Epson Home Cinema 5010 Projector - Performance 1

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Art Feierman

Home Cinema 5010 Eco-Mode vs. Full Power

True, dropping to eco-mode will make the lamp last longer - 5000 hours instead of 4000, but that's not a huge percentage. Most likely anyones real motivation is fan noise (discussed below.)

Lumen Output (Eco Lamp, Dynamic): 1235

That's about a 32% drop, and should be consistent, regardless of which modes you use.

Epson Home Cinema 5010 Pre-Calibration Color temp, Cinema Mode:

Color Temp over IRE Range (Pre calibration, best mode - Cinema): Cinema

Color Temp over IRE Range (Pre calibration, best mode - Cinema):Cinema
30 IRE	7040
50 IRE	7113
80 IRE	6998
100 IRE	6924

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.

Home Cinema 5010, Post Calibration, Best Mode (REC 709)

Calibrated color temps, 20 – 100 IRE: User 1 (Based on Cinema)
20 IRE	6528
30 IRE	6495
40 IRE	6481
50 IRE	6626
60 IRE	6611
70 IRE	6547
80 IRE	6525
90 IRE	6540
100 IRE	6513
Average gamma	2.05

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: