Epson Home Cinema 5010 Projector - Performance 2

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Art Feierman

Epson Home Cinema 5010 3D Brightness

Expanding on our comments from the first page, this Epson, by Mike's measurements, is the brightest projector yet, in a 3D mode. We don't have a good measurement system, to determine brightness back to the eye (factoring glasses, etc.) and we have no 3D test disk, but we have a work around. Problem is, glasses, black frames, overlap, affect brightness. Mostly, therefore, my assessments are subjective, but I do get to view projectors side by side, which truly helps. So, here goes:

I watched the Epson Home Cinema 5010 and the Panasonic PT-AE7000 side by side, in 3D (works with either the Panasonic or Epson glasses). I favor the Epson glasses for comfort, but that's me. Note, we currently have brought in about a dozen pair of 3D glasses to see which work on the Epson/Panasonic/others glasses consortium. We'll let you know which are cross compatible.

Finally we're getting some projectors that can, in 3D, give you almost as much brightness as a typical projector in a 2D theater. While the Epson measures a bit higher than the Panasonic, measuring light to the screen (not compensating for glasses, black frames), they pretty much look the same brightness. As I had them set up, I'd say a tie. In both cases, Mike "tweaked" the projectors, sacrificing a few or a few hundred lumens to improve the color of that "brightest" mode. (We're not trying to match "best" mode, that would end up the same, given a good management system.)

The Epson was down to a mere 1660 lumens at that point, but, in fairness produced a bit better color than the Panasonic provided, even with Mike's similar "quick-cal" effort with the PT-AE7000. If you use the default Dynamic mode settings on both, the Epson has a slight edge in brightness.

For most of my use, I prefered to watch using the slightly adjusted 3D Dynamic mode to the 3D Cinema. This was strictly a matter of brightness. And I gladly give up the couple hundred lumens for the improvements Mike came up with.

For my viewing, I kept my screen size at least 98" diagonal (the actual 16:9 diagonal of my 2.35:1 screen). I actually watched movies all the way up to 124" 2.35:1. My take is that the Epson was well brighter on the larger screen, than last year's LCoS projectors could do on an average 100" screen. The measured numbers would support that.

Switch to 3D Cinema, though, and then I'm working with only mid-six hundreds lumens to start, rather than. 1600+.

If you're running a small screen, say 92" or less. then you can have the brightness to take advantage of 3D Cinema's better color. That is just what I kept saying with all the LCoS projectors with 3D. Enough brightness to do a decent job in a normal, but under 100" diagonal screen.

3D Dynamic works out just fine for my 3D viewing. Interestingly the Epson, even in 3D Cinema is still brighter than the maximum lumens we got out of JVC's RS60 last year.

None of our friends checking out the latest 3D and trying out the glasses, preferred the 3D Cinema mode - as expected, They all favored the more than twice as bright 3D Dynamic. That's just like Best Buy, where the brightest LCDTVs on display have a tendency to sell a lot better.

Enough: The bottom line, is so far, this is as bright as it gets around here, and enough to let you watch 3D movies and other 3D content, at about the same brightness as is normal for 2D movies, on screens larger than 100". Oh the color won't be as good, but if you are like me, you'll be blown away with the 3D, regardless.