Epson Pro Cinema 810 Projector: Physical Tour

From the front, the lens is mounted off center, with a manual focus ring, and a tab on the inner ring to control the zoom in and out. The zoom is a best of class 2.1::1, which means that the furthest it can be positioned from a give sized screen is over twice as far away as the closest. You can see the front exhausts (on the first image above) which fire the hot air out at an angle away from the lens. Underneath there are two adjustable (screw thread) feet, to control projector angle.

Facing the Epson Pro Cinema 810 home theater projector, to the left of the lens, is the front Infra-red sensor for the remote control.

Moving to the top of the Pro Cinema 810 projector, and just behind the lens, are two dials to control the vertical, and horizontal lens shift. The lens shift range on the Epson is a bit less than most of the other LCD HT projectors, but still very respectable.

This allows you to mount the projector anywhere from an inch or so above the top of your screen's surface, to an inch or so below the bottom of the screen's surface. Both the Sanyo and Panasonic projectors have more range. This amount of range is about typical for the more expensive DLP projectors that have adjustable lens shift, like the BenQ PE-8720, which has almost identical flexibility. Note, using the horizontal lens shift will limit the maximum amount of vertical lens shift you can apply.

A look at the control panel of the Pro Cinema 810 home theater projector, finds all the standard controls. From the left, Power, Source, then the Menu button and the 4 arrow keys. In the center of the four keys in the Enter button, and to the top right of them, the Escape button which moves you back toward the top level of menus. Lastly is the Aspect ratio button which switches between the usual multiple modes. By the way, the up and down arrows double as keystone correction controls when the menus are not engaged. Of course, you should avoid using keystone correction, due to the distortion, and since the Epson projector has an incredible amount of lens shift range, I can't imagine anyone needing keystone correction regardless!

The back panel of the Pro Cinema 810 offers the normal range of inputs. In fact the Pro Cinema 810 offers the same setup as their lower priced Cinema 400. There is a single HDMI, one component video input (3 RCA jacks, color coded Red, Green and Blue), a computer input, a SCART input (for some parts of the world), one S-video, one composite input, and a 12volt screen trigger. Lastly there is an RS-232 for "command and control" of the projector from computer, etc.

Tthe power cord also plugs into the rear, and there is a hard power switch that must be on to be able to power up the projector from the top panel button or the remote. Lastly, there is a rear Infra-red sensor for the remote.

There is a single rear foot - not adjustable, to give the projector a 3 point stance for stability (better than four points, if the rear ones arent adjustable).