Greetings all,

Before I start rambling on about this new Epson projector I’m reviewing, and, since this is my first official blog, I’ll take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Art Feierman, and I’ve been involved in the AV industry most of my career, since getting out of college in 1972 (go Penn State football).

I’ve owned a major AV online reseller, but am having even more fun as a reviewer of home theater projectors.
Turns out, it is a natural fit.

Launching a blog is something I’ve been meaning to get around to for more than year, but have just been very busy growing my business: Projector Reviews.

BTW, I plan to post at least twice a week, with updates on reviews in progress, as well as assorted tidbits on products, how to get the most of your home theater, and useful tips on choosing wisely.

Here goes:
Welcome! A first look at an all-in-one projector I am currently reviewing – Epson’s MovieMate 72. Very, very, cool!

OK, I’m in the middle of reviewing Epson’s new MovieMate 72. With a little luck, the review will post Sunday night 12-16-07, but probably it will happen Monday night.

Here are some preliminary thoughts.

Talk about a great last minute present for the whole family, the Epson MovieMate 72, finally brings a reasonably high level of overall performance to those craving an all-in-one home entertainment projector. The Epson has a built in DVD player, plus reasonably good sound (hey, it’s a small box), and for the first time, a true HD resolution picture (720p resolution).

• See peer reviews of Home Theater Projectors at HomeTheaterForum.com

So far, the MovieMate 72 seems well thought out. Not only can you pop in a dvd into its player, but it has an hdmi input to allow an external dvd player – can you say “hi-def”? as in Blu-ray or HD-DVD, or plug in your cable/satellite box. There’s a computer input as well, but I haven’t determined yet, if you can feed a component video signal into the MovieMate 72, from the computer input. (That would be nice – having two hi-resolution inputs).

And just in case you have some good sound in one of the rooms you plan to use the MovieMate 72, it even has a digital audio output, so you can feed 5.1 surround sound to your audio system, from the internal DVD player, to get bigger sound than the MovieMate 72’s own speakers can provide. They can fill a small or medium sized room nicely, but lack deep bass (as one would expect).

There’s lots of bells and whistles, and so far I’m most impressed. Epson’s previous all-in-one projectors were all 480p resolution, which means highly visible pixels and screen door effect. Not so, the MovieMate 72, thanks to its HD resolution, and that goes a long way with me, in terms of final recommendation. I’ve watched HDTV, and Blu-Ray hi-def disc’s from my PS3 – Playstation3, plus watched standard DVDs (from the internal DVD player), and found the performance to consistantly be higher than any other all-in-one projector!

The price, with an MSRP of $1299, is the most for an all-in-one, but then, it offers the best picture quality as well. So far, easily worth the price, if an all-in-one appeals to you. It is an alternative to the least expensive stand alone home theater projectors!

Visit our site for the full review, when it posts. (When the review first goes up, it will be linked to from the homepage, and also I’ll provide the link in a blog.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 1:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.