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Epson Home Cinema 700 – Image Quality 5

Posted on April 19, 2009 By Art Feierman

Our last comparison uses the night train scene from Casino Royale. Look to the trees and shrubs on the right, especially just above the tracks. The first image is the Epson, second, the InFocus X9, the third is the Sanyo PLV-Z60, and the last one is from the Optoma HD71.

Epson Home Cinema 700 - Overall Color & Picture Quality

If you are not an enthusiast/hobbyist, and you just want a nice little projector that puts a pretty good image up on the screen (or white wall?), the HC700 does fine. In fact it does very well overall, except that one area (blacks).

Another way to consider it is this way. It does just just fine, on everything but dark scenes, and does lack a little punch on scenes with mostly bright areas but with some significant contrasty dark areas. Feed it brighter scenes, and it looks great for a low cost projector. That’s especially true of sports viewing. This is a projector that could easily find itself in use in sports bars, as well as your family room.

In the above slider a variety of images, that don’t have critical dark areas, and look great.

Home Cinema 700 Projector: Performance, HDTV and Sports

Now the Home Cinema comes into its own. Watching sports, and for that matter most general TV programming is not something that most people like to do in a pitch black room. The Home Cinema 700, being perhaps the brightest home theater projector under $3000, is naturally going to do well with this type of content and room lighting. I’ve watch several hours (at least) of March Madness basketball on the HC700, as well as other sports, and it cut through ambient light like few others can. In fairness, three other 720p projectors can give the HC700 a run for the money in brightness in brightest mode – and those are Epson’s own HC720, the Panasonic PT-AX200U, and the Optoma HD71. All cost at least a couple hundred more, and none has even half the brightness in “best mode”.

In other words, it’s a great, inexpensive projector for sports viewing!

All of the images below, except the concert scene, where shot with modest to moderate ambient light present.

Epson Home Cinema 700 – Image Quality 4
Epson Home Cinema 700 – Performance