These three new home theater/home entertainment projectors from Epson replace two year old models, and serve up some performance improvements, and reconfigurations in terms of features. I was supposed to get an actual demonstration of the Home Cinema 3100, 3700, and 3900 at Epson Long Beach, a couple of weeks ago, but it didn't happen because, instead I took a long awaited, two week family vacation. In other words, I've been briefed, but haven't yet seen them in action. I expect (more…)Greetings from Dallas, all ye home theater projector fans.  Here's the short list of individual blogs I'm working on, of new home theater projectors that I know about so far. Some I was briefed on many weeks ago, others by email the past few days. I've been on NDA - forbidden to share, until now (standard operating procedure).  No doubt (more…)Greetings projector fans. I had hoped to publish our annual report last week but only got a small part of it done before leaving on a family vacation. I'm back on Sunday, and will be hard at work on the report.I hope to have it up on the first day of CEDIA, but that's later than usual. (more…)Epson's newly designed Pro Cinema 4040 projector, announced two weeks ago, features 4K and HDR support. It is the lower cost Pro Cinema sibling to the Pro Cinema 6040UB (which stands for "Ultra Black").  The PC4040, along with the new UB projectors has pixel shifting, to work in conjunction with the 4K content to provide visibly superior detail when compared with traditional 1080p projectors! Compared to the 6040UB, the Pro Cinema 4040 a good choice if you've got a room that's never 100% dark where the black level difference is essentially negated, or if your budget is really tight. In fact, the Epson Pro Cinema 4040, including all the extras (see below), lists for $2699, compared to the 6040UB's $3999 price point.  That makes the Pro Cinema 4040, and the Epson Home Cinema 5040UB (which I blogged about recently) the two least expensive projectors on the market today, to support 4K content, including HDR, and the DCI standards. Update 4/2017:  Check out our Pro Cinema 4040 review! (more…)Epson's new Home Cinema 5040UB and it's non-identical twin, the Pro Cinema 6040UB represent a dramatic upgrade from Epson's previous UB ("Ultra Black") series.  Make that massive upgrade.  These projectors, while reminiscent of the models that came before, are more revolutionary, than evolutionary.  Epson showed them for the first time, today, at the CE Show in NYC. Check out our full review of the Home Cinema 5040UB and Pro Cinema 6040UB here.  Also here's a short highlight reel from our videos of these projectors Until now, Epson has been improving performance of the UB series for about eight years now since first launched, but the hardware basics hadn't changed much - for example their Fujinon 2.1:1 manual zoom lens, and the maximum supported resolution has always been 1080p.  No more! The most fun part in this story is I had a chance to preview the new projectors at Epson's US headquarters in Long Beach, CA earlier this month.  Epson gave me a pre-product announcement type briefing, but then I got to see a demo. I'll tell you this, for now (more below), it was well worth the almost two hour round trip to see it in action. The fun part for some of you - these projectors - and two others will be shipping before the end of summer.  For the sports fans among us, that's great news - they will be out before the football season starts, before the World Series, etc.  For us movie fans, (more…)Greetings projector fans, I am pleased to report that 4K viewing at 124" diagonal, using Blu-ray UHD has come to pass here in my home theater. It is an awesome experience!

Sony VPL-VW665ES True 4K Projector - with 4K UHD Movies!

I still have in my possession, the true 4K Sony VPL-VW665ES projector (yep, the one that's $14,999), for one more week.  I have managed to get everything to talk to each other (not easy), and do some viewing, so I'll talk here about hooking things up, picture quality and specifically HDR, including a surprise there. (more…)It's not too late to take the enjoyment factor up a level or two for your Super Bowl party, or just your everyday sports, HDTV and movie viewing. What you need is one of today's new Bright Room projector models geared for your maximum home entertainment! Decisions used to be simple. A few years ago, 60 or 65 inch diagonal was about as big as LCDTVs came. Today, if you have close to $100K you can buy a 100 inch LCDTV, but we're now seeing "affordable" 70 and 75" LCD TVs. A quick look at the Costco website shows 75" TVs starting at (more…)This is the second installment of our blog Supersize Your Super Bowl Party with a Bright Room Projector! If you haven't read the first part yet, start there. If you have, read on: A Decision You Must Make: Will your screen be visible at all times? For many folks one huge advantage of a projector / screen combination is that with a motorized screen, when you aren't watching content, It rolls up, so that you aren't staring at some huge gray rectangular area on your wall, which would be a good description of any 60 - 75 inch LCDTV when turned off. (more…)Greetings - and Seasons Greetings, to everyone!  As we prepare for some serious holiday celebrations, (well most of us have already started), I am reminded that over the years I, and thousands of others have been sharing an old "study" that looks into the science behind Santa delivering all those packages on Christmas Eve.   I decided to share this rather amusing document with all of you this year. I've been emailing it (more…)We've got home projectors sitting here to be reviewed - large and small, even tiny ones. Greetings projector fans! Don't worry, we're going to get around to all those new projectors shown at CEDIA, from the likes of JVC, Sony, and Epson, but while we're waiting for those to arrive, I've got a full house, starting with the smallest - the Sony MP-CL1, a tiny (more…)