Epson Home Cinema 5010 Projector – Performance 1

Now the story gets interesting. As you propbably appreciate, the goal is a 6500K calibration. The Epson comes in a bit cool – not too much, with readings nice and tight, around 7000K.

Since this Epson does not have a THX mode, Mike calibrated the Cinema mode and saved it into one of the 10 user memory spots. That is our “Best” mode.

In a discussion with Epson product folks, about some of our measurments regarding color gamut in Cinema mode, they pointed out that for the best color gamut, we should use Natural mode, which they say closely follows REC709, the HD standard. Well, as I write this, that was less than 48 hours ago. When this is all up, Mike will take a look at Natural, and recalibrate and confirm which is better. I can say, that Natural looks pretty good without any changes, from its default. In fact I used the unaltered (except for brightness and contrast) Natural, for a portion of the photo shoot.

It’s rare we get a projector that Mike gets calibrated over the range from 20 to 100 IRE, that is this tight – less than 150 degree range.

If the Natural mode has a better color gamut, and calibrates this tightly, then color should be dead on.

Mike reports a strange dip in the gamma reading around 90 IRE. We’re scratching our heads about that. Other than there, the gamma looks just fine. The end result is an average lower than the desired 2.2, but overall it looks just fine, basically like the 2.2 we want. I haven’t had the time to play with it, but the Epson gamma controls offer a custom mode, that should be able to compensate for that drop Mike noted. We’re curious and discussing this with Epson. It’s just one of those minor “no worries”.

Below, the same frame taken using different modes, and using the same exposure. This is so you can get a handle on the relative brightness and color aspects of the major modes. Of course, since the exposures are the same, the darker modes like Cinema would look better here, if more properly exposed:

Coming 11/26:

Cinema:

Natural:

Living Room:

Dynamic: