Epson Home Cinema 700 Special Features

Posted on April 19, 2009 by Art Feierman

Projector Lamp Life

The Epson Home Cinema 700 offers one of the longest lamp life ratings around. While a rare projector or two have claimed up to 5000 hours in low lamp (eco) mode, even most of those only claim 2000 hours with lamp at full brightness. The typical projector claims 2000 hours at full power, and 3000 in low lamp, compared to the Home Cinema 700 projector's 3000 hour claim at full power, and 4000 hours in low power. The replacement lamp is also less expensive than for most projectors. Epson shows a list price of $249 for the lamp, while most lamps are $300 - $400.

This means that your long term cost of operation will be significantly lower for the Home Cinema 700, than most competing projectors.

Doubles as a Widescreen Business Projector

Click to enlarge. So close. The HC700 has a combination of small size and light weight, plus support for 1280x800 resolution (the most popular for widescreen laptops), as well as a wide range of other resolutions, all the way up to UXGA (1600x1200). In addition, its brightness is similar to most entry level business projectors (typically 2000 - 2500 lumens). That does make the Home Cinema 700 bright enough to be a dual use projector.

Click Image to Enlarge

Audio Built In

Finding a speaker on a home theater projector is truly a rarity. It occurs to me that BenQ has offered a speaker on a couple of models, but generally, home theater projectors (other than, of course, all-in-one projectors) come without audio. One of the Optoma entry level projectors also has a small speaker if I recall correctly.

Having the audio on the Home Cinema 700 can be handy, especially if you plan on moving the projector to different locations. True, it's not overly powerful, nor will it have hi-fi sound, but, in a pinch it can provide you with sound, while playing a game console, or even to watch some TV, in a room without an audio setup (including your backyard).

SD Card Slot

You see these card slots showing up on some LCDTVs these days. It's great to be able to just pull the memory card out of your digital camera, shove it in a projector (or LCDTV) and view your photos. It certainly isn't practical for those with projectors that are ceiling mounted or mounted high on a rear shelf. This Epson though is mostly going to be on a table top, and that makes the card slot easy to access. It is located on the rear, to the far left, so separated from the various cables that will be hooked up. If your memory card isn't an SD type, you can always get an adapter, for, typically $5 to $20. The Epson even has a slide show feature for viewing those photos.

USB Input

This deals mostly with using the Home Cinema 700 as a business projector. You can feed it your computer signal though the USB port instead of having to use an analog computer input or HDMI. Actually, if you want to surf the web in your home, you can use the USB the same way in your home environment.