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AUDIO-VISUAL
Best Buys Audio & AV 2019-#2http://www.avhub.com.auEpson EH-TW9400W
wireless AV projector- Beautiful colour and brightness
- Excellent installation flexibility
- WirelessHD connection
- Hints at full UHD resolution
- Could improve 50Hz deinterlacing, or have
a force-film mode option
Price: $4999
Projection technology: 3 x 18.8mm
Polysilicon TFT active matrix LCD panels
Resolution: 1920 by 1080 pixels
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Lamp: 250 watts UHE-E
Lamp life: 3500 hours, 5000 economy mode
Contrast ratio: 1,200,000:1 (Dynamic)
Brightness: 2600 lumens (white and colour)
Inputs: WirelessHD (4 x HDMI on transmitter,
1 with MHL support), 2 x HDMI, 1 x D-SUB15,
1 x Ethernet
Outputs (on transmitter): 1 x HDMI,
1 x optical digital audio, USB charging port
Control/Other: 1 x RS-232C, 1 x trigger,
1 x Mini-USB (Service), 1 x USB (for WiFi
option), 1 x USB power (for active optical
HDMI cable)
Dimensions (whd): 520 x 193 x 450mm
Weight: 11.2kg
Contact: Epson Australia
Telephone: 1300 361 054
Web: http://www.epson.com.au
it make its minimum black? What upper for its
maximum white? Too close to the extremes and
near-blacks and near-whites will lack intensity. Too
far and they’ll crush. These test patterns showed a
discernible difference between 0.005 and 0.010 nits
for black, and 1200 and 1300 nits for white. That’s
a good choice. Those responsible for mastering
Ultra-HD Blu-ray discs are unlikely to push
anywhere near the 10,000 nits point as yet.
Black levels were up to Epson’s high standards.
Even without the dynamic iris in operation, the
darker scenes were subjectively impressive. And in
a sense, black level weaknesses in a projector are
less objectionable anyway than they are in a TV,
because they are even across the screen with the
projector. With many LCD TVs, in darker scenes
the images tends to look mottled, and that’s far
more distracting.
So, you may be wondering how well the
WirelessHD carries the Ultra-HD signal. Very well
indeed is the answer. With a regular Ultra-HD
Blu-ray disc, the projector’s information screen
showed it was getting 3840 by 2160 pixels with
12-bit, 4:2:2 colour in BT.2020 format, along
with HDR. That’s almost the same as with a cable
connection, but in that case the Ultra-HD Blu-ray
player chose 4:4:4 colour.
However with 60 frames per second Ultra-HD,
as on that Billy Lynn disc, the wireless transmitter
is limited to 8-bit, 4:2:0 colour. The projector said
that the format was still BT.2020 and HDR10,
but we can’t see how HDR10 can work with 8-bit
colour. With wired, it went to 12 bits and 4:2:2.
Thankfully, 60fps Ultra-HD Blu-ray remains
extremely rare. And in any case, pictures are stored
at 4:2:0 on Ultra-HD Blu-ray (or regular Blu-ray or
DVD or digital TV, and streaming can crush them
even lower). Ultimately it must be converted to
4:4:4 for display, but whether than happens in the
player or the display device doesn’t really matter, so
long as the conversion is competently performed.
A previous
Epson model, the
EH-TW9300W, exhibited
rather weird handling of
1080i/50 and 576i/50
content, but there’s none
of that here. Frames are
respected, as they should be. But there could still be
a little extra work on the deinterlacing of 1080i/50
and 576i/50 content. It has selectable deinterlacing:
Off, Video and Film/Auto. The last is the default,
and it has a bash at detecting film-sourced content,
despite it being delivered in interlaced format...
but it wasn’t quite up with the best of them in
performance. With one torture test 576i/50 clip
we use from the movie Gigi, for example, the hor-
izontally-striped vest of Manuel kept the projector
flickering from film to video mode, resulting in
moire patterns across the vest. Given that the
camera was usually moving, that also necessarily
reduces resolution in the rest of the image.
With Miss Potter, delivered from 1080i/50
Blu-ray, most of it seemed about average, with a
slight break-up in one of the tricky scenes. But
once the credits began to roll at the end of the
movie, it was clear that these were being treated as
video-sourced rather than film-sourced, resulting
in wiggling and break-up of the small horizontal
strokes in the text. This is a little disappointing,
since some older Epson projectors had a force-film
mode, which ensured perfect delivery of film-
sourced content.
The projector includes frame interpolation, or
motion-smoothing, as Epson premium models have
for many years. This doesn’t work with Ultra-HD
content, nor with lower-resolution material that’s
upscaled to Ultra-HD output. With regular
1080p/24 content, not upscaled, it did a decent job
of smoothing motion, but at the cost of producing
artifacts. With the Blu-ray of the 1993 movie The
Fugitive, the flyover of Chicago at 50 minutes inis smoothed very nicely. But a moment later, when
Harrison Ford is on the phone to his lawyer, a train
goes past behind him on a bridge. The rivets on the
bridge waver and squirm in an unseemly manner
when motion smoothing is running.
So it’s probably no loss not to have it disabled
for Ultra-HD content.CONCLUSION
While we look forward to the day when Epson
releases a true Ultra-HD resolution home
projector at a price like this, we’d be fibbing if
we said that the difference of true 4K would
significantly improve what you get in the Epson
EH-TW9400W, with the exception that the higher
resolution would more transparently reproduce
the Ghostbusters grain. But that’s a purist view,
especially as that movie looks better without it!
With this projector Epson is aiming to deliver the
best possible result under $5000, and has achieved
wonders here, with the brightness and colour
in particular, and the significant bonus of the
transmitter box which does away with the need for
the worries of long and expensive HDMI cables.Epson is aiming to deliver the
best possible result under $5000,
and has achieved wonders here...
Wired or wireless: The Epson has two HDMI inputs, but also comes with a transmitter box
which can send even 4K signals wirelessly to the projector, saving the hassle of long HDMI cables.