6500UB Advanced Setup and Calibration

Anyone who has used an Epson Home or Pro Cinema projector before will recognize the familiar interface. Because of that I will direct you to our review of the Epson Pro Cinema 810 review for a more thorough breakdown of the individual menu functions. That's not to say that the menu is identical. Epson has split the Picture menu into an Image and Signal menu. The Image menu handles your Brightness, Contrast, Color controls and even the lamp settings while the Signal menu deals with aspect ratio and Frame Interpolation.

Speaking of Frame Interpolation, Epson is in the same boat as everyone else I've seen implement this technology to-date - it's not ready for prime time, but it does make casual footage look like live HDTV. It will, for example, take a standard definition DVD and give it a much clearer picture (almost mimicking high definition) - solely because of the way it adds interpolated image information between the existing frames. The result is a really hyper-clear image that looks very much like live high definition television. It's so stunning, in fact, that it completely lifts you away from the film look and into uncharted territory that is still up for debate. Is it better? Is it too clear? Does it ruin the movie watching experience? Does it add more depth to the picture? These are all things you'll need to explore and decide for yourself. One thing we will tell you is that Epson's Frame Interpolation isn't able to handle fast moving video and pans. The on-screen image will artifact and the overall effect really turns me off from wanting to use this mode on a regular basis (I left it off for most of my time with the projector except to demo it to friends and family). It also completely fails with mixed media (video overlays on film footage) and produces jaggie artifacts on motion footage that won't appear when Interpolation is set to Off.

You need to know that the Epson 6500UB comes with Frame Interpolation set to Normal by default. In Normal (and Low) mode the projector uses a 60Hz playback frequency, but applies ample video processing to create a more detailed image on-screen. In High mode the projector switches to 120Hz and applies full frame interpolation to generate the cleanest image possible.

What we did find interesting was the 4:4 pull-down mode which converts the playback frequency to 96Hz, eliminating judder by taking 24fps and display each frame four times. While designed to eliminate the need for judder-inducing 2:3 pull down, the mode seems to work very well on straight up 1080p/24 content, but creates tearing on mixed media (video overlaid on film content). 4:4 is also not compatible when the projector is in the x.v.Color mode. The 4:4 mode indeed made Blu-ray movies flow better, eliminating the slight stutter induced from the natural conversion from 24 fps to 30 fps video. It was, however, debatable as to whether it made the image better… it may be that I'm just too used to judder.

Calibration and Initial Settings

There are some initial settings you'll need to know about to get the best possible performance from the Epson 6500UB. First off, the HDMI Range settings needs to be placed into Expanded mode in order to see Blacker than Black (below black) signals. Doing this will enable you to receive the maximum dynamic range from DVDs and Blu-ray sources and also calibrate Black to the perfect level. In setting Brightness we noticed that the 6500UB is subject to average picture level (APL) affecting the black level. This means you may have to go back and forth somewhat to get the best settings for you room. We ended up, in Theatre Black 1 mode, with a Brightness setting of -9 and a Contrast setting of 11.

Sharpness should remain at 0 as anything above creates edge artifacts, and anything below actually blurs the image. If you are looking to diffuse your on-screen image, perhaps to compensate for distance, we recommend using the focus on the lens rather than the Sharpness setting.

We utilized SpecraCal's CalMan software (v3.3 for anyone keeping score) and an X-Rite EyeOne Pro meter which we made sure to re-initialize every 15 minutes or so. This is a great combination for reviewing front projection LCD systems (or just about anything else for that matter). Our initial readings were revealing and showed us that the Epson Home Cinema 6500UB was a fair performer out of the box, providing you select the correct Color Mode. Our base readings looked pretty good, but we were able to make significant improvements after calibration:

RGB grayscale tracking before (left) and after (right) calibration

 
CIE Color Gamut before (left) and after (right)

 
Gamma RGB before (left) and after (right)

Overall what we saw was a pronounced Blue that was balanced out by a lower Green level that was consistent throughout the entire luminance range. This equated to a fairly accurate color temperature (6575K) but at the expense of perfect color accuracy. In evaluating the color temperatures and light output of the system out of the box, we measured the following at 80 IRE (light output was measured at 100 IRE):

• Dynamic - 6600K, 47 fL
• Living Room - 8150K, 39 fL
• Natural - 6430K, 17 fL
• Theatre - 7450K, 16 fL
• Theatre Black 1 - 6575K, 13 fL (calibrated)
• Theater Black 2 - 6450K, 15 fL
• x.v.Color - 6550K, 15 fL

I would highly recommend the use of Theater Black 1 mode for those with light-controlled rooms. In this mode we left Epson Super White to 'Off' and HDMI Video Range to Expanded. If you don't have a light-controlled room, try the Living Room mode, but dial back some of the Blue by dipping the Abs. Color Temperature control down to 7000K or 7500K. Disabling the Auto Iris allows more output and opens up the lens fully during darker scenes. After calibration we got the Delta E for grayscale down to an average of 1.5 across the board - far below the threshold of our visual acuity. As for color, we got every color (RGBCMY) below 3 (most below 1) with the exception of Blue which we could not reign in below 10. Visually, we couldn't complain about our Blue color response, but it's worth noting.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 6500UB Benchmark Score: 105 (excellent)

Spears & Munsil Cadence Tests
We really like the Spears and Munsil Blu-ray test disc as it provides a secondary source for testing some of the cadences and motion artifacts that we look for in video processors.

*The projector was sent a 480i signal via HDMI from a Denon DVD-3930CI.

Comments on Bench Testing

The Epson Home Cinema 6500UB tested very well. It exhibited excellent contrast, above average color reproduction and very fine detail. As a high definition video processing device and scaler it is extremely adept at taking standard definition video and processing it to produce a jaggie-free image with excellent noise reduction and precise motion deinterlacing. I would heartily recommend this projector for use with pretty much any video source. While a calibration is almost always beneficial (and thus recommended), we were very pleased with its out of the box performance.