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reviews
Epson EH TW4000 Home Cinema Projector
Review (price $ AUD) -- Updated August 2009
 Epson's new TW4000 1080P Home Cinema projector is a step up from the Epson EMP EMP TW2000. The Epson TW2000 was reviewed by us and almost everyone else as a very good projector.
The main upgrades found in the TW4000 are black levels, now a massive 75,000:1 CR, 120Hz processing for smoother action and a quieter fan.
Epson EMP TW 4000
1080P HD Projector review
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Manufacturers may try to confuse you with technical jargon it would have been a lot easier for Epson to print on the box "We make the LCD panels so we know how to get the most out of them" however as they sell the same panels to many other manufacturers they can't say that!
Unlike 1-Chip DLP projectors there is no spinning colour wheel in Epson 3LCD projectors to cause "rainbows" this is a consideration for some people that are sensitive to them.
There is no shortage of great projectors so your choice may come down to the Warranty, Purchase cost, LCD or DLP, Brightness or other features for your particular needs.
In nature you often come across the "law of cube" meaning to make something twice as fast/bright/loud/good you need more than twice the input (four x comes to mind).
Key Features and Benefits
Almost 100,000
When we saw that Epson were claiming 75,000:1 contrast ratio (CR) again we said "really?" - Deep Black is the key, the blacks are really black. 75,000:1 means the blacks will be darker.
Whatever the ANSI CR turns out to be (Around 500:1) this, is all the CR you'll ever need. Take on/off CR with a grain of salt, they all sex it up. The thing you look for is darkest blacks! LCD projectors are getting closer to perfection, which in our opinion is: In a totally dark room where you can't see your hand in front of your face, you project pure black and nothing changes.
When you get into splitting hairs over CR think what was the last time you were in a room with NO light at all? It wasn't a real cinema that's for sure.
Colour Bits
12 bit processing (86 billion colours) & Epson C7 LCD engine, that's where you see differences in specifications compared to lower end models. 12 Bit LCD means there are no bottle necks.
Plasma, LCD TV still just TV!
What happened to home cinema? 42-50-60 inch that's still just TV. Big deal that they're flat.
Projectors like the Epson EH TW4000 home cinema model should make big home cinema a must have for anybody wanting to overtake the Jonses, (why just keep up with them?) or indeed have a new way to spend "quality time" with the family.
The word is "Home Cinema is the new swimming pool" ..about time and a lot easier on the water storage.
You'll never see a great demo at a Plasma/LCD TV merchant, it's not in their interest to convert you to real home cinema, you'll be happy with your flat TV if they have any say.
Screen shot of the Epson TW2000 with DNP Screen
The TW 4000, TW5000 is the same brightness.
Pixels
Even up close you can hardly make out the pixel structure on the screen, from any sort of normal viewing distance it's impossible. The image is as smooth as silk. You may have heard of the Panasonic "Smooth screen technology" well you just don't need it, it's plenty smooth enough without sacrificing sharpness.
C2fine is just fine
Epson 3LCD technology is also used under licence by Barco,
Canon, Fujitsu,
Hitachi, Infocus, Mitsubishi,
Panasonic, Sanyo, Sony,
Toshiba, Viewsonic and many more..
The new Epson EH TW-4000 LCD
HTPS panels utilize Epson's C2 Fine technology. If any projector is 1080p, LCD and 12 bit it uses the new Epson D7 chips. As mentioned before the TW4000's colour processor is 12 bit so having 12 bit LCD panels is the way to go, 68 billion colours!
With this new technology, the TW4000 delivers superior black levels, vividly accurate colors and much higher degrees of contrast than previous-generation models.
Additionally, by achieving brightness levels as high as 1,600 ANSI lumens it's even well-suited for rooms where ambient light can't always be eliminated. In this case the CR is not important.
The new panels also quadruple gradation approximation from 1,024 gradation levels to 4,096 gradation levels.
Please remember our screen shots are taken with a digital camera and are nowhere as impressive as reality.
Please remember our screen shots are taken with a digital camera and are not as impressive as reality. Actual TW4000 images soon however 400 pixels means that they will look the same as TW2000 images here.
Out of the box
There is not much you need to do. You may like to have a fiddle with the lamp power and Iris on/off but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we liked it is an understatement.
Colour Modes
Dynamic is for emergency use only!
Bright for sure, but say goodbye to the subtle colours. More useful for PC spreadsheets in a bright room. This is the mode used to produce the highest contrast ratio. It's not the mode you'll be using most of the time.
Living Room is what I'm using now, in the middle of the day.
Theatre to Black 2 them for the blackest blacks, darkest darks, nothing when there is really nothing!
x.v.Color
Note x.v.Color is the new next generation colour mode which has 1.8 x colours. It's not found on projectors that have 10 bit LCD panels.
Larger colour range or gamut and you can see it. This is one they snuck in without much fanfare but it's a great option.
Sony Corporation sub brand name "x.v.Color", x.y.Colour is based on a color range standard with approximately twice that of conventional standards it was accepted and issued as an international standard by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).
Products which conform "xvYCC" will be able to faithfully reproduce natural object surface colors with contents that also conforms "xvYCC".
The different colour modes as mentioned above work as you'd expect, the only one that got our attention was the new x.v.Color for the obvious increase in colour gamut.
Screening review
Epson (TW 5000 - TW 4000) & TW2000 using HD transmissions the new models will look similar on most content (especially with light in the room) it has a noticeably lower output of light for black scenes so the blacks in a truly dark room are really improved. We'll put some TW4000 images up shortly but as we said it's had t tell any difference here.
You'll soon find out the limitation is often not the projector it's your eyes or your room but most lightly the source material. Very hard to fault the projected image when you're at this level. What about the the JVC HD 750B? (almost 1/2 lumens of the TW4000), it may pip the TW 4000 TW 5000 in absolute blacks (no light in room etc.) but it won't be as flexible (lens shift / brightness), it costs more.
Please remember our screen shots are taken with a digital camera and are not as impressive as reality. Actual TW4000 images soon however 400 pixels means that they will look the same as TW2000 images here. Apart from the no-image black screen it will be hard to tell the difference save for 120Hz motion interpolation that smoothes out high speed images to get rid of the "jerkiness".
Noise dB - Focus
TW4000 TW5000 will be used in cinema mode where it hardly works up a sweat and the 22dB fan is very considerate in cinema modes.
There is very little "real world" difference between 19 and 22dB.
The latest D7 LCD crop are very similar so testing the Sanyo Z3000 the image interpolation function worked perfectly. As for focus, we could see no focus shift, others who've been testing a pre production model may have noticed it but we did not. This has been confirmed by our sources in Epson.
High lamp mode causes the fan to speed up, on a hot night the level is very noticeable so there is the rub if you do need to use full lamp mode because you can't control the ambient light you will hear the difference.
HDMI 1.3a
The latest version of the HDMI standard for resolutions up to 1920x1080 pixels. Supports Deep Colour and "x.v.Color" and as we've mentioned the LCD can display the signals. If you'd like to learn more about HDMI 1.3
|see this link| at ausmedia.
Specifications Subject to change without notice
Conclusion
The Epson EMP-TW-4000 is a great high end 1080p HD projector.
When you're at this end of the market, which a few short years ago was reserved for the very rich, you've got many choices.
The natural competitor is the Sanyo PLV-Z3000 (and indeed the Sanyo Z700), they are fairly similar. With both there is noticeably better blacks, x.y.Colour, and both with versions of 120Hz frame interpolation. By all means look at models from Panasonic and Mitsubishi etc. however be wary of warranty conditions and 1.3 HDMI Deep Color & x.y.Colour support.
The Epson TW5000 is for all intents and purposes the same projector as the TW4000 unless you're going to fit an anamorphic lens (less than 1% of people do). The idea of another very similar model is to restrict TW5000 sales so the people selling them don't have to compete with web prices.
Many LCD projectors are now based on the Epson D7 LCD engine. All they do is add their own tweaking and features. So you have to ask yourself what features do I need and what's my budget? If you're after the latest 120Hz processing, really black blacks that kill your LCD TV then the answer could be Epson's TW4000.
Update November 09: With the replacement model now available which is basically the same thing (for 99% of uses) some shops are discounting the TW4000 this makes it a compelling buy.
HCC
© 2009
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This product may be available on hot.com.au 
*Warranties mentioned in this review are for genuine Australian supplied units only. Check with Epson Australia if in doubt.
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