Epson Home Cinema 8700UB Projector – Performance

While both Theatre Black 1 and x.v. Color modes both have a good color temp number at 100 IRE, they are both too red in the grayscale balance.   THX mode is the “Best mode”, and this year can be fully calibrated, which could not be done with the older Epson 8500UB THX mode.

Uncalibrated, THX mode measured 460 lumens on the pre-production unit, and should therefore compute to 503 lumens on the production 8700UB.

In brightest mode – Dynamic mode, the production 8700UB measured 1203 lumens.

Low lamp will drop the brightness of the projector by approximately 22.5% (from 460 lumens down to 357 lumens on the pre-production model)

The impact of the numbers above show that there is significant impact to where you mount, in terms of distance from your screen. If you are going large screen, a closer mount will give you more lumens, but there are other trade-offs. Also figure most lenses aren’t at their best at their absolute extremes.

That’s a good set of numbers – pre-calibration! The target is 6500K. The slightly higher numbers indicates a just slightly cool image (a bit more blues than reds). This is a slight shift, and further corrects with calibration. Note how consistent the color temp is, across the IRE range. (Note, below 20 IRE the color temp gets warm, so both our 8700UB projectors here exhibit a bit of red in the blackest blacks, which is visible in some of the longer exposure images in this review