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MillimeterDisplay Review — Epson PowerLite Home 10
May 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Jeff Sauer
16:9 video projection for the budget-conscious
Over the last several months, Video Systems has covered the trend toward more affordable multimedia projectors. Generally that has meant not only sub-$1,000 pricing with pleasantly good quality, but also projectors designed for the office and data presentations more than for video. Now, Epson's new PowerLite Home 10 brings native 16:9 and a focus on video to this exciting price category. At $1,299, the PowerLite Home 10 is a little more than the $1,000 models, but if you're screening video on a budget, it's worth a look.
The PowerLite Home 10, along with its premium Cinema 200 and Cinema 500 siblings, aren't Epson's first forays into the home theater market, but they do suggest a renewed interest from Epson in this burgeoning category. Together, those three models effectively replace just a single model, the TW100, that had been Epson's sole home theater offering over the prior couple of years. With three projectors, as well as recently announced 47in. and 57in. rear-projection televisions, Epson is taking a major step into home entertainment and, more important to video professionals, offering products that put a premium on video content.
With good color and solid performance, plus the lowest price going for a native widescreen projector, the Epson PowerLite Home 10 is a nice option for non-profits and smaller video production screening rooms.
Announced last fall and shipping since January, the PowerLite Home 10 is, not surprisingly, a value product, especially compared to the Cinema 200 and Cinema 500. With a native resolution of only 854×480, the Home 10 is only slightly better than the resolution you'd get from a native 4:3 SVGA model in widescreen mode (800×450), although it's a significant difference if you're talking about scaling, or rather not scaling, 480i or 480p. If you're showing 16:9 content, there's also a clear advantage in eliminating the letterboxing and light spill. However, the effective resolution of 4:3 content drops to a very out-of-date VGA.
Epson's Cinema 200 ($2,999) and Cinema 500 ($4,999) each have a native 1280×720 resolution for full native HD support (the Cinema 500 adds Faroudja DCDi for de-interlacing, reduced jitter, and 3:2 pulldown). However, the Home 10 does support 1080i and 720p through scaling and does a nice job compared to other affordable-class products. Indeed, with a good source, the Home 10 can look surprisingly sharp — although having a good-quality source is often much of the battle for each of the lower-priced projectors on the market.
In terms of size, the PowerLite Home 10 is bulky, at least compared to most business projectors in this price class. In fact, for a projector using 0.55in. LCD panels and with limited connectivity options, it's probably larger than necessary. But that's of little consequence for a projector that's not likely to move very much. It's a handsome design in a curvy, bone-colored chassis with silver accents, and the larger chassis helps Epson minimize fan noise and, best of all, better control the light path.
In my testing, the Home 10 does a very nice job, especially for such an affordable projector, of balancing light and color temperature across the entire image. For example, my test unit had better than 90 percent brightness uniformity across the entire image, something rare in value-oriented products. Color temperature was also fairly consistent, although the left side of the image from my test unit was about 1000° Kelvin hotter (toward blue) than the right side. A color temperature drop of more than 2000° K moving from white to dark gray means that shadow colors, including slightly obscured faces, will hint toward red, while sunlit faces lean toward blue. That's not ideal, but it's not terribly uncommon either, especially for the price.
Epson lists the Home 10's brightness at 1000 ANSI lumens, within 10 percent of what I measured (912 ANSI lumens). More important, the solid light balance means a consistent brightness across the entire image, which is likely plenty bright for a screening room where light is easily controllable. In fact, you'll probably even lower that brightness for darker screening rooms by switching to either Theatre or Theatre Black color mode, both of which lower light output to deepen blacks. Theatre and Theatre Black modes are also said to increase contrast, but in my experience, they ultimately decreased contrast by lowering brightness more than the black level. You'll get the higher lumens in either Dynamic or Living Room modes, which assume greater degrees of ambient light and, thus, the need to accentuate light and saturated color.
The onscreen menus of the Home 10 offer less than a professional might hope for. For example, there are only three presets — high, medium, and low — for adjusting color temperature and no individual RGB controls. That's not surprising for a product targeting the home user or for a product at such an affordable price. Epson does add a Fresh Tone slider control that moves those colors toward green and away from red or vice versa. Even more home-oriented, there is a Sleep Mode timer, presumably for those late-night movie screenings, and also a Child Lock (a simple press-and-hold delay for the power button that will discourage children more than it will unauthorized business usage).
Both the unit's top navigation controls and the remote have dedicated buttons for keystone correction, aspect ratio, and source, but not much else. The remote is very basic, lacking not only the typical presenter features, but also any dedicated video setup controls. Epson keeps it as simple as possible for the consumer, and that's one of the tradeoffs you have to accept for the price.
On the back panel, you'll find just the basics, although for a video projector rather than a data unit, that means direct component input (via three RCA inputs) rather than a conversion cable to 15-pin. The Home 10 also has S-Video, RCA composite, and a 15-pin RGB (by default). There's also a 9-pin RS-232 for external control, as well as a pair of RCA jacks for stereo that you should probably never use because there's no audio pass-through and only a 1W monaural speaker. Epson clearly (and rightly) expects users to supply better sound.
The PowerLite Home 10 is more about video, and the results are pretty good, with just a few caveats. Saturated color is very good. SMPTE bars are right where they should be, and skin tones are appropriately warm. However, the changing color temperature in the shadows, combined with the limited range of grayscale, leaves darker scenes a little unnatural.
The Home 10 features a shorter-than-normal throw lens in order to produce a large image in the confined space of a living room or small screening room, and that's nice. A bigger picture, however, ultimately exposes the limited native resolution of the Home 10 and rigid pixel grid of the LCD panels, even if you stand back from the image.
Still, none of that should be particularly surprising for a $1,300 home theater projector. Overall, it's hard not to appreciate the quality compared to the price class competition. The PowerLite Home 10 is currently the most affordable native widescreen projector out there, and if you're on a budget, there's plenty of value here.
Jeff Sauer is a freelance video producer and industry consultant. Reach him at jeff@dtvgroup.com.
BOTTOM LINE
Company: Epson America, Inc.
Long Beach, Calif.; (800) 873-7766
www.epson.com
Product: PowerLite Home 10 home-cinema projector
Assets: Solid color, good attention to detail, quiet.
Caveats: Low native resolution, lack of professional de-interlacing.
Applications: Home theater, screening rooms, small video/movie venues.
Price: $1,299
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