The Perfect Vision
Epson 1080 Additional Notes and Technical Ratings
Under the Hood | Adjustment Notes | Test Discs | Technical Ratings
Under the Hood
The Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 1080 uses three of the company's C2Fine LCD panels, the latest generation of this technology. It can accept a 1080p/24 signal, but it displays such a signal at 60Hz, introducing 3:2 pulldown at the frame level. The Fujinon lens has an extra-wide throw range of 10 to 22 feet on a 100-inch screen. The projector implements HDMI 1.3, though I'm not convinced of this version's value at this point.
One technical feature I particularly appreciate is the overscan control, which can be set to 100%, eliminating overscan scaling. This is ideal with high-def sources like HD DVD and Blu-ray, but cable or satellite images can have "digital hash" at the very top of the screen, which is visible if there's no overscan. In that case, you can set the Epson to overscan just a bit to get rid of that junk at the top of the screen. I would prefer a masking function that crops the image slightly without expanding it, but the 98% overscan setting works well enough.
Another of my favorite technical features is the projector's extensive gamma control. You can select from several presets, or you can specify any gamma curve you like by moving nine points on a graph, which represent nine different brightness levels. When you select a point to adjust, the corresponding areas in the image (which is frozen when you call up this option) blink so you know exactly what you're adjusting.
Adjustment Notes
Initial setup was very easy, thanks to manual horizontal and vertical lens shift, zoom, and focus as well as two threaded leveling feet in front. Also, the remote had enough power to reliably activate and navigate the menu while pointed at the screen, and the menu stays on the screen until you disable it, which I really like. The projector did not pass below-black from the PLUGE pattern on DVE HD DVD or the AccuPel signal generator, making it difficult to set the brightness. Also frustrating was the projector's occasional tendency to change settings when switching source devices to the HDMI input with an HDMI switcher and even switching between inputs; for example, the component input sometimes reverted to some of its factory settings after I had changed them.
The best grayscale was obtained with the Natural color mode and lamp control on High; the Low setting, which I would prefer to use to increase lamp life, was less accurate. This could be corrected by a technician with the projector's complete set of RGB grayscale controls. On the other hand, the peak white level was relatively low, so using the High lamp mode was, in fact, better.
Test Discs
Starting with the HQV Benchmark DVD at 480i, detail was excellent, though jaggies were moderate to severe, and the waving flag was awash in jaggies—clearly, you shouldn't feed 480i to this projector! The noise reduction control helped a bit, but the effect was subtle. Still, it did help without softening the picture, so I left it on its highest setting. The projector's processor picked up 3:2 pulldown quickly and reliably.
On the HQV Benchmark HD DVD at 1080i, the video resolution loss test looked excellent, with no flickering, but the vertical-burst box has a distinct greenish cast. The same was true in the film resolution loss test, which also exhibited slight flickering in the second horizontal burst. In addition, the lowest-frequency horizontal burst took on a reddish cast when the pattern was moving to the right, but not when it moved to the left. Strange...
On Microsoft's Stacey Spears' test disc, the high-frequency luma bursts were fully resolved, but again, the vertical bursts looked distinctly green. The processor picked up 3:2 pulldown at 1080i quickly and reliably, and there was almost no shimmering in the gently curved yellow trim on the sailboat.
Technical Ratings
Customer Service
Advertisement
