good—I could see more background details such as droids and other aliens in the shadows than with many displays. C-3P0’s golden carapace possessed a slightly greenish tinge, but the white of Princess Leia’s costume and the storm troopers’ armor was a true, bright white.

Details of the machinery in the Millennium Falcon were plainly visible, and the rocky canyon where R2-D2 is captured by the Jawas was cleaner and crisper than I’ve seen on most displays. HDTV from Dish Network looked fantastic. Law & Order on TNT retained all the grittiness of New York’s mean streets and suave courtroom posturing, with natural skin tones and sharp details, right down to the pull-cord on ADA McCoy’s office-door blinds. Regular TV looked as good as it can, but standard def is standard def. The colors on The Colbert Report looked natural enough, but there was some shimmering in the diagonal lines on Stephen Colbert’s tie and in the show’s logo on his desk as the camera panned across the set.

BOTTOM LINE I really enjoyed the Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 1080 from the moment I pulled it out of the box and set it up. For the most part, its performance was top notch, and it has more controls than most projectors, making it possible to tweak to near perfection. I wish the light output was higher, though not at the expense of its exceptional blacks.

The projector is also available in a pro version, which sports a black housing and includes a ceiling-mount bracket, extra lamp, 3-year extended warranty, and ISF (Imag¬ing Science Foundation) certification—all for $1000 more. The extra lamp and ceiling mount are worth about $600, but only you can decide if ISF certification and an extra year on the warranty are worth another $400. (Hiring an ISF calibrator costs another few hundred bucks, but I don’t think you need one in this case.) Either way, you won’t be disappointed with the picture produced by Epson’s PowerLite Home Cinema 1080 projector as long as you can completely darken your room or use an ambient-light-rejecting screen.

The Last Word
Pros
• Exquisite detail
• Generally beautiful color
• Deep blacks
• Good shadow detail
• Superb user interface
• More controls than most
Cons
• Low peak light output
• Settings sometimes revert to factory defaults

Specifications: Epson Powerlite Home Cinema 1080
• Technology: LCD
• Screen-size range: 30�-150�
• Distance-to-screen range: 9.8’-22’
• Pixel resolution: 1920×1080
• 1:1 mode: Yes
• Accepts 1080p: Yes (60, 50, 24)
• Displays 1080p/24 at: 60Hz
• Video inputs: 1 each HDMI (1.3),component, S-video, composite, VGA, SCART (used mainly in Japan)
• Other connections: RS-232
• Dimensions (WxHxD): 15.6� x 4.8� x 12.2�
• Weight: 12 lb
• Warranty: 2 years parts & labor,90 days lamp
• Lamp life: up to 3000 hours
• Price: $3000; lamp replacement, $349