1080UB Bench Testing and Convergence

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Epson PowerLite Pro Cinema 1080UB Benchmark Score: 95 (an overall great performer where it counts)

*We fed the unit 480i HDMI output from a Denon DVD-3930CI **There was some panel blurring.

Comments on Bench Testing

The Pro Cinema 1080UB mimicked the former Pro Cinema 1080 except that it passed the Film Detail test this go-around. I noticed a tiny bit of smearing on the Motion adaptive Noise Reduction test, though after comparing to a source component I was familiar with, I chalked up a majority of the slight blurring as the fault of the LCD panel. This was the reason it didn't fail. With this projector you're going to get a great picture, even if you are feeding it interlaced standard definition.

Quality Control Issues - Convergence

You may have heard a bit about the convergence issues associated with the 1080UB series. What I'm not certain of is how many people would be concerned if they had never heard about it in the first place. Nevertheless, the issue centers around the correct alignment of the three LCD panels and how that translates into the projectors ability to clearly produce the image pixels on the screen. In my first sample (yes I got nailed with it as well) my projector was far enough off that I could notice a slight reddish hue at the lower right of my screen and a slight green tinge at the center when putting up a test pattern grid. While I didn't notice the convergence issue on normal viewing material, it bugged me enough that I had Epson send me a replacement - and the replacement, while not absolutely perfect, was likely within tolerance. If DLP gets wind of this, you can count on press releases all over the place about how single chip DLP systems don't suffer from convergence problems…

Here's what the convergence issue looks like:

To me this was a bit too much to accept for the price. Epson has reportedly gotten a bit better in the QC department since this became a very public issue earlier this year.

And we would be lax if we didn't link to the AVS Forum thread that discusses some of the issues and provides user pics of what to look for.