Epson Ensemble HD 1080 Complete, Projector Based Home Theater System Review: Overview

8/19/2008 -Art Feierman

Epson Ensemble HD 1080 Overview
Image Quality
General Performance
Installation
Summary, Pros, Cons

Absolutely Outstanding!

 

I do believe that the two new Ensemble HD systems from Epson have the potential to completely change the dynamics of home theater purchases.

Finally, an easy way (budget allowing), to convert a room and install a home theater projector based complete system.

(Note, image above, provided by Epson, Olympic image on the screen, from our review photo shoot, added by Projector Reviews. -art)

After the Highlights list, I need to provide a quick "look" at the home theater market up until this new product. After that, this overview will get into all the aspects of what the Epson Ensemble HD 1080 (and Ensemble HD 720) consist of!

The Ensemble HD 1080 easily earns our Hot Product Award, but somehow that just doesn't seem to be enough. As a result, a new award category has been created, and the Ensemble HD 1080 is the first to win it: Congratuations: The Epson Ensemble HD1080 receives our highest award: Outstanding Product! - 2008

Now the only way to properly review the Ensemble HD, I figured, would be to install one in our house, since the concept of a complete, easy to install system is key to the concept. As I already have one awesome system, my wife and I decided that we could put a second one in our home office. (Smart move!). That was the plan, and it came off as hassle free as we had anticipated! Note: Epson was good enough to provide both the Epson Ensemble HD 1080 for the room, and to cover the cost of the installation as well. (Hard to argue with that!)

Epson Ensemble HD 1080 Highlights:

• A great large screen home theater system that is affordable
• Sold as a complete system that can be installed in, well, less than one day
• Very impressive picture quality
• Plenty of sound for the loudest movies, and good quality sound that impresses when listening to music (there's nothing like a good music video)
• Blends nicely into a room, the equipment doesn't dominate - esthetically designed for "wife approval"
• Well thought out, with lots of add-on capability if needed
• Excellent price performance
• Uses "last year's" model Epson projector, but still a solid performer
• Overall installed cost less than a 60" plasma system with inferior sound, and few frills
• Just too much fun!

The image below shows all the major components of the Epson Ensemble HD system (except the equipment cabinet).

The Dynamics of Owning a Home Theater Projector System

For the first time, a high quality large screen projection system - with sound to match - can be installed in people's homes, stress free in less than a day!

We're talking projector, 100 inch diagonal screen, a full 5.1 surround sound system, with sub-woofer, DVD player and AM/FM tuner, complete with almost all of the trimmings. (You'll likely still want to have your cable or satellite hooked up, and sooner or later, a Blu-ray player - I recommend sooner!) A home theater system like this makes the average sized LCDTV look so small that it all belongs in the kitchen!

Review continues below this advertisement.

Projector-based home theater systems are a tiny portion of the home theater market, with sales in the hundreds of thousands in the US each year, compared to tens of millions of LCDTV and plasmas sold.

Most people who have thought about a projector-based home theater system in their home, find the prospect of actually buying one to be too daunting. As a result, by my estimate, most people who have a room set up with a projector for some first class home theater, fit into three categories:

1. Home Theater enthusiasts, hobbyists, or whatever you like to call them, including DIY types (do it yourself) - they simply can't live without
2. Folks with a healthy checkbook - who will locate a local dealer, work with them to determine what level of system, and a few choices, but leave all the work to the dealer.
   1. Further, these people are typically not intimidated with home projects that can take weeks, or months, as long as it's completed on time, on budget, and performs as expected (or better).
3. All-in-one Projectors - these aren't full home theater systems, but a portable projector with some built in speakers, and maybe a DVD player, but are really entry level products - pick one up, plug it in, and shine it on a wall - great in the kids room. These are, overall, far inferior compared to what we are talking about here, and very low cost

What's missing from this list is most of the other 5 Billion plus people on the planet.

Most people go out and buy from their favorite toy store - Best Buy, Circuit City, and appliance stores that sell plasmas and LCDTVs. They then do the most basic setup in their homes. Over half of these people will just have their Plasma or LCDTV on a stand or table top, and not bother with wall mounting. Most will not even add to the typically anemic built in speakers inside the LCDTV or Plasma, thus losing the great room filling sound available on HDTV, TV, and DVDs of all types.

Basically people want to keep things simple, and with a serious home theater system at any budget level, there are many important choices to be made. That's enough to intimidate the vast majority of people, whether they want a system for $3000 (or less), $100,000 or more, or anywhere in between.

What's Normally Involved in Putting Together A Home Theater

If you decide you want to put together your own projector based home theater, here is a list of most of the many decisions you normally have to make, and for many, they will want to understand the basics of each choice. First, you have to figure out what room it will go in, then:

• Choosing the right home theater projector - for your budget, the picture quality you expect, the size of your room, and the options on placing the equipment
• Choosing the right screen - including motorized, pull-down or fixed wall, and the right type of screen surface (intimidated yet?)
• Choosing a full surround sound system (5.1 is most popular), but you still have to pick the speakers (five plus the subwoofer), by price, size, and positioning, sound quality (will your spouse let you have free standing speakers or must you have unobtrusive in-wall speakers)?
• You are going to need a DVD player, or a Blu-ray player for those movies - which one? and Why?
• You'll almost certainly want to have a cable box or satellite receiver added to the room
• And the "piece de resistance", you don't want to do it yourself, so you need to hire folks to handle the full installation. You'll have to check out the price, choose the right company (sometimes companies) - especially since not all home theater dealers do "everything" which includes opening your walls to run wires (and not all dealers have electrical contractors licenses either), drywalling and painting the aftermath. That includes mounting the projector, speakers screens, and doing all the final wiring. And you even have to decide about the quality level of all the wiring used!
• And finally, to get the last ounce of performance out, you likely will want the system calibrated.

I've been in the AV industry for roughly 30 years, and that's enough to almost intimidate me! I know, I have had a theater (currently two) of some level, in each of my last 3 homes.

What's Involved in Doing a Home Theater, Epson Ensemble HD Style

• Pick out a suitable room
• Buy the System
• Watch it get installed one afternoon
• Enjoy it that night!

That's right, Epson comes along with two Ensemble HD systems, and changes everything! These make owning a complete home theater room, something you can have up and running in less than a day.

For the purposes of this review, we will concentrate on the Epson Ensemble HD 1080, which I have just had installed as my second home theater room. (Much to the thrill of my teenage daughter, who would often "fight me for" my main home theater, so she and her friends can watch movies and reality TV (Idol, etc.) This complete Ensemble HD 1080 system is only $6999 (plus a very modest installation cost), offers full 1080p resolution, while a second, lower cost ($4999) Epson Ensemble HD 720, provides a slightly lower resolution system but is essentially identical in all ways but price and resolution. A companion article will be written that goes through the value proposition of the lower cost Ensemble HD.

Epson Ensemble HD 1080 System Overview of Equipment

• Epson Home Cinema 1080 projector (previously reviewed)
• Motorized 100 inch diagonal screen
  • Front speakers - a left, center, and right speaker (designed by the well respected team at Atlantic Technology) - all built right into the casing of the motorized screen
• Projector housing: The projector neatly fits into this good looking, white "housing" and
  • has, built in, the left and right rear (surround sound) speakers
• Equipment cabinet. This black cabinet sits on the floor and is less than 27 inches high, the cabinet has
  • A built in sub-woofer
  • A middle and top shelf for other equipment
• AV Controller - this small black unit will normally sit on one of the shelves. The console does a lot of things:
  • Is the surround sound amplifier for the speakers
  • Has an FM Tuner
  • Has a built-in DVD player (standard DVD, not Blu-ray, more on that later)
  • Lots of extra inputs
  • Acts as the hub for all wiring, including video, audio, and power
• Pre-programmed universal remote control, to run the entire system
• Wiring and channels - the Ensemble HD comes with all the wiring you need for everything included - you'll still need a couple of extra cables for your Cable/Satellite feed, and perhaps a Blu-ray player and game machine
  • Channels - in "big installations" people run all the wires in-wall, making for a major project. With the Ensemble HD, you still can, but the vast majority of folks will use the provided thin wiring channels that can be attached to your walls (corners usually, and run along the ceiling).
    • The channels make for a nice, neat - potentially spouse pleasing solution, that works, and saves tons of time and money

Estimated time for a complete installation using the channels (which can be painted if you choose), is only four to five hours!

And that, is the bottom line. Perhaps Epson should have called it The Instant, Huge Home Theater, With Excellent Picture and Wall Rattling Surround Sound System, but Ensemble HD will just have to do.

Review continues below this advertisement:

Ensemble HD 1080: Basic Specifications

Click here for full specs, and access to a .pdf of the Ensemble HD 1080 brochure.

Complete Package MSRP: $6999
Technology: 3LCD projector, motorized 100" screen with built-in speakers, subwoofer, 5.1 surround sound and video AV Controller: universal remote control, wiring and mounting hardware
Projector Native Resolution: 1080p
Projector Brightness: 1200 lumens
Projector Contrast: 12,000:1
Projector Zoom Lens ratio: 2.1:1
Lens shift: Vertical and Horizontal
Lamp life: 3000 hours low power (eco-mode), 1700 hours at full lamp power
Warranty: 2 Years Parts and Labor

The Ensemble HD 1080 review will not duplicate much of the original Home Cinema 1080, that is the included projector, as it was reviewed back in early 2007. For some things, though, I will repeat some information found in the projector's review, for convenience. In addition, we calibrated the Home Cinema 1080 included with the Ensemble HD1080, and will report the new results in the General Perferformance section.

Ensemble HD 1080: Physical Attributes of the Complete System

Epson Home Cinema 1080 Projector:

Shown here: Epson Home Cinema 1080 right after mounting, in the provided projector housing that includes the rear surround sound speakers.

The projector is one of the smaller home theater projectors out there. Even sitting in its cradle (with rear speakers), the whole assembly is still about the same size than some of the larger under $10,000 home theater projectors, including the JVC RS1, RS1x and RS2, the Sony VW projectors, and the recently reviewed InFocus IN83 and BenQ W5000.

From a placement standpoint, to fill the included 100" diagonal screen, the projector can be as close as 9.8 feet, and as far back as 20.9 feet (measured from screen, to the front of the lens).

There is more than ample lens shift, so that the system can be wall mounted or ceiling mounted. When ceiling mounted, the center of the lens can be up to almost 23 inches above the top of the screen surface, so, even in a room, with relatively high (normal) ceilings, such as a 10 foot ceiling, the projector cradle can be mounted just about flush with the ceiling. If shelf mounted, it can be anywhere, again, from that far above the screen to even below the bottom of the screen (although no one is going to mount it really low).

Epson Ensemble HD 1080 A/V Controller

This relatively small device (about the size of a Sony Playstation 3, measuring in at 13.5x10.5x4 inches), is the AV receiver, DVD player, AM/FM tuner, and room controller, all in one nicely styled black box. The AV Receiver aspect supports full 5.1 audio, and multiple formats including: Dolby Digital Surround, DTS 5.1, Dolby Pro Logic, and Dolby Pro Logic IIx. That's just fine for today, although it doesn't support all of the brand new - coming soon - Dolby and DTS formats that HDMI 1.3 can handle. Still, these compatibilities offer a solution for just about anything you can throw at it, that is available today (movies, TV, etc).

The built in DVD player is just that, a basic SD-DVD player, not a Blu-ray player. Some will be unhappy with that, but I don't see why, when you consider Epson has been working on the design of this system,since long before the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD war were decided. Fortunately, the AV Controller has 2 HDMI inputs, and the first thing I did upon completion of the installation, was to plug in a Sony PS3 into one of them so I could watch my Blu-ray movies. Since my Blu-ray player is outboard, and firmware upgradable off the internet, that likely will work out much better for most people. Had Epson put in a basic Blu-ray player, it almost certainly would not have had the performance, or the upgradability of the PS3.

The built in DVD player supports a healthy assortment of DVDs and CDs, including:

• SD-DVD (standard format DVDs)
• Recordable DVD (DVD-R format)
• Standard CD
• CD-R and CD-RW
• Data CDs with jpg MP3 and WMA files

On the other hand, the player cannot play SACD or DVD-Audio, DVD-RW and several other formats. In other words, it plays what I have listed, but no other formats.

I better mention it again, before it is forgotten. The AV Controller also has an AM/FM tuner, although I've never tried it, as I've got something like 60 music channels on my cable, (which happens to be plugged into the 2nd HDMI port). Down here, by the beach in San Clemente, CA, half way between LA and San Diego, reception leaves much to be desired anyway!

The AV Controller is primarily controlled with the remote control (we will explore than in the General Performance section). It does have a couple of controls right on the unit, though. There is a Power button on the left, five small buttons in the center in a row. On the left is Source select, then the DVD controls: Play/Pause, Back Chapter, Forward Chapter, Stop, and Eject. To the right of all that, is a large volume dial (backlit in LED blue - like the power button), when the unit is on. The power button is orange when off, the volume dial doesn't light when off.

Low on the front left, are a headphone jack, the Audio 2 input (convenient), and the USB input.

There are a good selection of inputs on the back- both video and audio. No actual photo at this time, as we never photographed the back of the A/V Controller, before installation. I did, however take a picture of the drawing in the manual - it's not great:

 

Video inputs: HDMI 1 and HDMI 2, Component Video, S-Video, and of course Composite video. There is also an input for a USB flash drive (want to watch pictures from your digital camera? - No problem).

Audio inputs: As you would expect, there is also a full complement of audio inputs. Remember HDMI ports provide audio as well as digital video. In addition, there is a Coaxial audio port, and a Digital Optical port, as well as stereo audio labeled Analog audio for the audio for the composite or S-video inputs. There is also an additional stereo audio input simply labled Audio In, which can be used for an iPod, MP3 player, or other audio only device.

Tuner inputs: There is the traditional 75 ohm coaxial input for the FM tuner, and the standard two connectors for the AM tuner.

Outputs: Interestingly, Epson thought this all out rather nicely, there is an HDMI output (you could use that for a separate DVR), an analog 5.1 audio output, and a stereo (labeled 2CH) audio pass through output (to a recorder). As is typical of audio outs, the volume of the system does not affect the output volume of the 2CH output.

Bottom line on the Ensemble AV Controller, is that they have covered almost all of the bases. Few users, if any, will run out of inputs or outputs. Next:

Ensemble HD Screen (and speaker) System

The Epson Ensemble HD comes with a motorized screen that has a 100" diagonal, 16:9, matte-white screen surface. The screen is capable of lowering all the way, or can be reset to go part way down (or all the way, by hitting the power button twice). There are two advantages of being able to stop the screen from going all the way down. The screen has about a 1 foot black drop when fully extended, so if your room has a low ceiling (ie. some basements) you might want the top of the screen surface to be closer to the screen housing at the top. A second use, which I like - though I haven't set it up yet - but will - comes into play when watching movies with Cinemascope aspect ratio. The wide Cinemascope is what we are used to, for most movies, and normally leaves you with a black letter box area at both the top and the bottom of the screen. I plan to adjust the screen stop, so that the bottom of the surface is where the bottom of the movie content will be, and the letterbox black area, would actually be below the screen, hitting, in the case of my installation - dark blinds and wall, where the minimal light of letterbox is invisible. End result - only letterbox at the top, not top and bottom. Then, if I am watching something in standard 16:9, or 4:3 aspect ratio, I can hit the button again, to fully lower the screen surface.

What is truly special about the screen, though, is the left, center, and right front speakers being located in the screen housing. This is a key part of making the Ensemble HD 1080 so quick and easy to install, and far less intrusive than most setups. More on the speakers, below.

Ensemble HD 1080 5.1 Speakers and Amplification

Epson partnered with well respected speaker manufacturer Atlantic Technology, an established manufacturer of medium and higher end speaker systems. The end result is really impressive, room filling, (and when appropriate), room shaking sound.

First, the three speakers in the screen housing consist of left and right speakers, each with one 1 inch titanium dome tweeter, and one 4.5 inch midrange speaker. The center channel also uses the 1 inch dome, but has two of the 4.5 inch midrange speakers.

The rear speakers mounted in the projector housing, again, bringing together different components for easy wiring. The rear speakers use a 4 inch mid-range speakerl.

Finally, there is the included subwoofer than sits in the equipment cabinet. The subwoofer consists of a ported 10 inch woofer, and draws on its healthy 150 watt amplifier. The rest of the amplification; 40 watt amplifiers for the left and right, front and rear speakers, and a 70 watt amplifier for the center channel, are all housed in the sub-woofer.

All together, in a medium sized room (2000 cubic feet - somrthing like 20 feet x 10 feet x 10 foot ceiling height or 16x12x10), the system can hit 105 db of volume, which is very loud. We are talking peak volume levels of typical rock concerts (though not the very loudest of them.)

Ensemble HD 1080 Remote Control

One touch operation! That's oversimplifying, but press the Power button on this remote, right out of the box, and the screen will drop, the AV Controller will power up, and the projector will turn on. Too easy?

The remote, manufactured by Universal Remote Control, comes preprogrammed to run the entire system. It uses both RF and Infra-red capabilities. It is a learning remote, and also accepts codes, so that you can add additional devices to it, to control their functions. It's functionality will be covered in the General Performance section. As I have already mentioned that I have added a Sony PS3 to the system, and, since I suspect that many others will, I should point out, that without an adapter, the Sony PS3's wireless is Blutooth, and not compatible with this remote. With an adapter, I believe you can have the PS3 accept commands from the Epson's remote control. I expect to do this in the next month or so, and will report by blog. Mike, who does my calibrations these days, is a programmable remote specialist as well, and has done so in his house, if I recall correctly.

Ensemble HD 1080 Miscellaneous Equipment

Basically, assorted hardware, brackets, etc., but also cabling for speakers, AV and power cabling to wire up the whole system are included.

Perhaps more significantly, channels are provided, so you can neatly attach them and run wires without opening up the walls (more time, expense, and hassle). As mentioned the channels can be painted, allowing them to be less visible in your room. The image below shows one of the wiring channels as it comes out in front of the projector. This image was borrowed from Epson's site, and is black and white. Further, it was no doubt taken in the development stages of the product, as the mounting plate you see there is not what the final looks like, and is clearly metal, while the finished mounting plate is white, and consumer looking, not industrial like the one shown here. Also, the channels in my system (which, as noted, I didn't use), were white, whereas these seem darker, or where digitally darkened so they would be easier to see in this photo. Rest assured, the channels are nice and white, and can be painted (good thinking Epson), to match wall colors or ceilings if needed!

OK, time to consider the picture quality of the completed system!

Epson Ensemble HD 1080 Overview
Image Quality
General Performance
Installation
Summary, Pros, Cons