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Epson Home Cinema 5020 Projector – Performance 2

Posted on July 17, 2013 By Art Feierman

Home Cinema 5020 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 anyone’s real motivation is fan noise (discussed below.)

HC5020 Lumen Output (Eco Lamp, Dynamic): 1357

That’s about a 29% drop, and should be consistent, regardless of which modes you use. Last year we measured about a 32% drop.  The difference is within the famous “margin of error”  Epson’s have typically dropped about 30% when switching to eco mode.

Epson Home Cinema 5020 Pre-Calibration Color temp: THX
30 IRE 7164
50 IRE 7170
80 IRE 7172
100 IRE 7012

Home Cinema 5020, Post Calibration, Best Mode User 1 (based on THX)
20 IRE 6719
30 IRE 6515
40 IRE 6474
50 IRE 6539
60 IRE 6503
70 IRE 6509
80 IRE 6564
90 IRE 6528
100 IRE 6517
 Average gamma =   2.18   

That’s a pretty tight range of color temp, post calibration. We’ve seen projectors that calibrate even tighter, but not often, or significantly (last year, the 5010 was a even tighter).  Of course, Mike could invest more time, and narrow the range further, but the picture works for me!

Below, photos showing the differences between modes.  These are taken at the same exposure, to give you an idea of relative brightness.  It also gives you a good idea about color, though it’s a touch tougher to fully appreciate since the less bright modes are a bit underexposed, and the brighter modes overexposed due to the exposure. Let’s look at how the different modes handle some skin tones:

THX (Calibrated):
Dynamic
Living room
Cinema
Natural
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Dynamic is suffering from being way overexposed.  Still, if you try to forget that, you can note that our Victoria Secret model picks up a yellowish caste due to increased greens, etc.

Epson Home Cinema 5020 Projector – Performance
Epson Home Cinema 5020 Projector – Performance 3