Epson Powerlight Home Cinema 1080 UB LCD Projector

Introduction

The Epson 1080UB is the second-generation Epson 1080P LCD projector. The difference between this model and the previous Powerlight 1080 is primarily two-fold:

• This model uses the new C² Fine LCD panels, which are supposed to produce better black level performance. This is what accounts for the "UB" suffix. It is designed to provide "ultra-black" performance.
• The model also employs a more sophisticated color management system (CMS) that should allow calibrators to achieve much more accurate color performance.

Throw and lens shift

The Powerlight offers very flexible installation options with a very wide zoom range and horizontal and vertical lens shift. Its throw is 1.33-2.9/1 screen width. By default, the lens aligns with the center of the screen. Use lens shift to adjust from there. Lens shift works like a charm, though it can affect light output, geometry, and contrast at the extremes, so I’d use as little of it as is practical for your installation.

Brightness and contrast

Measuring brightness is not simple with the projector because it has so many different modes. The relatively low-power lamp has two modes, Low (135W) and High (170W). High offers more satisfying lumens, but with somewhat higher fan noise. It offers an automatic iris that opens and closes in response to image content while simultaneously changing the gamma value. The projector also has several Gamma presets and several Color Modes.

I used the 2.2 gamma mode to obtain the best measured results. The available Color Mode presets are:

• Dynamic
• Living Room
• Natural
• Theater
• Theater Black 1
• Theater Black 2
• x.v. Color

Natural and the Theater Modes all offer essentially the same color performance, but each automatically employs different user settings. The Dynamic and Living Room modes are not suitable for serious viewing. Each offers substantially higher light output by severely distorting the color gamut. x.v. Color is useful only for sources mastered in this expanded color space. However, since no commercial offerings use x.v. Color except a few camcorders, this is mostly a gimmick of very little practical value.

Of the color-accurate modes, Natural offered the highest light output, so I used that and High lamp mode as a basis for the calibration. I am not a big fan of auto irises. They artificially boost or cut the gamma as the iris opens and closes in response to picture content, which I find often causes visible artifacts. Although they can dramatically improve measured contrast ratios, they have a much less profound effect on real-world content. There simply is no substitute for native contrast. I left the iris off.

With these settings, I measured a contrast ratio of 1829:1 (11.9 fL/0.007 fL). This represents about a 50% improvement over what I had measured from on the previous generation Epsons, so the UB designation is not marketing hype (though the 50,000:1 advertised contrast ratio is). The lamp produced 301 lumens. This was plenty of light output for the 92-inch unity gain screen it was being used with, but as the lamp aged, it would quickly become too dim. This projector should be used with a moderately-sized screen with some gain for best performance.

Uniformity and Sharpness

One of the inherent problems with LCD displays is poor white field uniformity (localized color shading) and poor convergence between the 3 LCD elements. This unit has apparently had some quality control problems with panel alignment, but the unit I worked on was quite acceptable in this respect, showing only small amount of color fringing on the edges of the screen, which was invisible from a reasonable viewing distance. The white field uniformity was actually above average for LCD units. I noticed no obvious areas of shading on a white background.

The sharpness of the image was about average for an LCD projector. Compared to DLP or LCoS, this is limited by LCD's inherently poor fill factor. On the one hand, edges were quite sharp, but on the other hand the low fill factor produces a less coherent and clean image than competing technologies.

Color Performance

Out of the box the grayscale tracking was not great. Even set at the 6500K preset, white was too blue across the entire range. The Epson provides detailed gray scale adjustments in the Advanced user menu. After making adjustments here, the grayscale was nearly perfect from 30% to 90% with the extreme upper and lower ends of the scale continuing to exhibit excessive blue.

Before Calibration

After Calibration

Providing full custom grayscale controls in the user menu is an increasingly common and welcome feature. What separates the Epson 1080UB from other models is its very sophisticated color management system (CMS) also located in the Advanced menu. It allows the calibrator to adjust the gamut of the projector so that it closely matches the standards by which the source material was mastered. Most modern projectors substantially oversaturate the primary colors, and as you can see from the diagram below, the Epson does as well. What is different in this case, is that the Epson provides controls to fix this.

Before Calibration

After Calibration

As you can the the gamut of available colors in the before calibration chart represented by the black line is considerably larger than the gamut as defined by the Rec. 709 standard for high-definition material. This results in an unnatural palette, which is particularly obvious with rosy skin tones and neon grass and trees. After calibration, the measured gamut almost exactly matches the expected standard. Only green remains slightly oversaturated.

What makes the Epson 1080UB really special is that in addition to providing controls to adjust the hue and saturation of the gamut as displayed in the CIE charts above, it also offers complete control over the brightness of those colors. The brightness (or lightness) of color is not displayed on the CIE chart at all and is typically measured as a percentage deviation from the target performance. It is an essential addition to the Epson CMS (which the previous generation did not have), because merely adjusting the hue and saturation of the primary and secondary colors severely lowers color brightness, so one must adjust the brightness upward to restore the correct levels. Otherwise, you get a CIE chart that looks good, but the colors look dull and uninvolving.

Problems

I ran across a couple areas of potential concern.

• As I mentioned above, even in the high lamp mode with any of the color-accurate presets I would like to have seen more light output. There is only so much light one can expect to get from a 170W bulb. This projector would benefit from a higher output unit.
• Both the native contrast and the sharpness/clarity of the image suffers in comparison to similarly-priced LCoS and DLP units. This is an inherent problem with LCD.

Conclusion

I am a big fan of this projector. Of the LCD units I have seen, it is at the top of my list. Its extensive controls are a calibrator's dream and allow one to dial in a stunning high-definition image.