Epson Home Cinema 710HD Projector - Image Quality-4

Epson Home Cinema 710HD Projector: Performance, HDTV and Sports, including 3D

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Watching sports was just great. Although I really didn't spend much time in the Bright mode, which is by far the brightest, and measured over 2100 lumens, I can tell you that it's not too bad.  I have mentioned that Bright mode has a definite green caste to it.  Let me say that heavy green is very common in projectors' brightest modes.  That's particularly true of 3LCD projectors but also some DLPs.

For sports and other fast action, the Epson Home Cinema 710HD does not offer any smooth screen technology, to creatively interpolate new frames to make motion smoother (and maybe even make that hockey puck visible).

Let's look at the room I used for viewing the HC 710HD in action, and for doing all the photos:

First two images are from the front, looking back.  The windows have heavy shutters which are about 1/3 closed, with plenty of daylight pouring in. I've also got the door leading out to the landing open.  There's a huge skylight above that area, and it's drenched in sunlight.

You may, of course, click on the above images for slightly larger versions.

In the image below you get a real good idea about how much ambient light is hitting the screen.  The screen is anything but dark.  And that becomes, in this room, this setup, the blackest black possible.  Only lots of lumens will make that much light seem dark by comparison. As you can see above, the side window's shutters are mostly open.  And you can definitely see the results of that ambient light, which is very evident, and especially so, closest to the window.  You can see all that light hitting the screen to the right of the image in the photo below    The screen is reflecting plenty of that ambient light back to the viewer - or my camera.  There is less on the left side. In this second image we centered the camera, and cropped in.  You can just barely see part of the shutters, but you can still easily see the ambient light hitting the upper right side of the screen.

Below we have the same image, taken using three different preset color modes. First the brightest - Dynamic, then Living Room and Theater. The same exposure was taken for all three, so you see the relative brightness.  This is a photo taken with the room's shutters exactly as shown above that is to say, lots of ambient light.

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For almost all of the sports images, this is how the images were taken, with a goodly amount of ambient light.  For the non-sports HDTV images however, the shutter to the right of the screen is closed about half way, improving the picture.  Rear shutters also closed a bit more. Other than the images above, all the Olympics images were taken in Theatre mode.