Epson Home Cinema 3500 Home Theater Projector Review – Special Features

Epson has been offering Super-Resolution – their name for their detail enhancement / sharpening feature, for several years now.  They continue to refine and improve it.  The Home Cinema 3500 (and the 3600e) share this feature.  It should be noted that the less expensive Home Cinema 3000 lacks Super-Resolution.

The best way to explain Super-Resolution is simply to show you the results.  Super-Resolution has six settings – 0 through 5.  0 is Off.

The two sets of images in the player here, show the same image first with Super-Resolution Off, then a setting of 2, and then 4 and when indicated 5.  The highest setting – 5 does even more detail/sharpening, but I usually find it to be “over the top”  You might like it for sports, but it hardens the image enough that its not really natural for movie viewing.  Generally settings 2 and 3 are most effective with the least artifacts, but I do find 4 works great when I watch football.  You can see the specific setting (0 through 5)  in the menu bar at the bottom of each photo.

The Home Cinema 3500 has PIP.  On the downside, like most PIP implementations at other manufacturers, you can only have one of the two windows populated with an HDMI source, the other has to be PC or a video source.  One of the higher end Epson’s doesn’t have that requirement, but it also doesn’t support MHL on its HDMI ports.  That may have something to do with it.

With this Epson you can have one full screen image and a much smaller “In Picture” image.  That smaller image is available in two sizes – small, and very small.  PIP is fine for seeing what’s going on, but since it’s pretty small, you won’t want to watch anything at that size.  Still, you’ll easily tell when the commercial ends and you are back to the programming you want to watch.

To toggle the sources so that the picture in the small window now fills the full frame, and the former full frame ends up in the small window, all you have to do is hold down the PIP button on the remote for about 3 seconds.  Voila!  Bottom Line:  PIP is a nice touch.  Not something most folks need, but it can be fun.  From a practical standpoint, I can use PIP to put my Fantasy Football browser page in one Picture, and the football game off of DirecTV on the other.

I’ll give Epson credit.  They call their implementation of HDMI-Link:  HDMI-Link.  So many companies cook up some fancy name, trademark it, (Panasonic calls theirs Viera-Link) and then taut that they are the only folks that offer “Viera-Link.  No matter. Here’s the scoop.

By setting up HDMI link, you can use the Epson remote to control other HDMI-Link compatible devices.  For example I have a Panasonic Blu-ray player with Viera-Link.  Once set up, I can use the Epson’s remote to hit Play, Chapter Forward, Pause, Fast Forward, Stop, etc.  Similarly, if properly setup, I could use the Panasonic’s remote to access menus on the Epson, although i admit I haven’t tried it.

It’s another way to cut down on remote control clutter.

Way better than most!  The Home Cinema 3500 has a pair of 10 watt speakers built in.  They are rear facing.  Let’s face it, built in speakers aren’t going to compete with expensive surround sound systems, but Epson has at least made an effort to deliver some respectable sound.

20 watts is a fair amount, especially when you know it’s not trying to tackle deep bass.  This Epson may not have the deep bass but it has the volume to fill a room like my home theater (roughly 400 sq feet, with reasonably loud, and well balanced sound, in the sense of enough mid range and upper bass so as to not sound tinny.

On the downside Epson provides no controls.  It would have given owners more control if there were your basic equalizer or bass / treble and loudness controls.  Hey, it’s only firmware.  That would have been a real plus – maybe next generation.  While their at it, they should have a night time mode that moderates the peaks for listening when others are asleep.

My complaining aside, the Epson has better sound than any other home projector I’ve reviewed.  Given they are less expensive, the BenQ HT1075’s audio sounds overly bright by comparison.  The HD141X, of course is only about $600 but its level of hi fidelity was not even close.

Score the speaker system as “about as good as it gets” for a home projector.