First some unboxing shots
It looks so innocent in it's cardboard box. Sure, the box is big, but it cannot possibly take up all of the space inside.
Correction. Yes it can. This thing is HUGE! I knew it's measurements beforehand and still I am surprised by the size. I've laid out everything that comes in the box. Safety info (yellow paper), remote, manuals on a CD, power cable and a quickguide (only drawings - no words).
Here it is in all it's unpacked glory
. I don't know why but for some reason I had read the official measurements wrong and therefore assumed that the pj was more deep than wide. I bought the shelf for the mount today. Luckily it will still fit on it. As you can see, the front air went is quite large. Unsurprisingly the air blowing out from it is very warm. It's directed so it goes out at an angle away from the lens.
A closeup seen from above. My old panny had the lens shift on the front - a single joystick. The Epson instead has two dials (vertical/horisontal). Much more precise and easy to use... if you are table mounting it or on a mount with the projector hanging upside down. It will be interesting to operate with my mount when it's finished. Table mounted on a high shelf using maximum lens shift. Yikes! At the top of the image you can almost see the two warning LEDs for lamp and temperature.
The back of the beast. It pretty much speaks for itself, but here's the rundown from left to right: 2x HDMI, Component, Svideo, Composite, VGA, Controll-port, and a trigger. Here we also see the second went on the machine (there are no side wents). I've only had the projector running for under two hours but in contrast with the front went you can hardly feel any air coming out of it and it's not even lukewarm. The days of needing plenty of space at the back for letting hot air dissipate are over.
It lives! :-D. Finally I get to fire it up. As you can see, the image is not filling out my image area on the wall. That will wait until I can mount it further back. Right now I think the size is around 100". The Warner logo is in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio though so it looks even smaller. In the next images, the size is easier to judge. Notice that I've shot the photos in widescreen format - it seemed fitting ;-)
I chose the opening shot from The Dark Knight (Blu-Ray) because it has so much fine detail. With a pj so much brighter than the old one, the drawbacks of using a painted wall (ordinary cheap white paint) instead of a real screen has never been more clear to me. It's probably not easy to see from the photos but I can clearly see that the black levels would be even better on a proper canvas. The colours and sharpness does look a lot better in real life than the images. My camera is to blame - the colours look fantastic even on a plain wall. It's also the camera making the lower edges look as if they are slightly bending (I'm taking pictures sitting down).
I really like this image. Notice the fine details in the clown's hair and the scratches to the mask.
All of the images are shot while using the colour mode "living room". I haven't gotten around to playing with the others yet. But as the default mode in use when you turn on the projector it seems like an excellent choice. I haven't calibrated the image at all yet.
A good range of colours in the same shot. This scene looks simply fantastic projected onto 100" of wall. I salivate at the thought of seing it on a canvas.
Boom, baby! The car chase scene looks fantastic. Much better black levels than on my Panny AE900. very difficult to see from the photos though.
And now for something completely different. The Blu-ray of Baraka is perfect demo material. It's in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, so there are black bars at the top/bottom. All the following images are from Baraka.
Quite a loot of colour is missing from this photo compared with what my eyes saw. If you think it looks good now... well, then you won't be dissappointed when you see the real thing
I haven't even tried out eco mode yet, so I thought something green would placate the environmentalists ;-). Jokes aside, I thought it was marvelously quiet in normal mode. Looking forward to hearing it being EVEN quieter.
That wonderfuld 1080p resolution really helps with material with so much detail as this.
And here is the last image for today (it's 02:30). Ain't it lovely
I will post some comparison shots from the exact same scenes when I get my screen in the next couple of weeks. Should be extremely interesting to see how much difference it makes.