Epson Home Cinema 6100 - Performance

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Art Feierman

Epson Home Cinema 6100 Brightness

Before we begin on this section of the Home Cinema 6100, you should know that we will soon be changing measuring and calibration equipment. We have been aware that the lumen numbers we publish are typically higher than other reviewers are reporting. Still, "apples to apples" applies. The brightness differences between projectors in our reviews is consistent, regardless of the actual numbers published. If projector x measures 20% brighter than projector y, that still holds true, even if our actual lumen measurements for both, are on the high side. Our screen size recommendations are based on viewing, not on lumen measurements.

When we formally switch over, we will publish a table showing "old lumens" vs. "new lumens" for the home theater projector reviews published in the last year. This should prevent confusion. Most likely our next review will use the new gear. OK, let's get started! As is also the case with the Epson 6500UB, the Home Cinema 6100 is the brightest of the 3LCD projectors. The two Epson's are virtually identical in brightness.

The Epson actually has seven different preset modes, however we concern ourselves with just three: TheaterBlack1 ("best" mode), LivingRoom (a "bright mode, without maximum compromise for ambient light), and Dynamic (the "brightest" mode), but one with pushed colors, and a less natural look, but ideal for cutting through ambient light - great for example, for watching sports where no one is worries about how perfect the skin tones are). Mike in doing his measurements does provide brightness numbers for all seven modes, but we only fully calibrate "best" mode. LivingRoom and Dynamic we allow more imperfections in exchange for not sacrificing a lot of lumens.

Here are the numbers (and the color temperatures for 100 IRE (white), for all the preset modes, right out of the box, before any adjustments:

color temperatures for 100 IRE:
Theater Black 1	687 @ 6566
Theater Black 2	684 @ 6248
Theater	739 @ 7884
Dynamic	2057 @ 6838
LivingRoom	1581 @ 8539
Natural	743 @ 6783
x.v.Color	540 @ 6449

These measurements were done with the projector lamp set to High Brightness. Dropping the lamp into low power mode, we measured TheaterBlack 1 at 517 lumens, a drop of approximately 25%. That 25% drop should be consistent between high and low lamp settings for all the modes. As is typical, low lamp modes have slightly different color temp readings than high lamp. In the case of this Epson, white measured 7031K in low lamp mode, just a little too cool (blue).

Note that, out of the box, LivingRoom mode is heavily shifted to blue (over 8500K color temperature) - a far cry from the ideal 6500K for movies, and most viewing. That was easily corrected by adjusting the Epson's color temp down from its default 8000K (for that mode) to either 6500K or 7000K. Personally, for things like sports viewing I actually favor a color temperature between 6500K and 7000K, and even 7500K is very watchable.