Epson Home Cinema 5030UB Projector Review - Performance 2

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Art Feierman

Epson Home Cinema 5030UB Projector Review - Performance 2: Lumen Output, Pre-Calibration Color temp: THX, Post Calibration, Best Mode User 1 (based on THX), 3D Brightness

Lumen Output (Eco Lamp, Dynamic): 1159

That's about a 29% drop, and that's the same percentage we saw last year for the 5020 UB. That much drop will be consistent from mode to mode. The year before, we measured 32%. Considering margin of error, let's call it an even 30% drop for Eco mode. Note that in THX and Cinema mode, Normal is actually low power which is called Eco on the other modes. For those modes, full power is called Extra Bright. Go figure! One thing that reminds me of. Expect low power modes to be cooler - less red, and therefore calibrate differently. Since we provide our subscribers our settings which in this case are done at full power, if you are paying a calibrator, why not have them do low power - aka Normal, so you have two sets of numbers to work with.

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Pre-Calibration Color temp: THX

Pre-Calibration Color temp: THX
30 IRE	7164
50 IRE	7170
80 IRE	7172
100 IRE	7172

Post Calibration, Best Mode User 1 (based on THX)

Calibrated color temps, 20 – 100 IRE:
20 IRE	6726
30 IRE	6646
40 IRE	6661
50 IRE	6666
60 IRE	6582
70 IRE	6484
80 IRE	6522
90 IRE	6449
100 IRE	6413

Average gamma = 2.20

Post Calibration the Home Cinema's grayscale looks very good. As you can see in the numbers above the temp stays nicely close to the target 6500K. Only in the darkest range does it miss by slightly more than 200K. Nice!

3D Brightness

We don't try to measure 3D brightest, instead you are stuck with my subjective comments. Using the 3D Dynamic, I find movie watching filling my 2.35:1 wide screen to be adequate in 3D. I'd like brighter but I find it watchable. Reduce the image size to about 100" diagonal and it is reasonably bright. Oh, not bright by 2D standards, but bright enough to be significantly brighter than a lot of the 3D theaters at your local megaplex.

I use Epson's menus to view with the the Low or Medium glasses settings for minimal crosstalk. High is brighter still, but I find the crosstalk to be annoying in that setting. Your results may vary.