Performance and Final Thoughts
The proof of all this impressive-sounding pudding is in the eating, of course. And during a demonstration of the R4000 in action on a 150in screen, the results appeared undeniably spectacular.
Kicking off with Mission Impossible 3, using the projector’s Cinema colour preset, a new ‘lens iris’ setting positioned at –5, and the frame interpolation processing set to High, we had to pinch ourselves to remind ourselves that we were actually watching an LCD projector.
The single greatest reason for this is the R4000’s black level response. The clouding over black parts of the picture that’s even visible a little on Epson’s excellent TW5500 previous home cinema flagship is almost completely removed, leaving black looking, well, black. Even better, the extra light efficiency of the R4000’s optical engine means Epson doesn’t have to compromise the projector’s brightness as much as other LCD projectors to produce a convincing black. Consequently, the bright parts of predominantly dark images still look punchy and dynamic - hence Epson’s vast claimed contrast ratios for its Reflective LCD duo.
The fact that Epson doesn’t need to compromise brightness as much as usual means there’s also more shadow detail in dark picture areas, which is essential in helping dark scenes look realistic and layered. The wide colour gamut claims for Reflective LCD technology, meanwhile, seem borne out by the exceptional lustre evident, say, with the control buttons inside the operations van during MI3’s factory assault sequence.
It was rather hard to judge the impact of Reflective LCD’s reduced response time with the frame interpolation processing locked to high. What we can say is that, even set to its maximum strength, the frame interpolation processing works rather well, clearly reducing judder and blur while, crucially, throwing up far fewer negative side effects than expected.
Switching to Ice Age 3 and turning the colour mode to its Living Room preset revealed another side to the R4000, as the screen was illuminated by a picture of intense brightness and colour saturation.
We couldn’t get our hands on the R4000’s menus ourselves during these demonstrations to try and uncover more strengths and weaknesses, but even from what we were able to see, it seems clear that Epson’s almost solo crusade to ensure that LCD remains a true premium quality home cinema technology has shifted up a serious number of gears.
Before wrapping up, Epson is also rolling out two new standard transmissive LCD projectors in October: the £1,300 EH-TW3600 and £900 EH-TW3200. The TW3600 claims a dynamic contrast ratio of 50,000:1 and brightness of 2000 Lumens, while the TW3200 quotes a 25,000:1 contrast ratio and 1800 Lumens brightness. Also, the arrival of the R4000 and R2000 has led Epson to slash the price of its outstanding TW5500 model to just £2,600 or so.
