Epson and AVSForum Bring the Projector Debate to New York
Photos by the author
Epson lit up two 135-inch screens in Manhattan. The AVSForum crowd wanted to know what happened when the movie got dark. That kept the September 24 gathering at AHT Global/Gilmore lively. Engineers from Japan joined Epson's U.S. team.
Rob Brennan, Epson America’s technical account manager, led much of the presentation. He explained why Epson puts so much weight on brightness. But Epson also urged the audience to ask tough questions. Attendees pressed for better blacks, more from the software and, yes, 3D.
We hosted similar side-by-side comparisons at our own Epson Projector Showcase at ProjectorScreen.com, with Epson, Sony and JVC in the mix.
The main comparisons paired Epson's QB1000 with Sony's BRAVIA Projector 7 (VPL-XW5100ES), then put the Epson QL3000 against Sony's BRAVIA Projector 8 (VPL-XW6100ES) and JVC's NZ800. The QL7000 ran in a separate room. Epson also showed the new LS6000 and LS7500, with floor comparisons pitting the LS6000 against the Home Cinema 3800, LS11000 and Hisense C2 Ultra.
Brennan's demo used F1 and Furiosa to show what more light buys on a large screen. Daylight needs some bite to be believable. Bright colors need to hold their saturation. Extra output gives tone mapping more room to preserve that visual energy.
Then there is football. Plenty of people want a huge picture but not have to watch in the dark. Turning up the room lights put that use case right in front of us. It looked compelling, this despite the screens having no ambient light rejection qualities.
A projector that spends Sunday afternoon with a roomful of friends has a different job from one reserved for movies after dark. More lumens help with ambient light, but light hitting the screen still washes out the blacks. Brennan acknowledged that the 135-inch Stewart Studiotek 100 demo screens used material meant for a dark room. For a brighter room, choose the material and placement accordingly, and control the light where you can.
HDR asks a projector to fit as wide a luminance range and contrast it can deliver on screen. Tone mapping is the deciding factor: how bright to keep the picture, how much highlight detail to preserve. And that's before we get into color gamut.
Brennan explained Epson's choices as one set of compromises among several. The movie, the setup and your preferences all count.
He also gave useful advice to anyone short on light: try SDR. A good SDR presentation can beat HDR that the projector and screen cannot do justice to. That applies to Epson owners, and any other brand of projector, too. And it's true, you only need 48 nits on screen to meet the commercial SDR cinematic standard.
One huge variable to consider is that Epson ran the main demonstration with default picture processing and tone mapping, and full laser output. According to Brennan, the JVC NZ800's SDR laser setting had been raised from 46 to 100. Color-balance differences were left untouched; Brennan acknowledged them but asked the audience to ignore those differences.
A calibrated comparison at matched brightness would answer different questions than this out-of-the-box, maximum-brightness demo. My photos have limits, too. Exposure and camera processing change how a projected image looks. They show the event, but it's best to judge the picture in person.
Black levels kept coming up, in the room and later on the AVSForum thread. Fair enough! Extra light can give a daylight scene life while leaving the next dark scene looking gray. Owners wanted Epson to keep the brightness and deepen the blacks. It is a recurring theme.
In the thread, AVSForum member @Ellebob described the QB1000 and Sony XW5100ES trading advantages as the scenes changed: Epson had the brightness, Sony the deeper blacks. In the QL3000 comparisons, he favored Epson's output in most scenes, while the Sony XW6100ES and JVC NZ800 handled dark material better, particularly Passengers. These were his impressions under the demo conditions. Elsewhere, the QL7000 drew enthusiasm for a large image with plenty of vivid brightness behind it.
Attendees asked for better dynamic contrast and dimming, along with the return of 3D. Epson heard them, though it made no commitment to bring 3D back.
Epson also demoed its new entry-level 3LCD 4K projectors. The Home Cinema LS6000 lists for $2,199.99; the shorter-throw LS7500 costs $500 more, at $2,699.99. Both use laser illumination and manual lens controls, and both support 4K at 120 Hz. Rated output is 3,400 lumens for the LS6000 and 3,500 for the LS7500.
I had already tested the LS6000 for my first look on ProjectorScreen.com. Natural mode gave me roughly 2,200 lumens in a nine-point measurement. Native sequential contrast measured 406:1 at the wide end of the lens and 451:1 at the telephoto end. It has a clear use case for sports and everyday big-screen viewing, with limits buyers should understand before committing.
Surprisingly, the LS7500 gave me roughly four times the LS6000's native sequential contrast. Those are my measurements, as I pointed out in the forum. They backed up what I saw subjectively at the event.
That difference deserves far more attention than the LS7500's extra 100 rated lumens. Sequential contrast compares full white with full black. It is separate from the huge dynamic-contrast claims on a spec sheet (800,000:1 for the LS6000). Four times the measured contrast won't make every picture four times better, but it sure does help the dark scenes. Treating these projectors as equivalent apart from their lenses misses a major performance difference.
The floor comparisons used the LS6000. The LS7500 was set up separately, and its black levels deserved to be judged on their own.
Those other demos paired the LS6000 with Epson's lamp-based Home Cinema 3800, the laser-powered LS11000 and the Hisense C2 Ultra. Attendees compared startup, fan noise and processing, and discussed Epson's three-panel LCD design against Hisense's single-chip DLP. They also asked for darker material to scrutinize. In his forum report, @Ellebob found better blacks on the LS11000, while the LS6000 appeared a little brighter and sharper under those conditions.
Hardware components were shown. One of my favorites was Epson's pixel-shift mechanism with its tiny voice coils, essentially audio actuators put to work shifting the projected image. I love seeing that familiar bit of audio engineering inside a projector.
Epson previewed QL Series software improvements and took questions. Having the engineers there gave the questions somewhere to go. And with multiple breaks to socialize, the talk carried on beyond the demos, with attendees comparing systems and experiences.
The event's greatest value may be that it was thought-provoking. With projection, you have to weigh several compromises and find the combination that fits your budget and goals. If you're projector shopping, watch a dark scene. Turn on the lights for a game. Choose for the screen and room you own.
