Epson Home Cinema 1080 and Pro Cinema 1080 Projector Reviews - General Performance - 1

Posted on October 5, 2013 by Art Feierman

Epson Home Cinema 1080 Remote Control

The Home Cinema 1080's remote is the same as several other Epson home theater projectors.

Epson's remote is well laid out, with key menu features directly accessable without having to go through the menu. Some of those include Aspect Ratio, Color Mode (Theater Dark, Theater, Living Room, etc.), Gamma, Contrast, Color Temperature and more.

The Backlight button is at the very bottom, by itself, where you can't help but find it. There are also separate buttons for each source (Component, HDMI, S-Video, etc.).

The Epson also has storable user defined settings that can be called up from the Memory button near the top. Immediately below the Memory button is the Menu button.

Right below that are your four arrow keys, nicely spaced out with the Select (enter) button in the center, and the Escape button on the lower right.

As I indicated previously in the Epson Cinema 550 review this is one of the best remotes you'll find, and with plenty of range. After using for just a few hours, everything is easy to find even without hitting the Backlight button to light it up.

I should note too, that the backlight is plenty bright, unlike some projectors' remote controls that are backlit but dim enough to still be a nuisance in a fully dark room. Also all buttons are labeled so they light up with the backlight. unlike some remotes that label some buttons but others are labeled on the remote itself and not readable in the dark, even with the backlight engaged.

The sculpted remote also fits well in your hand. Even those with large beefy hands should like this one.

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Epson Home Cinema 1080 and Pro Cinema 1080 Lens Throw and Lens Shift

As mentioned on the overview page, the Epson offers sensational placement flexibility. It starts with the widest range zoom lens around 2.1:1. This allows you (using a 100" diagonal 16:9 screen), to place the front of the projector as close as 9.8 feet, and as far back as 20.9 feet. To make things even better, the Epson's both offer horizontal and vertical lens shift. As is typical, using the horizontal lens shift (which few need), will limit the vertical shift, but that likely will never be an issue. For that 100" screen, the projector can be as high, as 22.7" above the top of the screen, or as low as 22.7" below the bottom (in both cases, measured to the center of the lens).

These Epson projectors will work in just about any setup. Of course, in full wide angle zoom (closest to fill the screen), the projector will be almost twice as bright as full telephoto (further back), so ideally you'll position the projector as close as you can (although you probably wont want to be at full wide angle - for other reasons we won't get into).

Epson Home Cinema 1080 and Pro Cinema 1080 Screen Door and Rainbow Effects

These Epsons are LCD projectors, so, no spinning color wheel, and therefore, no potential Rainbow Effect issues.

The Pixel structure of the Epson was a little less visible than I expected. It is my impression that they are slightly less evident than the Mitsubishi HC5000, but it's been too long since I reviewed the HC5000 to be sure. The great news is, of course, that these are 1080p projectors, and that means that the pixels are not likely to ever be visible at any normal seating distance. And that's the end of that conversation. Here's that closeup image of my cable guide, that shows the pixel structure. Click for the closeup.

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Light Leakage

No issues with light leakage. There is some small scatter from the lens, but, I don't think it's possible to notice it with an image being projected.

Epson Cinema 1080 Projectors: Audible Noise Levels

Good news and bad. In low power mode (27db), the projector is quiet. You'll barely hear it with your sound system off. With the lamp on full power, though, the Epson's are surprisingly noisy, since many other LCD proctors are quieter. Epson claims 33db, which is more typical of DLP projectors in full power, and will definitely be a potential issue for those who are really fan noise adverse. (A very, very, small percentage of people).