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Epson Home Cinema 3010 Projector – Physical Tour 2

Posted on October 7, 2013 By Art Feierman

Epson Home Cinema 3010 Remote Control

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The Home Cinema 3010 remote control is big, and black, and backlit. Overall, it’s a really nice remote control, and it seems to have very good range, I have to worry far less about where I’m pointing this remote, than most others, and I attribute that to range and spread of the IR beam.

The top row as the big power On button on the left, a smaller Off button in the middle, and the backlight button far right.

Next comes two rows of buttons with your Source choices. On the “e” version of the projector one of them is for the WirelessHD HDMI setup. With support for HDMI-Link, the remote provides all the usual DVD type controls since it should run any HDMI-link player. In fact on the row of large buttons immediately below, are the HDMI-Link button, and Volume Up and Down.

Below those, white buttons from 2D/3D modes, Color Mode, and Memory

That takes us to the navigation controls – four arrow keys in a round formation with a center Enter button. Below all that are three buttons in a curve,

Below those buttons are Default, Menu, and Esc (takes you back a level on the menus).

Finally, near the bottom, 7 more buttons offering direct links to features/menu items: AutoIris, Color (RGBCYMK), Aspect Ratio, Split Screen, test Pattern, User (programmable from menus), and AV Mute.

I have two complaints: The backlight itself, could be a touch brighter, but it really is ok. (Better than one of those remotes with overly bright, blinding blue LED lights!)

The other complaint (and that’s about it), it’s that the backlight button is way at the top right, and the backlight doesn’t come on, when you press any button. With a remote this long, the backlight button is far from the center of balance, so you really can’t hit the button while holding it balanced in one hand.

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Epson Home Cinema 3010 Lens Throw

As previously noted, the Home Cinema 3010 and 3010e have a manual 1.5:1 zoom lens. That makes the placement range pretty good, even if not as wide a range as the 8350.

For a 100 inch diagonal 16:9 screen the front of the HC3010 can be as close as 9.7 feet, or as far back as 15.7 feet. (2.96 – 4.78 meters).

The 9.7 feet is very typical. Most projectors except for the fixed lens ultra or very short throw projectors, have a closest distance for that size screen, of between 9 and 12 feet. This projector just can’t sit as far back from the screen as some others designed to also be able to be rear shelf mounted (like the 8350). Projectors without lens shift aren’t suitable for rear shelf mounting normally, although it can be done using keystone correction, if the measurements work.

Lens Shift

No lens shift for the Epson Home Cinema 3010, so mounting properly is critical if you don’t want to have to use keystone correction (which does very slightly degrade the picture).

Let’s talk about that for a second. I received an email or blog comment recently, asking “how bad is using keystone correction”. I have an easy way to describe that for existing projector owners: Any softness caused by using keystone correction, is going to take away less from picture quality, than the compression being used on satellite and cable transmissions. So, while we cringe at the thought of using keystone correction, it’s not going to do something drastic, like make a 1080p image seem as soft as a 720p one in terms of sharpness.

On Blu-ray disc, you should be able to see a slight difference between keystone on, and off. It will be harder to see on lower quality sources.

By definition the keystone correction compresses each line of data differently, but there never should be highly visible artifacts from today’s keystone adjustment formulas.

Anamorphic Lens - Wide Screen

The 3010 does not support an anamorphic lens.

Epson Home Cinema 3010 Projector – Physical Tour
Epson Home Cinema 3010 Projector – Image Quality