Epson Home Cinema 5020 UB Projector - Physical Tour 2

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Art Feierman

Home Cinema 5020 Menus

The menu photos have been taken. This section will be finished in the first few days after the review posts.

I will say that Epson has done little to change the way their menus work in the last decade perhaps. Sure, there are more, and some different features (including "new" things like dynamic irises, and CFI), but the organization, and the "look and feel" remain unchanged. I really liked the Epson menus all the way back to when I started reviewing, and I haven't changed my mind. Overall, type is on the smaller side, but no problem, translucency of the menu is done well, there are two aesthetic choices for the menus color scheme. I used the default which is gray/black/white.

Below find almost all the major menus, as well as a number of sub-menus and other on screen displays.

Epson Home Cinema 5020 Remote Control

It's big, loaded with buttons, and identical to last year's. The Epson Home Cinema 5020's remote works rather well. A similar remote control is used for the lower cost Home Cinema 3020, but that one has a few less buttons, due to less features. I repeat my same objection to this remote, from last year:: Since it is a rather long remote, it would have been nicer to have the backlight button closer to where you would grip the remote for balance. Or, let any key light the remote! That, though covers the complaints, as range is very good, over 25 feet bouncing the IR off of my 1.3 gain Stewart Studiotek G3.

Click Image to Enlarge

Epson Home Cinema 5020 Lens Throw

Epson's 2.1:1 zoom ratio manual lens has been around for 6 generations of Epson Ultra Black (UB) projectors. It is a Fujinon lens, with exceptional zoom range, and overall very good quality, with lots of lens elements and groups.

As usual we report on the placement range to fill a 100 inch diagonal, 16:9 aspect ratio screen: The HC5020UB projector (measured from the front of the lens to the screen), can be as close as 9.8 feet or as far back as 20.9 feet. You can calculate distances for other screen sizes, by starting with those numbers. For example, if you are interested in a 120" diagonal screen, then multiply the 9.8 x 1.2 = 11.76 feet, and the furthest would be 20.9 x 1.2 = 25.08 feet.

Kapisch?

Home Cinema 5020 Lens Shift

This Epson has quite a bit of adjustable lens shift. For that same 100 inch screen, the Epson can be placed, (normal or inverted), anywhere from 22.7 inches above the top of that screen's surface, all the way down to 22.7 inches below the bottom of the screen surface. Measurements are calculated by measuring from center of the lens. There is also a good amount of horizontal lens shift. Using horizontal lens shift will partially limit the range of the vertical lens shift (and vice versa).

The combination of the wide range zoom lens, and excellent lens shift, makes ceiling mounting, or shelf mounting the Home Cinema 5020, practical, in almost any room situation.

Anamorphic Lens - Wide Screen

The Home Cinema 5020 does not support an anamorphic lens. (For the first few days after publishing this review, we incorrectly said it did support an anamorphic lens.

Of the three related projectors, only the Pro Cinema 6020 supports an anamorphic lens.