Epson 8500UB 200,000:1 CR - Page 8

The 6500ub is basically $2300 after the $400 rebate and $300 extra lamp. So I could see the 8500 coming in at $2400 ish.

The 8500 won't likely be shipping until December, but even then I doubt most local dealers will display it. When are you in the US?

Hi Jason, i will be in the US October 15 and staying until December 3.

Do you think i will be able to buy it?

thanks

Can anyone tell me if the 8500 will have motorized focus and lens shift?
Thank you.

No it will have manual focus and shift. I have no idea why Epson hasn't gone motorized yet, but this is not a deal breaker for me. It will all depend on the MSRP now that Panasonic has dropped its pricing bomb.

Any idea when the review will be out?

Very bad news for those ceiling mount projector 8ft up from floor !

A $5 step stool will solve that problem.

I don't see why it is a bad idea unless they want to use the zoom method for a 2.35:1 setup, then they should know the 8500 is not for them.

I can understand for corporate use, but for home use, my screen hasn't changed position in years.

As long as it contributes to a lower price, they can get rid of any convenience features they want. I'm still waiting for a company to offer the remote as an option to those of us with universals.

My big hope with this unit is brightness from 20' away. The current crop of Epson's dim too much at that distance for my needs (126"; 0.9 gain), but I'm dying to get rid of my Optoma - and never go back to that company again.

Yep, that's what I'm currently doing with my Mits 4900. The zoom method works well for me for both 16:9 and 2.35 viewing. I have the picture zoomed out as large as possible to fit my screen.
I have a 136" inch 16:9 screen which is great for gaming and HDTV viewing. When I put in a movie, I use the remote lens shift to lower the picture to the bottom of the screen to hide the lower black bar. Then I lower a black velvet masking screen down from the top over the top 1/3 of the screed to remove the top black bars and dead space created by lowering the picture. This gives me a great 120" wide 2.35 screen.
I get the best of both worlds this way and I don't have to leave my chair!
I'm still considering the 8500, but the motorized lens shift of the Panny 4000 may be the deciding factor.

You're quite right my friend. If that's what you do, it would be a PITA to do it manually with the Epson. Although the 8500 is expected to have better black levels than the panny, i think a PJ with motorized zoom/focus/shift will be better for you. Again i have no idea why Epson don't have motorized controls. And why they haven't done something like Panasonic with the lens memory!! (it's not like Panasonic patented the lens memory thing. did they?)

Sean.........

Do you really feel you get enough benefit from all that masking to make the effort worthwhile.... (silly question I suppose as you want to continue to do it)????

I also use a 135" diag. 16x9 screen but just show movies in the center of the screen...... I have never found the bars above and below the image to be a detriment to the movie... I don't really even notice that they are there and my InFocus 7210 is not known for black level... rather as a light cannon.

I have given some consideration to the whole 2.35/CIH scene, but to me it only seems worthwhile if the 2.35 image was significantly wider than my 16x9 image....... so I would need a screen/projector capable of doing CIH but maintaining at least my current 66" image height.

I have the 6500 and manually zoom out for 2.35...takes me 5 seconds.....

Lots of LAZY people here!

Do you have to refocus? If yes, every time or only rarely?

Hello HiHoStevo.
Yes, I do feel there are a few benefits making it worth while to go through the lens shift and masking prep when watching a 2.35 film.
First, it lowers the picture to a more pleasing viewing angle based on my seating. The lower picture also makes the film quite a bit more of an emersive experience.
Second, I find the black bars above and below the picture to be distracting. My HC4900 doesn't have the best black levels, so I'm always a bit too aware of the bars. Lowering the velvet masking allows me to focus solely on the movie image.
It only takes about 10 seconds to lens shift the image down and lower the top masking screen by remote control. I typically do all that even before the movie has booted up.

5 seconds to zoom out but you have to play with the len shift and the focus also?

Eric

Still no word on these? Arrival? Pricing?

Also, what is with the 4000 hours on the bulb...it says 4000 hours in either high or low setting....so is there no advantage to having the projector in low lamp mode? Will you get 6000 hours in low lamp?

I know the AE4000 is only rated for 2000 hours or 3000 in low lamp mode.

Hey guys,

have seen the new European TW5500 in comparison to the JVC HD750. Here's my report:

contrast:
If the dynamic iris had no artifacts, I'd say there's no big contrast difference between TW5500 and HD750. Unfortunately the dynamic iris can't do magic. E.g. in a test image from Star Wars the JVC was just a touch better. And when clicking around in the Casino Royale menu (with black background), I could see the black changing with the Epson. So the HD750 does have the edge in overall on/off contrast, but I found the difference to be surprisingly small. However, I have to say that the ceiling was white (rest of the room black). Eventually the HD750 would have pulled ahead more clearly with a full black room. Or maybe not. Interestingly the TW5500 did noticeably better in the Star Wars test image compared to last year's TW5000. It seems that the dynamic iris gamma manipulations were improved in this year's model. Furthermore the TW5500 got an additional fixed iris added to the lens, which is supposed to eat stray light. This is supposed to improve the intra scene contrast. The TW5500 ist still just as bright as the step down model TW4400 which doesn't have this fixed iris. The Epson guy guessed that the lamp was driven slightly harder in the TW5500 to make up for the light loss caused by the added fixed iris. But he wasn't 100% sure.

pixel structure / SDE:
At home I'm quite near to the screen. So I double checked how far away I have to be exactly to not notice the pixel structure with the Epson, anymore. Unfortunately I can't give you a simple number. With 1.0x (screen width = viewing distance) I could detect a faint raster in the clouds. Maybe with an even brighter image it would have been more evident. At home I'm about 1.15x. I guess, personally I'd probably have no problems with SDE at my viewing distance. However, different people have different eye sight and I want all of my guests to have a perfect experience, too. So a small amount of concern still remains. It's not a big problem, though, and if you sit more than 1.15x screen width away, there should be no problem at all (unless you have extremely good eye sight and are very picky). Of course with the JVC there is no problem in any case. With the HD750 the pixels also look perfectly square. With the Epson they look more like a plasma TV. Ok, not really, but they certainly don't look perfectly square.

brightness:
We projected one half of the screen with the TW5500, the other half with the JVC. Both in high lamp. Here the JVC was a bit brighter. However, the TW5500 in the light power mode (with a Europe only special external filter) would have been even brighter - but with imperfect colors.

colors:
Both the HD750 and the Epson can be calibrated quite nicely, AFAIK. The HD750 I've seen was carefully manually calibrated, the Epsons weren't. Consequently the JVC looked noticeably more natural to me in the split screen test. But that was not a fair comparison, of course, since (as I said) the Epsons weren't calibrated at all, but set to factory settings. Interestingly the TW5500 and TW4400 had noticeably different colors, although both were running with identical factory settings. Well, whatever...

frame interpolation:
I didn't have any personal experience with FI myself yet. So I first watched the Casino Royale scene with last year's TW5000. Yeah, I saw the artifacts. But honestly, I didn't find it *that* bad. However, the TW5500 didn't show any artifacts at all. But sometimes, when a new scene started, I think I've noticed a very slight judder. Ekki (cine4home) stated in his preview that the FI in the TW5500 prefers does nothing over introducing artifacts. So my guess is that sometimes when a new scene starts, the FI isn't totally sure what to do and thus deactives itself for a few frames. This would nicely explain what I believe to have seen. But I'm not really sure here. My impression was that the Blu-Ray player sometimes skipped a frame by itself or something. So the judder I think I saw might have come from that, too. Or maybe I just imagined it. Whatever. How shall I judge the FI? I'm quite unsure whether I'd use it for movies. With sports: Definitely. With movies? Probably not in the highest mode. Maybe in the normal or low setting. But I think I'd have to try watching a full movie with it turned to normal/low to be really sure about it.

super resolution:
The dealer was very excited about this feature. Personally, I found the images to look more natural (but also softer) with the feature turned off. Unfortunately we were not able to activate the normal or low settings. We could only use high or off (firmware not final yet). I don't think I would use the high setting. Sure, in some scenes such sharpening algorithms can show detail more clearly. But as I said, the images looked simply more natural to me with super resolution turned off. In two scenes I also could see strong edge enhancement with super resolution activated. One scene was the "Markusplatz" scene in Casino Royale. The other one a scene were James Bond (or was it his girl? don't remember) opened a laptop while sitting in some boat. I could see noticeable edge enhancement on the top of the laptop there. In both scenes there was no edge enhancement whatsoever with super resolution turned off. Maybe the normal or low settings would be more interesting for me. But I'm not really a big fan of sharpening algorithms, anyway. I simply prefer the more natural look, even if it's a bit softer.

noise:
Unfortunately I forgot to check the HD750's noise level. The TW5500 in high lamp mode is a bit more noisy than my Sony HW10, but I didn't find it too bad...

final judgement:
Taking price into consideration, the TW5500 absolutely is an alternative to the JVCs for me. However, if I compare the TW5500 to last year's TW5000, I don't see so much progress. The most important difference for me would be the improved gamma algorithm and the added fixed iris. Frame interpolation and super resolution are generally less interesting to me. But that's only my personal opinion, of course. Everybody has to decide for himself. Overall there doesn't seem to be much progress in 2009 with any company. Too bad. Maybe we'll get bigger improvements next year again?

A few additional nuggets from th Epson guy (since I don't remember his name, let me call him the "EG"):
(1) Laser light sources probably don't have much of a chance in Europe due to security concerns.
(2) LED will come sooner or later for Epson, too. However, it's too expensive right now. Also the blue LED is supposed to age faster than red and green, which is not a good thing, of course. The EG said that he doesn't anticipate Epson to use LED light sources for at least 2-3 more years (!!).
(3) LCD panel technology for projection seems to be at the end of the line. No big improvements in store for us, anymore. No 4k, either. Epson has already been working on their own LCOS panels for some years, though (!!). According to the EG LCOS could come in maybe 2 years from Epson. He believes Epson will bring LCOS projectors sooner than LED powered projectors!
(4) The lens memory functionality of the AE3000/4000 is not planned to be copied by Epson. The EG couldn't give me a good way to comfortably switch between cinemascope and 1,87:1 movies on my CIH screen, though, even though he tried. I hope that this made him reconsider his stance about lens memory...
(5) I asked about 4-panel technology (4th panel being used for brightness modulation). The EG said that the Epson devs had already done a statement about that technology. They said it would have advantages and disadvantages. Overall they decided not to use it for now. But the EG was not able to give me more details. He didn't seem to be 100% sure about what the Epson report about 4-panel technology really had said.
(6) According to the EG isn't not necessary to wait for 50 hours (or something) before calibrating the projector. He says you can calibrate the brand new projector. And you don't have to recalibrate after 500 or 1000 hours, either. Or even when you change the lamp.
(7) The EG says Epson projectors have a built in electronic which drives the lamps harder when they get older, so that there's no noticeable light drop over the age of the lamp. He said he doesn't know any other projector manufacturer doing this.
(8) The EG says the exact same lamps are also used in the business line of projectors and there they are driven much harder to output 3000-4000 lumens. In other words: The lamps are quite relaxed even in high lamp mode in the TW5500.

I hope this report was detailed enough for you guys...

Madashi,

Thank you very much for your thoughtful report. I appreciate you taking the time to fill us in! Your "nuggets" section at the end of your report is very interesting. Again, thanks for sharing!

Leffe67

Madashi

Wow, some very good information and great opnions. Thank you so much for your time and effort.

One question for you that maybe you have an answer for. I beieve the 5500 is spec'ed at 130,000:1 contrast were the US model 8500 is spec'ed at 200,000:1. Was that brought up at all? Is there a true difference between the two units or just marketing hype?

Also point 7 and 8 at the end of you post are exciting. If this is all tru I will be very happy. I have the 1080UB and it does not have this new lamp technology, so that will be a very welcome change.

Madashi,

Thank you for your time and effort.

You mention the Light Power Edition, which has always intrigued me... do you have any clue at all why they will only sell this filter in Europe?

Cannot imagine why there would be import/export restrictions on a lens filter....

Where's Guy Kuo when you need him? Why not experiment with your own filters? I'm using two external filters with the 7500 in Vivid mode - it makes a huge difference - very bright image, good colour and with great on/off contrast (for digital). If I upgrade to the 8500/9500 I'll continue to use these filters. I think these filters (the ones you're talking about) are sold only through a certain dealership in Europe and therefore are an exclusive, so why sell it anywhere else and lose the advantage. This doesn't stop others from experimenting and coming up with their own solutions and maybe even better ones. Seven or eight years ago some enterprising person on this forum would have found a filter solution for the Epson and begun marketing it here in North America and made some money. I remember Guy Kuo advising LT150 owners "to run not walk" to your local camera store and buy a Hoya filter. Now those were the days.

Yes Deja Vu........ people can experiment around and see what they come up with.

But my question is... WHY

Some very talented and experienced people in the field have already done this and come up with apparently a very workable solution.

So why is this solution only allowed to be sold in Europe?

I clearly remember just a few years ago where Epson would sell the same projector to the rest of the world except North America for 1/2 the price it charged here. Yes we got a different color and a ceiling mount but for twice the price.

Apparently there were finally enough complaints about this practice that Epson finally brought two versions of each projector to the North American market... one for mass sales and one for the custom install market. I don't think this lens issue is a hold-over from that era, but it certainly does cause frustration.

It is my "understanding" that this filter system was developed by Cine4Home, so why they cannot or will not market it here in North America is quite baffling and in my reading no one from Cine4Home has ever been willing to address the reasons for their marketing practice. From the deadening silence I have to believe that it is due to some type of agreement that they entered into with Epson...

I of course have no information, but I cannot fathom any reason for Cine4Home not marketing their solution more widely unless they had something much larger to lose by doing so.

I suspect it's all about control (and $). What if you could add $150 to $200 to the cost of the projector (your cost as the dealer being about $15.00) you sold by adding a specifically sized external filter as a value added feature which dramatically increased the performance? Would you want to ship it internationally and lose control over it. I'm surprised that the specific type of filter they're using hasn't already been made known by owners, unless they've signed some kind of nondisclosure agreement. It is probably a camera filter that takes out blue and green or one that adds red ( they've just had it customized to specifically fit the Epson). These camera filters cost about $35.00 (or used to). Who is going to buy their solution when you can do it yourself for much less cost? So, again I believe it's all about control and if you retain control you can make some money with it.

Madshi:

Did you get to see the FI in the new split screen mode with one half using FI and the other half not using it? If so, did you see a clear difference in sports?

I don't know how you could possibly have more control by only selling in Europe?

Someone can always "try" to copy another companies product, that happens all the time, but I cannot see how the concern about that is assuaged just be selling it in Europe. If people are going to try and copy their filter they can do that the minute just one is sold anywhere in the world.

A better approach if that was the concern would be to follow the example of Wal-Mart or Southwest Airlines....... Volume. If your cost is $15 and you can sell 5000 for $50 that is better than selling 200 for $100.

That way the price delta is small enough that it is not worth the effort of folks to copy things... (I have been preaching this at the DVD business for years).

I can only see it happening due to a restriction placed upon them by an external source (such as Epson) on whose good graces a portion of their business depends.

Just one guys opinion of course......

Recieved a call today from my local dealer informing me that the 8500ub will be shipping out on the 26th but still no price yet.

Would that be the 26th of October, November or December?

October. Projector central just got in the 8500ub and should have a review up next week. Looks like I will wait on ordering a 7500ub. Sucks since I was going to order tomorrow.