Upgradeitis strikes! Any other Epson 8500 owners here?!

Kex wrote: »

Good for you!

However, you have a moral responsability to get Sanyo to fix the old unit (for free) so that you can stick it up on the Flea Market and let some other Polkie taste the joys of projector driven movie nights.

Well, I actually had a buyer for my Z2000 lined up in advance, on the assumption that Sanyo fixes it without much coercion. But if that sale falls through, it'll definitely go up here. I also have a 92" Da-Lite manual screen in my attic, but God knows how I'd ship it.

Kex wrote: »

Nice way to lose a customer, Sanyo!

Exactly. Never again. Yeah, they have a 3 year quick turnaround warranty... but any problem you'd normally have with a 3LCD projector, they always blame you for not cleaning it, even though their 200 hour timer reminds you to do it. Plus, they were bought by Panasonic, so I can't imagine there will be much innovation in their new projectors.

Yeah, 3LCD projectors can have panel convergence issues. My Sanyo has the red/green edges on white lines when you're up close, but maybe by 1/4 pixel and it's not noticeable from viewing distance. I'll be sure to run the Epson through the AVS709HD disc as soon as it's connected though. I've seen close-up screenshots of the 8500 with very tight convergence, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Still, I consider that an unavoidable issue with 3LCD projectors.

I considered a BenQ, but I can't do DLP. Color wheels drive me nuts.

I wish they would list the ANSI contrast as well as the dynamic contrast. My Sanyo says 15,000:1 contrast... but the ANSI contrast is like 363:1 with my EyeOne Display LT on it. Either way, I'm looking forward to having better blacks and to tweaking the Epson's grayscale.

And I thought about holding off for HDMI 1.4 units, but... I don't care about 3-D and in 3 years I'll probably end up buying another projector anyway.

LCOS might be overkill for me. Then again, I'm running 9.2 surround with a Buttkicker... so who am I to stop at "overkill"?

Sherardp wrote: »

In most cases dynamic mode is anything but accurate. I would think THX or Natural mode would be closer to D65. If you really want to see your Epson shine, get yourself an Eyeone LT cal set and do a greyscale/color calibration. The results are nothing short of spectacular.

One of the things that made me want the Epson was Art Feierman's review, where he tested the lumens and grayscale of each mode out-of-the-box:
Dynamic = 1316 @ 6365
LivingRoom = 1175 @ 6833K
THX = 503 @ 6505K
Theater Black = 470 @ 8111K
Theater Black 1 = 478 @ 6779K
Theater Black 2 = 424 @ 5391K
x.v.Color = 484 @ 6728K

6365k in Dynamic out of the box? SOLD! My Sanyo's dynamic mode was seriously 10,500k, and you couldn't tweak it down to 6,500k if you tried (without putting a CC30R filter on the lens). I'll probably just do a cursory calibration in THX mode this weekend, but I can't wait to put the EyeOne on it after the bulb settles in. My room has blackout shades and I'm shelf mounting 10.5' from the screen, so THX/Eco bulb mode will probably be where I start my tweaking.

So... I get home, unpack it, put it on the shelf and decide that first I want to reprogram my Harmony 880 real quick. "Real quick" turned into 90 minutes of cursing. Logitech's newest firmware loads into the remote, I hit update with all my new settings to control the Epson, and unplug the remote... and instead of my menus, it says "Go to website to update settings." So I hit their support forums and sure enough, someone else had the same problem today, and a tech had posted how to boot the remote into safe mode to reload the firmware. That didn't work either. So I call Logitech... they tell me that means the memory in my remote has died and I have to buy a new one, but they'll gladly give me 50% off of a new remote.

After cursing some more, I decide to try making a new account, loading just one device into the remote, then logging back into my old account and updating again. VOILA! Remote works fine, and Logitech can suck it. I stopped long enough to post the solution on their forum for the other guy who had the issue.

So I go into the living room, hit Watch TV on the 880, and everything powers up. White Epson logo comes on the screen... then nothing. I look at the top of the 8500, and the TEMP light is flashing. So I try to power up without the remote... same deal. Call Epson support, they tell me they'll have to send me a new unit and ask for my credit card info, then tell me it won't get here until Tuesday. Insert more cursing. They ask for the serial number, so I flip the projector over and give it to them.

After I get off the phone, I flip the projector back over and decide to try it again, just for laughs. POWERS RIGHT UP, WORKS FINE. So I call Epson back and tell them that it seems to be working and to please cancel the replacement... and of course, that department has closed. Fortunately, the tech was really nice and told me to put it through its paces over the weekend to make sure it works as it should, then if I don't need the replacement I can call Monday to stop it or just refuse the shipment on Tuesday.

So after all of that, I finally got around to lining up the lens shift, sizing it and focusing. Started in THX mode with Eco bulb, popped in my AVS 709HD calibration disc for a basic calibration, then dropped in Avatar... and WOW. I was completely floored.

Here are the immediate differences I noticed between the Epson and my Sanyo Z2000:
1) The three panels were damn near perfectly aligned. The Sanyo always had a red edge on one side of what lines and a green on the other side, though you really couldn't tell from the seats. The Epson, however, was DEAD ON SHARP.
2) There's far less chromatic aberration and focus shift on the Epson's lens. Color uniformity across the screen was very solid, and focus is so tight that you can see the pixel structure cleanly from corner to corner (whereas the Sanyo blurred toward the edges if you focused tight in the middle).
3) This sucker's a light cannon. Even in THX mode with Eco bulb, white is ridiculously brighter than anything my Sanyo ever put out. Plus, it's a pure looking white, not the tinged white the Sanyo had from running out of red when you try to nail the grayscale. Even with Super White engaged so you get the full HDMI range for above-white highlights, white is just beautiful.
4) This was the biggie for me: Black level is AMAZING. Goodbye gray Sanyo blacks and loud clanking auto-iris, and hello theater quality black levels! No auto-iris trickery... just good ole native ANSI contrast, and it's impressive. I did try the auto-iris on the Epson, but I didn't really notice much improvement and I'm pretty happy with it off.
5) THX mode, out of the box, looks amazingly close to 6500k on my Elite 100" Cinema White screen. I haven't put the EyeOne on it yet because I want to put some hours on the bulb first, but comparing the same 1920x1080 pictures shown simultaneously on the Epson and on my calibrated BenQ monitor, they look remarkably similar. The Sanyo NEVER came that close, even after hours of tweaking, so color me impressed as hell!
6) This may be the only drawback I've found so far: HDMI lipsync time with the Sanyo was 28ms, according to my Onkyo TX-NR1007. Lipsync delay for the Epson? 120ms! This is not a big deal for movies or TV because it seems to sync up perfectly to the audio. I was afraid this was going to be a problem with games, but I loaded up MW2 and jumped into a quick free-for-all match, and I was still doing pretty well and didn't really FEEL like the controls were lagged any more than with my Sanyo. After that, I tried Rock Band... and the auto-calibrate with the guitar was too inconsistent to use. Did the manual calibration and things seem to sync up enough for the game to be playable. After all that, I found that disabling Noise Reduction, Super Resolution, and Frame Interpolation got Rock Band's detected video delay down to 70ms. I'll spend some more time with it later today (if I ever actually go to sleep).

A few quick comments on the Epson's features:
1) Super Resolution on low looks pretty much like Sanyo's "Transient Improvement" on low. On the Sanyo, you had to set it to low to prevent blurring of fine details. Not so on the Epson. My 1080p resolution chart was pixel perfect, so Super Res was left off.
2) Frame interpolation, even on low, makes movie and TV content look too digital video. It looked cool with games, but the added processing delay means I'm always gonna leave it off for multiplayer. I might turn it on for single player stuff that isn't so twitch-dependent.
3) As a tweaker, I absolutely LOVE the amount of control Epson gives you. Gamma, primaries, and secondaries are all easy to tweak. Can't wait to really get my hands dirty tweaking this thing.

Before anyone asks, I didn't actually watch a movie on it yet. I did, however, scan through parts of Avatar, Up, and The Dark Knight... and it completely justified my purchase. The detail you can see in Up far surpasses what the Sanyo was resolving, and the black levels and shadow detail in The Dark Knight were absolutely jaw-dropping. I put off watching Saving Private Ryan this week so that I could get the new projector in, so I look forward to spinning that today.

And now... I'm going to sleep!