Epson Home Cinema 8100 LCD Projector Review

HC8100 Features & Specifications

The industry simply can't deliver brand new mind-blowing technological advances in projectors every year. This year, Epson is focusing on making strides in terms of value and bang-for-the-buck. Its Home Cinema 8100 projector has most of the features of the former Home Cinema 6500UB, but with a sticker price that is over $1000 less. It's also $2500 less than its THX certified big brother, the Pro Cinema 9500UB, yet it shares about 90% or more of the same technology. Indeed, 2010 may mark the year where consumers are spoiled on what to expect for their money. With excellent high lumen color reproduction and fantastic low level blacks, the 8100 is a steal at just under $1500.

For $1500 you should have reasonable expectation on what you'll get in a home theater projector. After all, there are plenty of models dropping in just below $1000 these days. The Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8100, however, delivers dual HDMI 1.3a inputs, flexible placement options through the use of lens shift, and a bright 200W lamp that outputs over 1800 lumens in our testing. Add to that HQV Realta-VX processing, a flexible 2.1x zoom lens, and its low noise output and you've got a product that makes a lot of the competition start to look average by comparison.

The new chassis is the same that is being used by all latest-generation Epson projectors in its Home and Pro Cinema line, including the 6100, 7100, 8100, 9100, 6500UB, 7500UB, 8500UB, and 9500UB. The only difference is that the Pro Cinema line is black and the Home Cinema line is white. For the most part, the Pro and Home models are directly correlated and near-identical save for CEDIA/Custom-channel features like ISF calibration features and spare bulbs (the 9500UB is also THX certified). The corresponding projectors are as follows:

• PowerLite Home Cinema 6100 is similar to the PowerLite Pro Cinema 7100
• PowerLite Home Cinema 8100 is similar to the PowerLite Pro Cinema 9100
• PowerLite Home Cinema 6500UB is similar to the PowerLite Pro Cinema 7500UB
• PowerLite Home Cinema 8500UB is similar to the PowerLite Pro Cinema 9500UB

In our opinion, there is little reason for the home user, who is looking for the best deal possible, to grab the Pro Cinema 9100, since the Home Cinema 8100 does 98% of the job for close to half the price (the Pro Cinema 9100 is around $2600). Custom installers, however, may want to push the 9100 since it has ISF calibration settings, which can be stored and locked away, as well as some other custom controls.

How Does it Compare to the Excellent Home Cinema 6500UB?

The Epson Home Cinema 6500UB was an excellent performer and received a solid 4/5 star rating when we reviewed it. What's happened since then isn't much, except for a hefty price drop. With the new 8100 model offering nearly the same features for over $1000 less money, you'll see that our value rating went up accordingly. The biggest differences were the lack of inorganic C2Fine panels and the change in the video processing. The 6500UB uses the HQV Reon-VX while the 8100 scores somewhat lower with a more mainstream processor. We set up a quick grid to outline the differences:

If you're expecting huge differences here, you won't see them. The UB (Ultra Black) designation, of course, typically signifies Epson's C2Fine inorganic panels and an advanced iris system. For the savings, the 8100 isn't a bad deal in that it offers much of the same performance.

HC8100 Set Up and Remote

We mounted the Epson 8100 to our Peerless PRG-UNV Precision Gear universal projector mount using its four screw anchor points. I like that this projector has four mounting points. All projectors should, though it often seems like the heaviest ones are the ones that choose to go with just three – go figure. We again leveled the projector by using a simple torpedo level which we placed atop the projector to square it to the screen and apply the manual Zoom and Focus. The 8100 had the same Fujinon 2.1:1 lens that exists across the entire lineup and it produced a flawless 92-inch picture on our Carada Masquerade masking projector screen. Since the Epson has a 96% vertical and 47% horizontal lens shift, you can place it just about anywhere and hit a screen without having to resort to keystoning (which is good, because the 8100 doesn't have any).

The Color modes are the same as with the 6500UB and we really liked that the Dynamic mode delivers much better color than one would expect. Epson has done away with the typical green tinge you will find on most other Vivid or High output modes.

• Dynamic - The image appeared bright, but not nasty green like many other projectors. Epson did a great job keeping the color in line while increasing output to its maximum potential. With some minor calibration this can actually be an excellent Daytime mode for regular use.
  
• Living Room – This mode isn't as profoundly bright as the Dynamic mode, but offers a bit more boost with the lamp in Normal mode.
  
• Natural - This is a your best bet for rooms with little ambient light where you'd still like to maintain some semblance of Black level. Color temp is set to 6500K. I actually preferred this mode to Theater mode.
  
• Theatre - This mode also uses the projector's "High" Brightness control but sets the color temp up at 7500K for a brighter, more "white" (Blue) white.
  
• Theatre Black 1 - This is the recommended starting point for a fully light-controlled room. It sets the Brightness Control to Low and puts the color temperature to 6500K. This is where you'll want to begin calibrating the projector for your home theater.
  
• Theatre Black 2 – I recommend using this mode to tweak your black and white movie playback – if you care about such things. It's always nice to have a mode with a bit more red to simulate the way old projector houses used to show them (with warmer bulb temperatures).
  
• x.v.Color - This mode locks out most color adjustment controls and opens up the color depth to the larger "Deep Color" color space. It's not "accurate" to ATSC CIE standards, but it can look nice.
  

Connections

The Epson Home Cinema 8100 projector has enough inputs to meet almost anyone's needs. Though you'll likely only use one, there are two HDMI inputs and a single component video (YpbPr) input, plus a composite and S-video input for legacy sources. It's nice to know that you don't need to step up to the Pro Cinema line to get RS-232 control and if you want, you can connect any PC to this projector and send it screen resolutions up to 1920x1080.

Remote Control

The remote control is unchanged and features the same, easy-to-use backlit functionality as prior models. This remote is excellent and delivers direct access to each of the projector's six inputs. You also continue to have direct access to such functions as Aspect (ratio), Memory, and Color Mode – which is nice for on-the-fly changes. The backlight is activated by a small button on the top right of the remote and remains on for approximately 10 seconds after the last button press.

This remote is backlit perfectly and easy to use in the dark

HC8100 Menu System and Calibration

The menu system hasn't changed much since we reviewed the Epson Pro Cinema 810 HQV and that review will give you a run-down of the various sections and subsections of the interface. Epson has done some minor maintenance and has renamed the Picture Menu to "Image" and the Image Menu to "Signal". Under this revised Image (Picture) menu you will now find that features like Skin Tone, Abs. Color Temp, Brightness and Contrast are no longer buried one level deeper into the "Input Adjustment" menu.

The Signal (Image) Menu now has direct access to 2-2 Pull-down settings, Motion Detection, and Progressive mode and the Settings menu has direct access to more advanced functions. Overall the menu system is much easier to navigate and has less depth in places where it isn't warranted.

Calibration and Initial Settings

Epson still has some boneheaded initial settings you'll need to change in order to get the best possible performance from most DVD or BD players. To begin with, 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 8100 is ill 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. This time around we ended up, in Theatre Black 1 mode, with a Brightness setting of -10 and a Contrast setting of 12. Sharpness is still best set at 0 to avoid creating edge artifacts (higher setting) or blurring the image (lower setting).

We utilized SpectraCal's CalMan software (v3.62) and an X-Rite EyeOne Pro meter which we kept properly initialized. For reviewing front projection LCD systems this is an excellent combination. We took a look at the before measurements and found the Epson Home Cinema 8100 to be increasingly "red" in its Theater Black 2 mode. While this caused us to begin in the Theater Black 1 mode, it was worth showing visually here to give users a peek into what the RGB grayscale looks like when an image is too warm.

RGB grayscale tracking before calibration (Theater Black 2 mode)...

...and RGB grayscale after calibration

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

Obviously, we noticed a pronounced Red in the image when we measured the default Theater Black 2 mode (pictured above). This is what caused us to investigate Theater Black 1 as our starting point and decide on that. This is pretty much the process you want to go through if you have the ability to measure color temperature at various points across the grayscale. Finding the best starting point can save you tons of hassle and time. For those who don't have access to measurement equipment, finding the best starting point can really be the difference between watching the movie as the director of photography and colorist intended, or watching it in some insane default mode that picks the color like Liza Minnelli selects husbands.

In measuring the color primaries and secondaries, it was apparent that Epson is pushing its Green output, possibly to achieve some higher light output. In any case, we could not dial it down to get it within ATSC color standards. This isn't to say that anything actually "looked" green, but it was something to note.

In Theater Black 1 mode we left Epson Super White to "Off" and set the 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. If you're throwing a party and can't lower the lights, feel free to toss it in Dynamic mode. Disabling the Auto Iris allows more output and opens up the lens fully during darker scenes, but we actually liked the Auto Iris mode and felt it was fast enough to do a good job at increasing perceived contrast. After calibration we got the Delta E variance for grayscale well below the threshold of our visual acuity. As for color, we got most colors (RGBCMY) below 3 (many below 1) with the notable exception of Green which we could not seem to reign in. Again, this didn't show up in our visual testing.

HC8100 Bench Tests

HQV Perfect Score is 130
Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8100 Benchmark Score: 105 (decent)

Source: Oppo BDP-83 @ 480i (HDMI)

HQV HD Perfect Score is 100
Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8100 Benchmark Score: 95 (very good)

Source: Oppo BDP-83 @ 1080i (HDMI)

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.

Source: Oppo BDP-83 @ 1080i (HDMI)

Comments on Bench Testing

This is a decent projector and can handle deinterlacing HD material (1080i) with no problems. For those sources (cable an satellite boxes) we'd recommend letting them hit your projector at 1080i or 720p as they are sourced  - the 8100 will do just fine. For standard definition material, we'd recommend the use of a great source that performs slightly better deinterlacing and jaggie reduction. While the Epson Home Cinema 8100 technically passed, it wasn't the smoothest we've seen.

HC8100 Viewing Evaluation and Conclusion

BD: 9
This movie was as amazing as the story that brought it to the big screen. The animation was lifelike and so full of minute detail, interesting backdrops and colorful foreground elements that it quickly rose to the top of my list for test material. In particular, we loved how the dark movie was punctuated by moments of bright, intense light. This will be excellent fodder for testing local dimming capabilities of newer LED backlit televisions. Fr now, it served as a means of testing the true dynamic range of our Epson Home Cinema 8100's 200W lamp and optical system. We really enjoyed the deep, rich blacks that this projector afforded. As I mentioned, the dynamic iris really was put to use on this film as it constantly dialed back the output during dimly lit sequences, and came back to fill the screen with light when the protagonists crept out into the open air.

Though not a "colorful" film, the colors were dazzlingly poignant when they hit the screen and had an incredible contrast to the normally dark, interior sequences.

BD: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
The Harry Potter movies continue to remain some of my favorite video go-to material when checking out the resolution in deep black content. It seems that each movie gets darker and more shadowy, and you can't get better material than that for testing the claims of LCD front projectors to support deep blacks. There is a scene where Harry is indoors and lights up his wand to illuminate the hallway. The glow from the wand was perfectly blended, with no banding or other anomalies, but more importantly, the contrasting black shadow behind him as he walked revealed a ton of room detail. I doubt you would have seen just a couple years ago in a projector priced this far under $2000. In another scene we get a closeup of Severus Snape and I could detect all of the detail in his face, though his head was positioned with dark storm clouds behind and just a touch of light from the front. These scenes abound and the Epson's dynamic iris was key in really bringing out the maximum amount of perceived contrast when watching a dark film like this.

BD: Terminator Salvation
There's not a ton to say about this film except that it has excellent detail and offered a lot of real world material to test the high definition performance of this projector. I especially loved the intense color prevalent in this film. It was similar to Transformers in that it had an ability to really punch out reds and blues in stark contrast to scenes that were nearly black and white. The juxtaposition of bold, vivid colors and dark, dimly lit scenes made for an amazing and pleasing  visual experience on the Epson Home Cinema 8100.

BD: Spears & Munsil Test Disc
We watched a lot of HDTV material on this projector, including shows like Lost and 24. Those are some excellent shows and they came off really well in our reference room. Another source we really liked was the test material present on the Spears and Munsil High Definition Benchmark disc. Some of this content is simply excellent for viewing the detail, noise reduction and even the 1080i deinterlacing abilities of a projector. Most of this material just looked awesome. 

Conclusion

Epson's been on a roll lately. With the Home Cinema 8100 projector, you are getting an awful lot of features from Epson's higher end products, but without the higher-priced bill that comes attached. Make no mistake, the 8100 has a lower end D7 panel (which is, as far as we can tell, organic), lacks the video processing capabilities of the UB line and... no actually, that's really about it.  Considering you can buy this projector and an excellent source like the Oppo BDP-80 Blu-ray player for less than the step up to a UB version, it's a wonder that many don't do just that. In terms of value, it's hard to find a better bargain and we liked that most of the color modes out of the box at least looked pleasing to the eye – even the Dynamic mode looks better than most. It's going to be very hard to beat the 8100 in terms of its blend of price and performance – you get a lot for your money.

Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8100 LCD Projector
MSRP: $1,499

Epson America, Inc.
One Epson Way
Secaucus, NJ 07094
www.epson.com

About Epson
Epson offers an extensive array of award-winning image capture and image output products for the consumer, business, photography, and graphic arts markets. The company is also a leading supplier of value-added point-of-sale (POS) printers and transaction terminals for the retail market. Founded in 1975, Epson America, Inc. is the U.S. affiliate of Japan-based Seiko Epson Corporation, a global manufacturer and supplier of high-quality technology products that meet customer demands for increased functionality, compactness, systems integration and energy efficiency. Epson America, Inc. is headquartered in Long Beach, Calif.

The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

• — Excellent
• — Very Good
• — Good
• — Fair
• — Poor

Metric	Rating
Detail and Resolution
Deinterlacing & Scaling
Contrast and Black Levels
Color Reproduction
Noise Reduction
Calibration Options
Build Quality
Ergonomics & Usability
Ease of Setup
Features
Remote Control
Fit and Finish
Performance
Value