Pros: Good SD performance, Excellent black levels, Good brightness, Easy placement in any room
Cons: Manual focus and zoom, Auto iris noise
Epson's Home Cinema 8700 UB is a great value at reasonable price. Its THX mode produces a beautiful well-balanced cinema picture that needs no further professional calibration. It can also put out an exceptionally bright picture that's useful in ambient light or for really big screens. It has the deepest black levels available for the money, near-perfect color, and excellent clarity of detail. Placement flexibility is second to none. Standard-definition DVDs shine thanks to Frame Interpolation and Super Resolution.
This time Epson has followed up with the new PowerLite Home Cinema 8700 UB, offering incrementally better performance at an even lower price. It features proven technology - inorganic LCD panels, a killer auto-iris system to bring down black levels, and Epson's Frame Interpolation system. The 8700 UB is a powerful, capable 1080p projector serious home theater that does not cost a fortune--you can pick one up without hurting your pocket, which includes a spare lamp.
The Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8700 UB is built for home theater in a light-controlled room, and for this purpose it is indeed well suited. THX mode, with its 660 lumens, provides ample light for most home theater needs. Contrast is excellent, and black bars can scarcely even be seen. However, its high lumen output modes can be useful for video games or television in a room with ambient light. The 8700 UB's Dynamic mode not only exceeds the published specification handily (1830 lumens beats its 1600-lumen rating), but it does so while keeping color balance marginally intact. The result is a much brighter picture that has no garish, obvious color bias or tint, perfect for football games or Pacquiao-Margarito fight, which you might watch on a television rather than a projector.
While talking of placement, the 8700 UB includes Epson's 2.1:1 manual zoom/focus lens with manual horizontal and vertical lens shift. The 8700 UB can throw a 120" diagonal image from 11' 9" all the way back to 25' 1".
The lens shift allows for the projected image to be cast completely above or below the centerline of the lens; the range is just under three picture heights. This is a perfect setup for rear shelf mounting, as it allows for an optically neutral placement of the projector itself relative to the screen. Ceiling mounts are also possible, and the lens shift range will eliminate the need for a drop tube in a room with a standard eight-foot ceiling. The same applies to a coffee table or low shelf situation. Thanks to the extensive lens shift, the 8700 UB is one of those rare projectors that you really can place more or less wherever you'd like. That said, not all placement situations will be ideal. The "best" set up for the 8700 UB would be using THX mode in a light-controlled room on a mid-height shelf, such that you don't need to use the lens shift at all, and preferably at a distance where you're in the middle of the zoom range.
The Home Cinema 8700 UB has high brightness modes that produce a bright picture while remaining largely color-balanced. This sets it apart from other projectors whose dynamic modes have a more visible color cast or other imbalance. While a home theater projector with high maximum lumen output is not unusual, a Dynamic mode with reasonably balanced color is unusual indeed.
Cons: Manual focus and zoom, Auto iris noise
Epson's Home Cinema 8700 UB is a great value at reasonable price. Its THX mode produces a beautiful well-balanced cinema picture that needs no further professional calibration. It can also put out an exceptionally bright picture that's useful in ambient light or for really big screens. It has the deepest black levels available for the money, near-perfect color, and excellent clarity of detail. Placement flexibility is second to none. Standard-definition DVDs shine thanks to Frame Interpolation and Super Resolution.
This time Epson has followed up with the new PowerLite Home Cinema 8700 UB, offering incrementally better performance at an even lower price. It features proven technology - inorganic LCD panels, a killer auto-iris system to bring down black levels, and Epson's Frame Interpolation system. The 8700 UB is a powerful, capable 1080p projector serious home theater that does not cost a fortune--you can pick one up without hurting your pocket, which includes a spare lamp.
The Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 8700 UB is built for home theater in a light-controlled room, and for this purpose it is indeed well suited. THX mode, with its 660 lumens, provides ample light for most home theater needs. Contrast is excellent, and black bars can scarcely even be seen. However, its high lumen output modes can be useful for video games or television in a room with ambient light. The 8700 UB's Dynamic mode not only exceeds the published specification handily (1830 lumens beats its 1600-lumen rating), but it does so while keeping color balance marginally intact. The result is a much brighter picture that has no garish, obvious color bias or tint, perfect for football games or Pacquiao-Margarito fight, which you might watch on a television rather than a projector.
While talking of placement, the 8700 UB includes Epson's 2.1:1 manual zoom/focus lens with manual horizontal and vertical lens shift. The 8700 UB can throw a 120" diagonal image from 11' 9" all the way back to 25' 1".
The lens shift allows for the projected image to be cast completely above or below the centerline of the lens; the range is just under three picture heights. This is a perfect setup for rear shelf mounting, as it allows for an optically neutral placement of the projector itself relative to the screen. Ceiling mounts are also possible, and the lens shift range will eliminate the need for a drop tube in a room with a standard eight-foot ceiling. The same applies to a coffee table or low shelf situation. Thanks to the extensive lens shift, the 8700 UB is one of those rare projectors that you really can place more or less wherever you'd like. That said, not all placement situations will be ideal. The "best" set up for the 8700 UB would be using THX mode in a light-controlled room on a mid-height shelf, such that you don't need to use the lens shift at all, and preferably at a distance where you're in the middle of the zoom range.
The Home Cinema 8700 UB has high brightness modes that produce a bright picture while remaining largely color-balanced. This sets it apart from other projectors whose dynamic modes have a more visible color cast or other imbalance. While a home theater projector with high maximum lumen output is not unusual, a Dynamic mode with reasonably balanced color is unusual indeed.
Like last year's 8500 UB, the 8700 UB is rated at 200,000:1 contrast. While contrast specifications can be misleading, the 8700 UB really does have knock-your-socks-off contrast. Black is some of the blackest we've ever seen, especially in the 8700 UB's price range. Black bars disappear from view, and night-time shots look like they are inked directly onto the screen. For those who despise black bars, the 8700 UB makes them practically unnoticeable.
On the 8500UB, THX mode had the best color accuracy, but lower color saturation than we preferred. This would not have been a problem had THX mode been adjustable, but users were locked out of making changes to this preset. Those who wanted higher saturation had to go through a long calibration process of trying to bring Theater or Theater Black mode in line with THX mode's color balance, which required calibration equipment or an amazingly good eye. Needless to say, it was kind of a hassle.
Epson has been refining their Frame Interpolation system over several years, beginning in the 6500 UB with a shaky implementation that was, quite frankly, distracting in most cases. The 8500UB's implementation was much better, with fewer artifacts and better smoothness without an overabundance of the dreaded "digital video effect." This year's implementation is as good as it's ever been, with very few artifacts in Low or Medium and less obnoxious digital video effect in High.
The projector's only real weakness is in 2.4:1 support. Manually adjusting back and forth for 2.4:1 movies via the zoom can be a hassle with the non-powered lens. So if 2.4 Cinemascope without an outboard lens is on your list of priorities, the 8700 UB might not be.
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