Choosing between Epson 8350, 3010 or 8700UB

I'm having a hard time pulling the trigger on a projector. I was looking at the Epson 8350, 3010 or 8700UB. My HT will be in a 12x19x9 room and during the day there will be some ambient light (for now). I am planning on having a 110" or larger screen that will be mounted 18" from the ceiling and 35" up from the floor.

My main purpose will be for movies during the evening where there will be no ambient light, but I would also like to have the option of daytime viewing mainly on my Sunday afternoon football games and do not want to have all the lights out just to watch football if friends and guest are over. It seems the more I read on these forums about any of those three the more I am getting confused which one would be the best for my application!??!

3D is not a huge "thing" for me right now but my AV is 3D pass through so looking into it for now.

My plan as of right now seeing how the 8350 and the 3010 are in stock at my local BB is to go pick up the 3010 "try it out" and return it for the 8350 if it doesnt meet my expectations and if the 8350 doesnt give me enough of the blacks I can always take it back and get the 8700 from another source. I watched a video with Art Feierman (which I cannot post on here yet..too new of a AVforum user) with the 8700 and must say super impressed seeing how towards the end of it all the lights come on and the picture is still very acceptable.

WOW the 3010 is bright! It is being thrown up against a light beige wall of sheet rock that has Spackle all over it from about 14 feet away and I can not believe how great of a picture out of the box this thing has, I thought I would have to mess with the calibration to get a good picture, not the case at all, the only calibration it needed was zoom in/out and focus and maybe need to wear some shades with it until I get my walls and ceiling painted.

Oh and now that the wife has seen what the potential of the room can be...good bye 110" Hello much bigger screen! I was using a measuring tape and reduced the image to a 96x54 so she could see about what we would be watching, after hearing her say "oh I thought it would be alot bigger than that" hit the zoom and away we go .. zoomed that baby till the entire 12 foot wall was covered (minus the 21" that are taken up in the right corner of the room) so now its time to remeasure what size screen I can get with about 115" length working area this will slightly offset the "center" of the room by about 7 inches. I am off to measure and go gets the parts for the Monkey_Man mount.

LOL, yeah in this case I am super glad to hear it and couldnt agree more. For anyone that might hear those horrible words for a different issue I hear there is a pill for that.... lol

Just a reminder to all set your clocks back an hour!! I finally got my 3010 mounted using Monkey_Mans technique....3 hardware stores and $52 (with military discount) later it is up on the ceiling the floor flanges were the most expensive and I recycled some old wood I had for the bases. I went with a 24 inch steel pipe seeing how the epson "instructions" say to get the lens level with the top and bottom of the screen. I am guessing I did something wrong because the image is way too low now, I am going to replace the 24" pipe with an 18" tomorrow...Monkey_Man if you read this thanks a ton for that super easy ceiling mount as long as you can find those M4 threaded screws!! I bought 8 just in case I need 4 more in the future!

Seeing how there is no lens shift and I am pushing a 135 inch screen on a drywall plastered 12' wall and absolutely impressed with the image I am seeing without messing with any setting except to get it to project front ceiling and going through the image preset modes, liking the cinema mode most, living room and dynamic are uhmmm BRIGHT.... but when I or any one else in the house looks at it we all loo in awe and normally first words are WOW... btw once you ceiling mount it and change it to ceiling the auto setting is no longer available, guessing the light sensor is inactive now? Either way tomorrow off to BB to get a 3D blue ray player and try it out to see if 3D is something my family will enjoy or not... any suggestions at this point are not only welcomed but encourage... going super great so far!!

Last thoughts tonight...WHY havent I done this sooner??!!

Thanks Frogpond and YES this is the first projector.. I am still sorta itching for the 8350 or 8700UB but the 3D tonight might be a keeper!

Today I went and exchanged the 24" pipe for a 18" pipe now I am about 8 inches from top of ceiling ...MUCH better! Got a super deal on a 3D blue ray player and headed back home for the fun stuff.. Pulled HDMI cable through the wall along with speaker wires. I have the HDMI cable and Power cable running up through the 1 1/4 inch pipe of Monkey_Man design and looks super clean no cables anywhere but coming out the wall into the AVR. Fired up Lion King on 3D and the family loved it, didn't let them see the whole thing .. the Steelers are playing right now.. I actually enjoyed the beginning scene where the elephants are walking and my Polk Bass is booming making it "feel" like they are stepping closer to you. I have taken some before and after pics with a few screen shots but my camera does not show the quality my eyes are seeing so not sure if its worth posting any of them. If anyone thinks it might help them on their decision on the 3010 let me know I will be glad to post them!

If anyone knows what other good 3D glasses will work with the 3010 please let me know...got 5 kids and a 22 month old so the two pair that come with it are Wife's and Mine!!

Here is the "screen" with my son thats about 5'8" in front and one of the Monkey Man mount so far. Plan to bring the mount down and paint it either tonight after the football game or tomorrow.



Well guess I wont add pics...time to learn how to add pics now..

Retry with Pics

Few more... Picture quality isnt that good, got a new Atrix2 phone still trying to get used to the focus of it, guess I should have used a "real" camera

Havent checked the gaming out on it yet, the kids were begging to hook the 360 up to it for the Left for Dead tournament they have against each other. Might try it out this weekend but was sorta hoping to keep this to movie nights and sports viewing I have a feeling once they get the 360 in there it wont be coming out!

I played with the brightness and contrast setting on this last night during MNF and for anyone that is worried about it being too bright it can be toned down quite a bit. I ended up resetting everything to defaults for now seeing how its just fine as it was.

This 3010 has far exceeded my expectations so far and I have not heard anything from the iris as some others have so as of today I have no reason in my mind or eyes to take this back and try out the 8350 or 8700UB but still got 10 days to go!

Wow been a quick week and so far I dont see any reason why I would want to take the 3010 back for the 8350. I have the SilverScreen paint sitting and waiting on me to finish spreading joint compound on the wall to get to a smooth surface instead of the textured that it is currently on, then comes the Primer and finally the SS.

I changed the mount from an 18" pole to a 12" pole and now the center of the lens is 14 1/2" from the ceiling and have planned for the top of my "screen" to be at 9" from the ceiling and now the sides of the screen are even all the way down (MUCH BETTER) (the 18" pole had me too low and the bottom of the screen was bowed out when I had top aimed to about 8" from ceiling). I have adjusted the zoom so that we will be around 120" screen so there will be about 7" from edge of walls for framing.

I purchased my speakers yesterday to take advantage of the 7.2 capabilities of the Yamaha receiver. I am hoping the speakers I have selected will match well with each other, having to go with the Monitor 40s for fronts seeing how floor standing would not allow for the 120" screen. Any opinions of the speakers?

1 - Polk PSW 505 Sub
4 - Polk RM 8 satellites
2 - Polk Monitor 40s for front left and right
1 - Polk RM8 Center
1 - Yamaha RX-V867 Receiver

Got the speakers in on Tuesday and rushed home to get them all hooked up for a test run, no mounting yet just cables and moved them to the areas they will be in and cranked it up pretty loud, they are very clear and crisp was enjoying the blasting of bass and clarity of the music for about 5 minutes when I thought I heard my doorbell ring and confirmed that it was the doorbell when I turned the blasting down to find one of the kids had already opened the door and standing there is my new neighbor (we just moved in 3 weeks ago) in her robe with a disgruntled look on her face asking me to turn the bass down because her master bedroom is next to our house and she is trying to go to sleep and all she can hear is "boom" "boom" "boom". I thought it must be getting late or at least well after 10PM but when I checked the clock it was only 945pm...So now I am tasked with another project of sound proofing the wall between our houses, I am guessing some quiterock over the existing sheet rock should do the trick, hoping so anyway. If anyone is wondering about the Polk Audio PSW 505 Sub I can attest it is fully capable of upsetting your neighbors!!

I have the "screen" almost finished on my 4th application of compound to smooth out the old textured wall and its coming out very nice, tonight I will finish the few spots that need touched up and hopefully have time to sand it smooth and get some primer on it early tomorrow. We did watch Thursday night football on just the wall with the dried joint compound last night and even with just that the picture was still amazing so I am really looking forward to how its going to look with the silver screen up.

If anyone has any suggestions on soundproofing a wall between neighboring homes they are much appreciated!!

If your sanding joint compound from the drywall it is a good idea to cover everything you dont want COVERED in dust... wow I did not think it was going to be that bad and didnt cover the things in the back of the room and the dust got EVERYWHERE!!

The Silver Screen from Behr makes a huge difference in the black levels. I ended up getting to compare it to the white primer by accident, I was 3/4 of the way finished with the 1st coat when the baby woke up so went to get him and about an hour later came back to finish the painting and figured now would be a good time to "see" the difference. To me the Colors were much brighter on just the primer but the contrast and the darker blacks won me over quickly even though the colors were not as bright on the Silver screen the difference in the contrast made them look better, my wife had a different opinion she preferred just the white of the primer instead of the darker blacks and higher contrast...so I made sure to finish that last 1/4 and get a really good second coat up there.

We watched Sunday Night Football and she thought the Giants uniforms had a purple look to them. I thought they looked blue and called the kids in for their opinions and all of them said it looked blue also, after the game we watched Captain America and there was no complaints at all from anyone... Amazing how better the "screen" is now...thanks for those that suggested the silver screen paint!!

Pretty serious seeing how my work shift makes my average movie start time around 10PM and our HOA has a nice neighbor policy.

The wall in question is an outside wall (that supposedly has insulation in it) then we have about 15-20 feet of yard before the neighbors house (another outside wall) which according to her is their master bedroom and the have the bed against that wall. So the sub is about 8ft away from my inside wall figure the drywall, the insulation, the outside board then the concrete siding of my house the 15-20 foot of space then her concrete siding, outside board, insulation then drywall and into their master bedroom.

In my room there are 3 windows which I would think is the main culprit of the leakage of the low frequency, we are planning on blacking those out but now I am considering blacking them out, insulating, then putting up quiet rock along that wall on top of the drywall that is currently there, supposedly the quiet rock will lower the sound up to 40db..

Fortunately we have just started converting this room so making wall changes will not be a big issue seeing how we haven't done more than mount the projector and paint the silver screen.

Any opinions on the quiet rock?

Glad you are enjoying your 3010 as well, at first I thought the 3D was going to be a gimmick for my family also but once we got it up and turned on 5 minutes into Lion King on 3D we were all sold, the wife and I watched Pirates of the Caribbean, On Stranger Tides in 3D last night and absolutely SOLD on it now!

I need to get 6 more pair of glasses...anyone know which ones besides the big Epson ones would work with this?

I havent done any calibrations on the 3010 yet seeing how what I see now with the silver screen paint on the wall is excellent to me.. the only issue I have found was last night I went to turn the volume up towards the beginning of the movie and it would turn the 3D off so after I turned it back on turned the volume back down and it turned it off again, not sure if my receiver is passing a signal thru the HDMI cable that the projector is taking as the same as 3D on off signal or what, this didnt happen if I paused or FF/RR the movie, just volume from my AVR.. havent heard if anyone else has this issue yet.