[...]The Art of Home Theater Projectors » Blog Archive » Epson Home Cinema 21000 and Pro Cinema 31000, 61000 Projectors[...]…

I’m assuming you are watching a typical movie that is made in Cinemascope – 2.35:1 or 2.40:1 mostly. Your screen, is a 16:9. All those movies will have the famous letterbox at the top and bottom. 16:9 is the resolution of HDTV, (and many new animated movies, some “regular” ones, etc. It is inherently a compromise between old style tv – 4:3 (which is 12:9), and Cinemascope 21:9 They came up with 16:9. So you get letterboxing on those movies, none on HDTV. on 4:3 (old TV, the letterbox is on the left and right… That’s all the way its supposed to be. To get rid of letterboxing on Cinemascope aspect ratio movies, people use a Cinemascope shaped screen – 2.35:1, and an anamorphic lens to stretch the image in most cases. Problem is, with a 16:9 projector (all home theater projectors, for purposes of this conversation) if you use a 2.35:1, when you want to watch 16:9 content, you are projecting content above and below the screen. There’s a work around if all the setup is optimal for using a Cinemascope screen accomplished by changing the zoom lens setting when going between 2.35:1 and 16:9 content. The Panasonic PT-AE4000 is an example of a projector that does that well. They call their solution Lens Memory. Few projectors offer it automated like Panasonic, but technically, you can do it with the right placement of any 16:9 projector with at least 1.5:1 zoom, but you won’t have much cholce where the projector has to go. -art

And even that – April – June? as large a target as that is, is probably unsanctioned – an enthusiastic sales person or support person, who doesn’t really know but wants to provide some sort of answer. I say that because:

I did get one of my key Epson “mucky-mucks” on the phone last Friday, and got NOTHING out of him…at least about the R series projectors like the Home Cinema 21000. Not “next quarter” nor “next week” nor “never” nor waiting till the fall. I got nad! Bupkis! Zero! Most annoying. If the delay is engineering or production related, Epson America, and Epson EU might not even have firm dates. If it’s a marketing decision – to delay – say due to the disappointing economy, even that’s a possible. But, I can only speculate, not one piece of solid “news” let alone be able to verify. (I trust you expect me to maintain standards at least as high as those two pillars of the Media: (cheap shot time):
The New York Times formerly “all the news that’s fit to print” but more recently more of the “all the news that it suits us to manufacture” (they do seem to be get getting caught regularly), and that other pillar (who I don’t think get’s caught any more than the NYT?:
The National Enquirer: which is/was something like “We check it, then we check it again”

Best I can tell it wasn’t a great Q4 for the home theater projector industry (relative to predictions). Certainly, there were a lot less new models this year than the last few years, spanning any number of major brands. Epson, by announcing it’s R series, may be one of only a couple of companies to expand, the actual number of models (when they ship the “R”s). So, best I can tell, whatever is going on with the home cinema 2100, etc., I’m as clueless as everyone else. But I will break the story- when I find one! art

As to the HD250, I’m stuck – JVC says they are selling all they bring in, and can’t spare a unit for a review. My feeble attempts to locate a local dealer with one they can loan me for a week have turned up nothing. I might have to ask the folks at AVS…