Epson MovieMate 25 Projector Review - General Performance

Posted on April 9, 2006 by Art Feierman

The MovieMate 25, being an all-in-one, has more non-image related items to consider than a typical projector. Also, as an all-in-one, it is not a product for performance purists, so we aren't considering things like calibrating the projector,(even if this projector allowed for the kind of calibration that stand alone projectors have the controls for. This section is mostly complete. Some extra material will be added in the next week, and the list of performance catagories immediately below will have live links to the actual details.

Menus

As you may suspect from the statement above, there are few image controls. In fact, they are limited to brightness, contrast and color saturation. In addition, with NTSC signals (the lowest quality), you also get a basic tint control, like the one you would find on a standard TV.

Epson MovieMate 25 Menus SlideShow

Remote Control

The MovieMate 25's remote has to not only control the projector image, but the DVD player and all the sound functions of a surround system, so its no wonder there are tons of buttons on the remote.

Between the Power button and the DVD player's door Open/Close is a slide for choosing between the next grouping of buttons operating in normal function mode, or you can switch to numeric mode. Numeric mode can be used for things such as selecting a particular track on a movie or CD. Some of the functions in function mode include toggling between On Screen options, sleep settings aspec ratios, and the colormode button which selects which Preset mode you want. Others control the brightness of the light on the DVD's display... Mostly you will leave the remote in the function mode.

There's a source button for choosing between the DVD player and the S-video and composite inputs. The break button is perfect for the phone ringing. Hit it, and the projector lights up the room by replacing the image you were viewing with a white screen, a very nice touch.

Also important, next to that is the Image Off/On. If you just want to play music on the MovieMate, this will turn off the lamp. Epson has set this up so that, unlike normal projectors it only takes a couple of seconds for the lamp to come on. With most projectors when first firing up the lamp, you need about a half minute before you have an image, and they don't normally give you a means to turn off the lamp, without shutting down the projector.

Next come DVD controls, and then the main menu buttons, arrow keys and enter button.

Audio is next with a treble control, mute and volume control (up/down).

Finally, there is Audio button, a subtitle button, and the DVD Angle.

At the very bottom is the Info button and Visual adjust. We have already shown images of Info above, and the Visual Adjust toggles betwen brightness, contrast and saturation. Two arrow keys to adjust those, finish off the remote's controls.

Unfortunately the remote is not backlit. True, the keys are "glow in the dark" types, but I found them (like most similar ones) to not glow bright enough to do the job. If you are watching movies in a fully darkened room, you'll just have to operate the remote by "braille" - basically learning by feel, where the controls you want, are located.