Epson Home Cinema 3010 Projector - Image Quality 5

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Art Feierman

Epson Home Cinema 3010 Projector: Performance, HDTV and Sports, includine 3D

The Home Cinema 3010 is great on HDTV and Sports, with only one reservation. As is typical for projectors in its price, it lacks CFI - smooth motion, which a lot of folks like for sports.

On the other hand, I can't think of one other projector selling for the Home Cinema 3010's price that does have CFI, except for perhaps a couple of closeouts.

Considering that, I withdraw my reservation.

We all got by fine without smooth motion (CFI) until just about 4 years ago. As I always point out, I'm not a fan of CFI on movies. It changes the feel, but on sports it can be a plus. I consider the lack of CFI at most, to be minor, and since you just normally don't find it around this price range, essentially you'll have to decide to spend more to get it, a lot more if you also want bright, and 3D.

3D sports is a total blast. For the first time, I got to watch my recorded games, filling about a 98" diagonal 16:9 size, and not at all feel like the image is dim. In fact, it's more than decent in 3D Cinema, and downright reasonably bright in 3D Dynamic mode.

Football is cool....very! Several friends have watched a 3D football game here, but it's not just football. In fact, far more impressive in 3D is boxing. I'm not a boxing fan at all, but, "wow!" I may be a fan of 3D boxing...

Perhaps even better than sports is the high quality 3D "Discovery HD, History HD, type content. China Revealed (3D) for the first time in my theater had sunlight scenes that actually seemed bright. Now were talking. I know there are other bright 3D projectors about to ship, the aforementioned Panasonic PT-AE7000 and Epson Home Cinema 5010. People, 3D is made for projectors. If you've watched 3D at some point on someone's 42" or 55" LCDTV or Plasma, let me say that it's like looking at a small 3D picture box. When you view it on a 100" or so screen with a projector, it's a whole new window on the world, and so what if you have to wear some glasses.

Check out some images from football, and other HDTV content: All the sports images were taken with the blinds partially open, as per the picture, above, and with the back recessed lights on. The other HDTV images had the lights off and the shutters still partially open, just not as much.

Since all the modes are relatively similar in brightness, though, that's hardly a concern.

Epson Home Cinema 3010 Projector: Bottom Line on HDTV Sports, and also 3D HDTV content

Simply stated, so far, this is the best game in town for a bright quality picture, in the sub-$2000 price range, or for that matter, sub $2500 range, if you want 3D as well as 2D. I recommend 3D HDTV content. In fact, for my own viewing I'm far more taken by HDTV content, than by movies in 3D.

The Epson handles sports, standard HDTV, and 3D with tons of brightness (2D) and good brightness for 3D.

The picture is crisp on HDTV. The Home Cinema 3010, I better point out, had no trouble with any of the HDTV 3D formats coming in from DirecTV. That's very unlike most first gen 3D capable 1080p projectors, of which only a couple could work with ESPN 3D, or other 720p resolution 3D channels.

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For well under $2000, you will get most impressive 2D, nice and bright 3D.

Considering though, that most folks watch TV and sports with lights at least partially on, and can use lots of brightness, remember that this is one of the two brightnest 1080p projectors under $2000, unless you count some real entry level ones, that can't compete in black levels or picture quality.