Wow! I got to visit Epson a few weeks ago, to get a preview of the new Pro Cinema G6900WU and other new projectors that Epson will officially announce at the CEDIA tradeshow in Denver in a few days. Of course back then I wasn’t allowed to leak a word. Consider this a preview of the inevitable Pro Cinema G6900WU projector review.
The Pro Cinema G6900WU is the flagship of a new class of projectors for the home and for that matter, suitable in other environments such as sports bars.
The Epson Pro Cinema G6900WU is Epson's flagship Ultra-Bright Home Projector
This is great stuff. There have always been plenty of folks who would have liked a large screen projector system at home, but really lacked a proper dedicated theater or man-cave.
One of three new projectors in the Pro Cinema series, , the Pro Cinema G6900WU is the brightest projector I can think of, intended for the home, short of some $50,000+ Runco projectors! Don’t worry, the pricing by comparison is the ultimate bargain.
I’ll keep this blog primarily to this projector, and do separate ones for each of the other new projectors! Let me just say that this Epson projector tops the scales
with an official price of $7499, but for that you get a lot, starting with 6000 lumens. (Yes, that’s 6000 color and 6000 white lumens.) There are two other Epson projectors in this series. There’s the $5999 priced Pro Cinema G6550WU with a still dazzling 5200 lumens, easily more than twice as bright as any Epson home projector ever shipped. There’s also a relatively low cost Pro Cinema 4855WU, claiming a still massive 4000 lumens, which is coincidentally priced at $4855. Strange!
The WU indicates that multiple lenses are available. That’s true for all three new G-series projectors mentioned above.
Think of the Epson Pro Cinema G6900WU and G67550WU more or less to be the equivalent of Epson’s 5020UB and 6020UB projectors just with all that extra brightness, and a lot of additional features and capabilities, while the PC4855WU might be thought of as the Epson HC2030 of the new series, a good bit less feature laden.
Back to the Pro Cinema 6900UB. Expect great black level performance, Creative Frame Interpolation, and if I remember correctly Epson’s Super-Resolution
But also expect support for HDBaseT which let’s you run CAT5/6 wire for distances to just beyond 300 feet, for video, audio and control! That makes wiring a whole lot simpler, than HDMI where anything but short distances are . We’ve mentioned HDBaseT in some reviews, but this is the first home projector I can think of to sport it. Nice touch, and that will be a boon to sports bars, that choose this projectoras it will make their wiring a lot easier too.
Match the Pro Cinema 6900WU with the right screen, and the combination should be able to tackle any media room, even with some pretty large screens. Even if you have a tougher room still, without great control of lighting, this wall melting Epson projector should have still have little trouble at all. I can’t wait to get one of these in and try it in my sun drenched living room. And to think 4-5 years ago, just about anything that measured over 1200 lumens was considered a light canon.
Of course this is an Epson projector, so it uses 3 LCD panels or chips (call them what you will). Epson manufactures the vast majority of 3LCD chips on the planet, and it’s the only technology they use. Faroudja DCDi provides the image processing, so expect excellent, clean picture quality The lens, as you can see from the image, is center mounted, there’s, lots of lens shift, and Epson has added a lens shift lock, to prevent any shift, just in case your audio system is shaking your house to its foundations, while watching a movie or sporting event. I should mention that the G6900WU projector has split screen viewing, allowing two high definition signals at once. Inputs include HDMI and DisplayPort, Component video, audio sources, and a whole lot more:
The well endowed rear input panel of the Epson Pro Cinema G6900WU Projector
I’ll provide more on the optional lenses in the full review.
Seeing a projector in action at Epson, of course isn’t the same as viewing them in my controlled environments, so it’s hard to make any definitive statements as to picture quality relative to Epson’s current Home Cinema 5020UB or Pro Cinema 6020UB, but that of course is why we bring them in to look at!
Update: Confirming to you now. The G6900WU and the other two Pro Cinema G series projectors are 2D only!
I may have no use for 6000 lumens in my dark, fully light controlled home theater, but this projector or one of its siblings may be just what my living room calls for.
I love the idea of 6000 lumens of real “home theater projector” I mean one with first class black level performance, one that can calibrate beautifully, or still do really good color with incredible brightness. I wonder of any of the competition will be this clever, in moving the bar on brightness for those wanting huge screens even in not great rooms? Certainly there are bright cross-over projectors, but these were meant as "cinema" or "home theater" projectors especially the G6900WU. -art
