Epson Home Cinema 3700 Projector Review – Special Features

Image Enhancement Comparisons

In the player above, find  comparison images from Victoria Secret’s Swimsuit show.  Look at her eyes, hair etc, the menu tells you whether Image Enhancement is Off, or on 2 or 4.  I believe this to be 1080i content (the jaggies in strands of her hair would be far less visible with 1080p).

I generally watch sports with Image Enhancement set to 4, or 2.  2 is more natural, with 4 definitely a bit over the top, but boy does 4 provide a crisp looking image.

I will rarely venture above the #2 setting for movie watching, and sometimes leave it off.  But I like a a seeming sharp and detailed image, so that I really like the #2 setting.  We’re getting into personal taste here.  A purist probably would not use the Image Enhancement choices, except maybe #1.

CFI - Creative Frame Interpolation

It’s almost refreshing that Epson just calls their implementation “Frame Interpolation.”  So many companies have fancy, trade-marked names, so that it sounds like they are the only folks that can do it.

CFI is “smooth motion.”  I don’t consider this a critical feature although I do like it in the Low (or sometimes Medium) setting for sports.  Many folks will also leave it on for general HDTV viewing, although I prefer not.

When it comes to movies, I definitely recommend not using it, but then many folks do, and that’s especially true for LCDTV users.  Problem is, by smoothing out motion, with a movie, you are essentially making the picture so it no longer reflects the Director’s intent.  Imagine the always rough motion camera work in the Bourne movies.  If CFI smooths out some of that motion, you lose the intended effect.

Epson’s CFI works just fine.  How much, and when to use it, I consider an individual call.  Note that in the High setting you will see modest motion artifacts around fast moving objects.

The HC3700 Has A Pair of Rear Facing 10 Watt Speakers

It’s always better to have a great sound system, but the HC3700s rear facing speakers, have plenty of bottom, and enough bass to not sound tinny.  Still, it’s a very poor substitute for a surround sound system (5.1 or higher), with a good sub-woofer.  The Epson would be better if you could have the speakers playing even when you have something plugged into the stereo audio out.

In fairness, I’ve been harassing manufacturers for years to allow that if they have speakers inside, and audio out.  If that worked you could plug in a small external, powered subwoofer, to dramatically enhance the internal speakers.   Oh well!

Home Cinema 3700 Lens Shift

Unlike most sub-$2000 projectors – which have either no lens shift, a small amount of vertical lens shift, or maybe small to modest amounts of shift, the HC3700 has a very healthy amount to simplify placement.  Details on the Hardware page.  Suffice to point out that lens shift is optical.  Using keystone correction (digital) instead, is more destructive to the original image.  Always use lens shift over keystone correction when both are available.

3D Capable

The HC3700 supports the standard 3D formats including Blu-ray 3D.  The system uses RF type glasses.  Epson sells their own, which are rechargeable, and work nicely enough. But, there are also plenty of low cost 3rd party glasses.  I’ve used Samsung’s (well under $20 a pair that use lithium batteries) and glasses from Xpand, with no issues.

There are controls which affect brightness and picture, but all considered, there is a slight amount of crosstalk, which is not as clean as most DLP projectors (which basically shouldn’t have any crosstalk – different technology), but overall, the 3D is pretty clean. I’m a fan of 3D because I love being immersed in the content.  The HC3700 does a fine job on 3D.

3D pretty much eats up about 2/3 of total brightness.  I would describe the 3700 which is loaded with lumens, as easily able to handle a 100″ screen doing 3D, and it still looks relatively bright when filling my own 124″ screen, with typical (1.3) gain.  Overall, I watched parts of several movies, and all of the new Ghostbusters in 3D.  Ghostbusters (which is mostly a very funny movie) was excellent in 3D on the Home Cinema 3700!

Three Power Modes

Most projectors have two power modes – Full and Eco.  Not, however, most new Epsons. They have a full power mode, and Medium and a low (Eco).  With the Epson you drop down about 25% in brightness to medium, and about another 8-9% to Eco.  For most folks Medium is where you’ll be running unless you need full power, which also ratchets up the fan noticeably from fairly quiet to fairly noisy.

When lamps are not run at, or near full power, there is a tendency to get some flicker.  The Medium brightness mode performed well without flicker, but I did spot a little flicker once in a while in Eco.  So, again, I recommend you skip the full eco mode, and go with Medium.

HDMI-Link

User Memories

Like to tweak settings, This Epson offers 10 savable memories, You might save Cinema, with slightly adjusted settings for color and contrast, with power on Medium in #1.  In #2, you might have similar settings but power on Full for daytime viewing.   You’ll be hard pressed to really need 10 different user settings, but then, nice to have them, if you are a User settings fanatic.