Viewing and Comments

It is perhaps relevant at this point to mention my current setup for viewing. For a number of years, my wife and I had a home in the San Francisco Bay area where I had a family room/Home Theater, that featured complete light control, dark walls, and extensive acoustic treatments for the walls and ceilings. In the last few months, we have moved to a smaller house in the mountains near Lake Tahoe that has more of an open architecture and no room that could be dedicated for a Home Theater. I am currently using a ceiling mounted Sony VPL-VW50 (Pearl) projector and a DaLite 92 diagonal Cinema Vision (1.3 gain) screen installed in the living room. All of the windows in the room are equipped with blackout shades, but during the day light leaks around the edges, and light from other parts of the house does enter the room (no doors) and reflects off of the currently white walls. None of this ambient light falls on the screen directly, but does keep the room from getting dark while the sun is up. The room also has two Solartube skylights that can bring an incredible amount of light into the room. Fortunately, I was able to install dimmers or flaps in the light tubes to block most of this light when necessary.

This setup is less than ideal, but perhaps more typical of what the average reader is likely to achieve. Given the above, the screen I am using is smaller than my last screen and of higher gain, but this seemed more appropriate given the ambient light conditions describe above. All in all, this setup all works pretty well, and casual daytime viewing (not that I have ever had much time for this) is certainly possible, and by early evening the room is dark enough for serious viewing. I do hope to find the time to at least paint the walls a darker color in the near future. For the measurement of projectors, I do wait till it is very dark outside and all lights are off in the house.

As mentioned above, setting up the Epson HC 1080 was a snap. I had installed a removable shelf on the back wall for exactly this purpose, and it was a real pleasure to be able to mount the projector near the ceiling and still have it right side up. This is certainly not always possible, as not all projectors have the range of vertical lens shift that the HC 1080 does. I did not need much horizontal lens shift, but having it did make setup and achieving proper geometry very easy. (In the picture on the right one can also see the ceiling mount for my reference projector above the HC 1080.)

I watched HD TV on my DISH for a while before doing any measurements, and it was clear from the start that this was not like any LCD projector I have used before. There was no screen door effect visible at the seating position about 10 feet away from the screen. Contrast ratios and black levels with the Auto Iris on seemed OK, perhaps not as good as my reference projector, but much better than the LCD projectors of a few years ago. The dynamic Iris was obviously doing its job.

With my particular screen, the HC 1080 in the Low setting produced a nice image with a brightness of 16 ftL, exactly what is specified for movie theaters. In the high mode, the 20 ftL image was brighter, which is nice, but the projector's cooling fan was noticeably louder, and I quickly reverted to the low lamp mode where the cooling fan was virtually silent.

There was also no question that the image projected by the HC 1080 had 1080p resolution and crispness. There is something very special about a good 1080 source being displayed on a good 1080p display device. The image has a crispness that seems to exceed that of film based sources, and certainly is more detailed than any source displayed on a lower resolution display device. Call it the Wow factor. The Epson HC 1080 has that crispness, and given a good source your first impression is, "Wow!"

At the end of the evening, we typically watch the local Sacramento news on KCRA High Def station. This is one of the best HD sources I have seen. Even though it is just the local news, and the news is rarely good these days, the images are often stunning, especially those taken in the studio. With the HC 1080, the local news at first seemed a little less crisp than my reference projector, but very close. This was a bit surprising given the Sony's reputation for softness and the fact the test images from Digital Video Essentials show single pixel lines very clearly all around the screen. Convergence was also excellent on the Epson, with less than a half a pixel error anywhere on the screen. After tweaking color balance and raising the sharpness to 2, the image did seem a bit crisper, and certainly the colors looked right on. All I can say is that with this source material, I would not call either projector soft.

1080p images from my Toshiba DVD player were also incredibly sharp, including the demonstration materials on the Digital Video Essentials Disc.

The issues that perhaps need the most discussion with the Epson HC 1080 are the measured overall light level, the contrast ratio and black levels, and especially, the use of the Auto Iris function. Without the Auto Iris function, the contrast ratio of the HC 1080 was measured at 420:1, while with the Iris on, it improved to 2570:1. The light output with the bulb in the High setting was measured at essentially 400 ANSI lumens, and in the Low mode at 309 lumens. Both the projector's measured brightness and contrast ratio are therefore well below the 1,200 lumens and 12,000:1 specified for this projector. However, it should be noted that brightness specifications are usually for the un-calibrated state, which does not necessarily produce the most accurate image.

From past experience with Epson projectors, and a quick check of this projector, I found that some of the other settings of the Color Mode, and in particular the Dynamic setting gave a far greater light output than the Theater Black Setting I selected for my viewing tastes. Unfortunately, that higher light output comes at the cost of color accuracy, and I preferred the more accurate images produced by the Theater Black 1 setting for my use and this review. Although I did not measure these other modes, I have no doubt that the additional light output in the Dynamic mode would double both the contrast ratio and light output of this projector.

As to the use of the Auto Iris, and the improved Dynamic Contrast Ratio achieved via its use, I find it convenient to borrow text from a review I did of the Panasonic PT-AE700U in February of 2005:

So does that mean a Dynamic Contrast ratio of say 2,000:1 is just as good as a panel native contrast ratio of 2000:1? Is a Dynamic Iris the answer to all our HT dreams? The simple answer is, No. The real answer is more complex, and closer to Not really, but it sure does help.

The issues involve how the light output of given pixels in the display follows the input stimulus for that pixel, what we normally call gamma tracking. Ideally, a display device will output a light intensity for each pixel in the image that is proportional to the input stimulus for that pixel, modified by the projector's gamma characteristics. (A display device's gamma is the exponential term in the power function that relates the actual light output to the input stimulus.) Ideally, the light output for each pixel will follow the input for that pixel and be independent of the other pixels in the same image. This is essentially the way things work with display devices that do not involve an active modulation of the lamp intensity or an active iris. (It is not quite that simple, as light scatter in the projector and/or room reflections may reduce the pixel-to-pixel contrast ratio at the screen, but at least the pixels are trying to act independently.)
With an active iris, the light intensity of the entire display, i.e., all the pixels, also changes with the average light intensity of the picture. Thus, the light output for a given pixel no longer follows its input stimulus alone, but is also dependent on the image as a whole. This is fine, if, for instance, the whole image is completely black, the iris closes down, and black levels are improved. If the image is all white, the iris opens up, and one gets full light output. No problem so far, and the contrast ratio is improved in the process.

With any full field image in between black and white where the whole image is the same intensity, gamma tracking can be done properly with a dynamic iris. There are potential problems with dynamics if your eyes detect the iris working, but your own eyes have an iris that modulates the incoming light by an order of magnitude, and that seems very natural, albeit on a much slower timescale.
 

So with full field images, i.e., images where the whole image is of similar brightness, a dynamic iris can work perfectly, timescale issues aside. The problem, as that review continues, is that when images have both light and dark parts, what is the iris to do, close down and make the dark parts parts darker, or open the iris and raise the level of lighter parts of the image? There are obviously many ways to handle this and related issues, and no doubt the various projector designers handle these issue differently.

That said, I have nothing against use of a dynamic iris control to improve black levels. My reference projector, the Sony Pearl has a dynamic iris and I watch video using that mode every evening. In practice, the dynamic iris on the Sony works very well, and I can only think of one time where I might have seen it pumping.

From my viewing of the HC 1080, I would say that that its dynamic iris, or Auto Iris, also works very well, but in a way I was not expecting. In fact when I first set up the projector, I was convinced that the dynamic iris function was not working at all – I would quickly switch it on and off and I could not see it affect the image! But, I left the Iris on for viewing anyway, even though I was not sure it was doing anything.

After I finished measurements with the Auto Iris off, I brought up a black full field and switched the Auto Iris back on. My first impression again was, it's not doing anything, as the level on the light meter stayed the same. Then slowly but surely, and over many seconds, the light level slowly began to drop, and drop and drop to a sixth of its previous value. So the Auto Iris did work, but slowly.

 
When viewing a variety of video materials, I never noticed the iris working either, and that is a very good thing. And while the black levels may no have been quite as good as my reference projector, they were acceptable and much better than one might expect can achieve with an LCD projector without a dynamic iris or similar device such as lamp modulation. So the Auto Iris was doing its job and doing it invisibly, just as it should.

At one time, LCD projectors could be criticized for having poor black and Screen Door Effect. That would seem to be no longer the case. The 1080p resolution of the Epson HC 1080 has virtually eliminated the SDE, and the Auto Iris function of the HC 1080 produces what most viewers would consider very acceptable black levels.

Considering that I started with a Sony 11HT that had a contrast ratio of 150:1, and I managed to essentially double that with CC filters and other SMART-based tweaks, I am surprised that even with contrast ratios at 10,000:1 or greater, one would still be on the quest for better black levels, but that would seem to be the case. In this respect, the HC 1080, and my reference projector for that matter, could be improved. You might not see that improvement in most scenes, but in those very special dark scenes, darker is always better.

The last issue to be discussed here is noise level. Both my wife and I like a very quiet projector. The H79 we had in our last home was extremely quiet. In selecting a projector for our current mountain home, our elevation of approximately 4,000 ft became an issue. Most projectors require operation in a high altitude mode if they are used above a certain elevation; there is simply less air up here, and in the high altitude mode the fan on the projector runs faster, and as a consequence, makes more noise. This can be a problem if the projector tends to be a bit noisy to start with.

The very popular (and more expensive) JVC DLA-HD1 requires the high altitude mode for operation about 900 meters (~ 2,700 ft), where the Sony we bought, and the Epson HC 1080, only require high altitude operation above 1,500 meters or 4,500 ft. Thus, with the Sony and the Epson, the normal quiet fan mode was available, where with the JVC, it was not. If you live at high altitude, you might want to think about this factor as well in selecting your projector. To my ears, the HC 1080 in the low bulb mode was just as quiet as my Sony, and that is very quiet indeed. With the lamp in the brighter mode, the noise approached the level of being objectionable, to my ears at least.

Conclusions

The Epson Home Cinema 1080 is an excellent example of how far home theater LCD projectors have come in the last few years. It produces a very smooth image with 1080p resolution that really makes high definition sources pop. The HC 1080 also features well-saturated colors and a respectable contrast ratio, especially given the LCD technology used. It is also a very quiet projector in the low bulb mode. Compatibility with HDMI 1.3 is another plus for the HC 1080, as is the menu system that allows extensive adjustment or tweaking of the projector's performance.

If you haven't yet switched to 1080p, this high resolution is definitely worth it if obtainable for an affordable price. This is exactly where the Epson Home Cinema 1080 comes in with its MSRP of less than $3,000.

- Steve Smallcombe -