Epson Home Cinema 3500 Projector Review – Hardware Tour 2

This Epson HC3500’s remote control is typical for an Epson remote.  It’s pretty long, moderately heavy (for a remote), has a very good backlight, and great range.

The remote is laid out in sections.  It won’t take long for a new owner to know what buttons are where, thanks to the logic

Let’s run through all the sections and buttons, from the top.

Power top left, once for on.  next to it, a smaller button for power off (also press once).  The backlight button is on the top right.

The next section of 8 buttons all relate to source selection. There are seven different sources, plus, the upper left most – labeled PIP is for picture in Picture, which of course relates to the sources.  There is a USB/LAN button, then two HDMI (HDMI supports MHL, HDMI2 does not), Component Video, Video (composite), and PC (analog computer).  The last one is labeled WirelessHD, a feature only found on the HC3500’s twin, the HC3600e.

Immediately below that is the HDMI-Link area that lets you use the Epson remote to control other HDMI-link devices (thus buttons like fast forward, play, stop, pause, which are found on Blu-ray players, etc.)  There’s a Link-Menu button for when you have other devices set up.  The larger HDMI-Link button just below those others, brings up the HDMI-Link button you saw above.  The other two large buttons on that row are volume Up and Down.  Above the Down button is a Mute.  Apparently the volume and mute can control the internal speakers, or work with configured devices.

After a space – large white buttons:  3D, changing Color modes, and direct access to the Super-Resolution menu.

Then comes navigation:  Four arrows in a round formation with Enter located in the middle.  Below the Nav arrows are three buttons in a curve.  Left most returns a menu to the default settings.  In the middle is the Menu button itself to open menus, and on the right is Escape, which takes you back up a level when navigating the menus.

We’re almost done.  The next six buttons are more that provide direct access to sub-menus:  Fine/Fast processing, CMS (color management system), and Aspect ratio on the first row.  On the second row is the User button, Memory (menu) and 2D/3D. On the 3rd row is a button to bring up the test pattern, and an AV Mute button that “mutes” both audio and the picture.

There are four more buttons – outlined with a white line which are all buttons for controlling the WirelessHD not offered on this version of the projector, but found on the HC3600e.

I really like Epson remote controls like this one.  There are two or three other manufacturer’s I like about as much, and far more that aren’t near as good.