Any Epson 5030UB owners here? (1 Viewer)

[Josh Steinberg]

Some shipping issues, so not gonna have this set up til mid-next week… (I'm sure I was not pleasant to be around when I found out this morning) but I promise I will report back when things are up and running!

 

[FoxyMulder]

Some shipping issues, so not gonna have this set up til mid-next week… (I'm sure I was not pleasant to be around when I found out this morning) but I promise I will report back when things are up and running!

I recommend A Turtles Tale as your first 3D film to watch, it looks amazing on a projection system.

 

[Sam Posten]

Who in America is stocking it tho?

 

[Gregg Loewen]

hi guys.

Personally I have a 6020 set up in my HT right now (with fixed anamorphic lense). I really like it, nice and bright and easily to calibrate.

I currently have the 5030 UB, and 5030 UBE in stock, but mainly sell the 6030 version as when you include the freebies, it works out to a much better deal than the 5030.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think it very well may be - region B copy already on order from Amazon UK. Depends on whether or not I'm watching alone the first time I turn the 3D on. (If my girlfriend is home, it's gonna be "Step Up Revolution" or "The Lego Movie", which are the 3D discs she owns but hasn't seen yet. Or possibly "How to Train Your Dragon")

 

[DaveF]

It is prudent to keep the girlfriend happy. But given the choice, for a first movie, go with "The Lego Movie" or "...Dragon"

 

[schan1269]

If I got into 3D (have everything but the glasses...and content)...the first thing we'd watch is porn.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Gonna be her call, but I think she's more likely to pick one of those. The "Step Up" is as much of a joke about me being willing to watch anything in 3D.. We'll see it, but probably not first.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

OK, some very quick, very initial first thoughts on the Epson 5030UB based on about four hours of viewing last night:

- Really, really easy setup. (I remember this also being true with my previous projector years ago, an Epson Powerlite Home 20 SD/16x9 projector.) We don't have the exact final position of the projector decided yet, but that was in no way an obstacle to getting started with it -- I just put it on top a table against the back wall of the room, fiddled with the lens shift and zoom for no more than 30 seconds, and I was all set. It's really cool to be able to check it out with so little fuss.

- 2D viewing mode, not calibrated of course, just on "Cinema" and "THX" modes - in limited viewing, gorgeous. We watched the first ten minutes of "The Avengers" and then all of "Mary Poppins" (the new Blu-ray), and both look incredible. I saw "Avengers" quite a few times in theaters, and what I was seeing at home looked to my eye to be pretty darn close to what I saw in theaters.

- 3D viewing mode, also in "Cinema" and "THX" modes (can't decide which looks "better", they're pretty close) - the BD3D menu pages on a few discs showed some mild crosstalk, but the movies themselves, I saw not an instance of crosstalk or ghosting. I tried out a few discs that always looked very ghosty on my LG plasma TV, like "Dial M For Murder" and "House Of Wax" and I didn't see a hint of that on the Epson. The opening five minutes of "Avatar" also looked stunning. The opening ten minutes of "Gravity" was equally stunning. Popped in "Star Trek Into Darkness" to watch the opening sequence and ended up watching the entire movie -- I got sucked into it in a way I hadn't since seeing it in IMAX last summer.

- The screen is 106" diagonal (16x9 aspect ratio), and I tend to like to sit "too close" - I don't remember what the exact measurement of my seating distance was, but I don't think I'm much further than eight feet away, maybe ten. Even at that close distance, there's no pixel grid visible, it's a surprisingly and pleasingly film-like image. (At one point, I noticed a single hair at the bottom of the frame, and was impressed at how well the projector and Blu-ray captured that tiny imperfection.. and then I realized it was a strand of my own hair from me being slightly in the way of the lens.)

- The projector was a lot quieter than I anticipated. At the moment, it's about four feet behind where I was sitting, and with the speakers on a low volume for nighttime listening, I still couldn't hear it.

- Physically, the projector is a lot larger than my older Powerlite Home 20, although I expected that, so it wasn't a big surprise. Makes sense, my old projector was SD only, and was on the lower-end. But reading the measurements on paper vs actually seeing it, it still seemed larger. I'm glad we didn't pre-buy a shelf or piece of furniture for it before it arrived.


Basically, if I didn't have to work today, I would still be in front of the thing. As it is, I stayed up until 4am checking it out knowing I had to be at work at 11am, and as tired as I am, I don't regret it.

If anyone out there is considering one of these projectors, based on a very limited viewing, I'm absolutely loving it. Happy to answer any questions that anyone has, and looking forward to spending more time with it and sharing future thoughts on it.

 

[Sam Posten]

Trust me. Pacific Rim. =)Enjoy your new PJ!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Trust me. Pacific Rim. =)Enjoy your new PJ!

Will it make the movie any better?

(Saw it twice but it doesn't really do it for me. But I got the 3D blu-ray for cheap a while ago, so I do have it)

Sam - I have to say thank you again for the recommendation of the PJ and vote of confidence based on your experience with a similar model. I was pretty sure that this was the projector I wanted, but some of the feedback and responses at other places online made me second guess myself (I can sometimes overthink these things). Your post was really helpful in cutting through some of that chatter and helping me feel secure about that decision, and I'm grateful for it!

 

[FoxyMulder]

Hurry up and watch the opening ten minutes of A Turtles Tale, i want to know what you think of the stunning 3D.

If you have Madagascar 3 then pop that one in too or Rise of the Guardians.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Hurry up and watch the opening ten minutes of A Turtles Tale, i want to know what you think of the stunning 3D.

Import/Region B copies of Turtle's Tale and T.S. Spivet are on their way!

 

[FoxyMulder]

Import/Region B copies of Turtle's Tale and T.S. Spivet are on their way!

Buy yourself this and calibrate 3D, it makes a difference with the colours and you can calibrate the tint of the glasses out.

http://www.chromapure.com/products-d3pro.asp

It's what i use and it has made a huge difference to the quality of the image and it's fun to calibrate, the one i link to above is $569 and includes the enhanced meter for greater accuracy and the Chromapure software.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Buy yourself this and calibrate 3D, it makes a difference with the colours and you can calibrate the tint of the glasses out.

http://www.chromapure.com/products-d3pro.asp

It's what i use and it has made a huge difference to the quality of the image and it's fun to calibrate, the one i link to above is $569 and includes the enhanced meter for greater accuracy and the Chromapure software.

Cool -- for the price and all, this may be a while off. My room isn't necessarily ideal for projection, a lot of bright walls that I can't paint, for instance... do you think, given that, that it would still be worth it?

 

[FoxyMulder]

Cool -- for the price and all, this may be a while off. My room isn't necessarily ideal for projection, a lot of bright walls that I can't paint, for instance... do you think, given that, that it would still be worth it?

Do what i do, black matte sheets everywhere, put them on the ceiling, on the side walls and a black carpet for the floor and all easy to take down and it improves your contrast ratio, i highly recommend doing something about the bright walls and the ceiling and floor in front of the screen, it really does make a massive difference to your image quality, calibration also makes a difference.

Sheets are very inexpensive but work, an alternative is black velvet, more expensive but works better.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Malcolm - let me put it this way. I can't change the walls. It's not a matter of being allowed to paint or not paint, to hang sheets or not hang sheets. (Great suggestions, though, and if that changes in the future, I will definitely steal a couple of those ideas.) The problem is that the room is both our screening room and our all-purpose living room in a NYC apartment -- and the girlfriend (understandably) doesn't want me to turn it into a dark room -- so at this point it's kinda "it is what it is". We've agreed to paint the wall behind the screen a darker color at some point, but the ceiling will be staying white, and the surrounding walls will most likely be staying their peculiar, landlord-picked shade of off-white. If the room was being used solely for movies, we'd paint or drape everything but alas that's just not in cards right now. (Hopefully the next place in a couple years will have a spare room that can be customized solely for movie watching, but that's a little while off for now.)

Part of my choice for this particular projector was because it's got really good light output, good contrast, so that I can get away with using it in a less-than-ideal space. I figure if right now, not calibrated and not in a light controlled room, and not in a room with dark walls, the projector looks great (which it does), it'll only get better in the future when I have a better space for it. I just didn't want to spend the next couple years waiting for the perfect room (or the perfect scenario that would allow me to customize a room), so I think this is it for now. Maybe when we get around to painting the wall behind the screen, maybe we can discuss expanding that out a little bit so it's a little of the ceiling and connecting portions of the wall. We plan on getting a rug for the room, so going darker color for that is easy enough.

Appreciate the suggestions!

 

[FoxyMulder]

Malcolm - let me put it this way. I can't change the walls. It's not a matter of being allowed to paint or not paint, to hang sheets or not hang sheets. (Great suggestions, though, and if that changes in the future, I will definitely steal a couple of those ideas.) The problem is that the room is both our screening room and our all-purpose living room in a NYC apartment -- and the girlfriend (understandably) doesn't want me to turn it into a dark room -- so at this point it's kinda "it is what it is". We've agreed to paint the wall behind the screen a darker color at some point, but the ceiling will be staying white, and the surrounding walls will most likely be staying their peculiar, landlord-picked shade of off-white.

There is one solution in your situation, a high contrast screen, i know in the UK the Draper React 2.1 gets rave reviews for holding it's contrast and image quality with ambient light and light walls and ceilings, it might be worth looking into as it can help a lot.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

There is one solution in your situation, a high contrast screen, i know in the UK the Draper React 2.1 gets rave reviews for holding it's contrast and image quality with ambient light and light walls and ceilings, it might be worth looking into as it can help a lot.

Cool! So far, pretty happy with the cheap screen and the situation as-is after one night, but as I slowly tweak that's something I'll keep in mind.

For the record, I feel really lucky to have this system and to be able to have "gotten away" with taking up such a huge chunk of our living room with this stuff. She's also a big movie fan, so after a couple years of each one telling the other "you need to see this!" it's great to have a mini-movie theater in our living room where we can actually do that.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

OK, no "Turtle's Tale" yet, but, we watched "Gravity" in 3D last night. Even though I had seen the film before (a few times in IMAX theaters and then again at home on my 50" 3D plasma), but I don't think I ever felt as tense and as "in it" as I did watching it on the projector last night. Also was the best demo for my new surround sound system out of all the other discs I've tried so far. Very immersive experience. No 3D crosstalk issues, just 100% lost in space terror.