Epson Redux

Shane already nailed the Epson Cinema Pro 1080 UB ("Ultra Black") demo. It was amazing to see this kind of performance from an LCD. I'll add that Epson might be claiming a 50,000:1 contrast ratio, but that's with what has to be an awfully aggressive auto-iris in play. Kevin Miller, whose work continues to amaze, flew without a net using the chipset's native contrast ratio of 4,500:1, which is pretty outstanding on its own.

Blacks were very good if not totally as inky as the best DLP or LCoS systems. Shadow detail, on the other hand, was excellent on the Casino Royale Blu-ray. Finally, I've seen a few of the anamorphic lens 2.35:1 demos which require scaling, and I have to say the scaling (or possibly the lens) seems to introduce some softness in the picture. The Epson, however, using an outboard Silicon Optix HQV to accommodate the lens (total system price, about $12K-$13K), was perfectly clean with the HD material we saw. There was no sense of lost resolution due to scaling. It looked native in every way.

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