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Epson Pro Cinema G6550 WU Projector: Picture Quality 2

Posted on June 12, 2015 By Art Feierman

PRO CINEMA G6550 PROJECTOR – PICTURE QUALITY PAGE 2:   Shadow Detail, Home User for HDTV and Sports, Overall Picture Quality

G6550 WU Projector - Dark Shadow Detail

Out of the box, Theatre (and other modes) definitely are killing the dark shadow detail.  I settled on adjusting the brightness to a setting of 5 which restored almost of the lost near black detail.

For some reason, I don’t believe the G6550WU is handling the darkest shadow details quite as well as the G6900WU, but then we fully calibrated that one.  On our usual Bond night train scene, it’s harder to make out the shrubs behind the tracks on the far right, and there isn’t as much detail in the large darkest area of the forest in the right center.  Those are two of our favorite tests.  Since this projector probably won’t be used in a fully darkened room, modest ambient light will negate a good deal of the differences between the G6550WU and other projectors that are better at dark shadow detail. Overall, let’s call this Epson “ok” on dark shadow detail.  In perspective, you want as much as a display will give you, but I’ve always considered performance in this area to be of lower importance, behind black level performance, color accuracy, having suitable brightness, etc.

Epson Pro Cinema G6550WU for Sports and HDTV

Typically I shoot the HDTV images with the projector set up in my home theater with its dark walls floors and ceilings, and great lighting control.  I normally shoot HDTV and sports with some light coming in from partially shuttered windows, and movies, and some HDTV (Victoria Secret Fashion Show, for example) in a fully darkened environment.

This time though, all images have been taken in my living room setup, with the Epson G6550WU projector ceiling mounted. Some of the football and HGTV images are taken with near impossible lighting conditions, yet the image survived.   Even the darkest room lighting used, still has six 60 watt or so equivalent LED lights running, as well as some colored RGB LED lighting, plus some low kitchen lights some 30 feet away.  In other words, even the darkest setup for these images is brighter than I normally use for all but football images.  Our video on the G6550WU handling different room conditions is what will really tell the story.

Here you find images from various times of day,  plus evening with either massive numbers of, or limited numbers of lights running.  All the football images were taken in the worst 30 minutes of the day, except the one with the streaks of light on the ceiling, that was taken around 11am, well before sunlight enters the room.

On all but the brightest 30 minutes or so of a sunny day, when the room is bathed in sunlight, this projector combined with the Slate 1.2 gain screen, easily handles the room for Sports viewing.

For our Superbowl party, even the worst five minutes of the day, produced a very watchable, if a bit washed out image. For the rest of the game:  No problem.  Our roughly 30 guests were thrilled with the results.  In previous years, most folks flocked to my home theater.  This year, they only headed to the Theater for the half time show, because of the high end audio there.  Consider that brightness of this Epson projector on my screen is brighter than the LCDTV you are probably watching in your home.

G6550 WU Projector: Overall Picture Quality

This is easy.  One more time:   Home entertainment projector!  Extremely bright, very good color, (great if calibrated).  Black level performance is “home entertainment” quality which is to say not even close to a good $3000 home theater projector, but then, it’s not designed to go into a home theater.  Dark shadow detail – again, not great, but with ambient light present, you lose much of the advantage between ok dark shadow detail, and great.

The G6550WU rocks for the purpose I installed it for, which is primarily sports viewing, news and HGTV, sitcoms, and also browsing the web.

For business purposes, this is a great larger venue projector thanks to rich, saturated and reasonably accurate colors.  It does well displaying websites, spreadsheets, and Powerpoint presentations, including good skin tones for when images including peoples faces are part of the presentation.

Epson Powerlite Pro Cinema G6550 WU Projector – Picture Quality
Epson Powerlite Pro Cinema G6550WU Projector – Performance