CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[fefrank]

So…, I’ve had the 5010 for about 3 weeks now, so far so good with the unit at 85 hours of use. The bulb hasn’t blown up yet (knock on wood) and the unit seems to be performing pretty well. By now on most of the projectors in the past I start noticing some dust blobs. The little suckers start showing up clearly at around 120 hours of use but I haven’t seen anything like it. I’ve been able to test this unit head to head with the Runco 947. Both projectors were showing blu-ray movies in hi-def (Avengers, Avatar and The Dark Knight Rises). Even thou the Runco goes only to 720p it gave the 5010 a run for its money. Yeah, the 5010 beats it hands down in resolution and image detail, but I was pretty amazed at how this little projector was able to perform in black level performance and color accuracy with little to no setup. Convergence was done using Iris 2 for and about 35 minutes of tweaking. So it wasn’t much calibrated. And color wasn’t calibrated pretty much at all, since I don’t have the equipment. So everything was done eye to eye. The 5010 was pretty close to the black levels of the Runco in its brightest mode throwing out a very bright picture (over 2000 ANSI lumens) with pretty decent black levels. Now comparing both projectors in best mode got really interesting. The Runco kept its ground really well even though the image on the 5010 was much brighter than the Runco. The black level and shadow detail of the Runco was just more realistic to me and more detailed you can notice these details better in the Dark Knight Rises where black level performance is the number 1 priority (In my opinion that movie is king in showing black level performance so far just to let you all know). In movies like Avatar or the Avengers the difference between the black level performance of the projectors wasn’t very noticeable unless you put both projectors head to head and compare (The Runco wins slightly). Have in mind that the Runco does not deliver more than 240 ANSI lumens, and that helps black levels a lot. The 5010 still delivered over 900 lumens in its natural mode (best color accuracy and best blacks). Have also in mind that the 5010 Dynamic iris was off during the whole comparison except for a few minutes.

Note: I turned the dynamic iris on for a little bit. The dynamic Iris does add a lot more black level performance to the picture but it’s pretty much useless to me in my home theater, since I could see it and hear it working while watching a movie. With the iris on the black levels got really close. They were pretty much too close to compare with the naked eye sitting 6 feet from the screen but the runco had the overall black level performance to beat the epson's 5010 in shadow detail and night shots the dark knight rises's blacks looked better in the runco than in the epson.

Colors were outstanding on both projectors. Once again I was pretty amazed with how the Runco performed in this category, the colors where just vibrant, bright and pure; I give the whole credit to the HD-145 lenses on it since they are color filtered. But colors were just beautiful. In avatar, especially, colors were amazing. The scene where they are in the jungles for the first time off the helicopter was just awesome in both projectors. I did see more vibrant and brighter colors on the Runco than in the 5010. The 5010 had colors washed-out a little in best mode compared to the Runco but once again it had color filtered lenses.

Sharpness was the sinking point for the Runco since it only scans up to 75 kHz. Unfortunately the little guy couldn’t compete with the 1080p machine in this category. But I found 1080i to look a little sharper and more detailed than 720p but overall soft compared to the 5010. The Runco looked pretty good for being a 12 year old machine, but the 5010 was just truly spectacular with 480 Hz 3lcd panels and a convergence adjustment setting it was amazingly sharp even in motion. Have also in mind that the Runco’s convergence wasn’t all perfect, maybe if it had been done perfectly the image would have been much sharper. But we all know that this is no contest. The 5010 is full HD 1080p and its release was just last year. And the Runco is basically a no specific resolution -12 year old projector.

Overall CRT owners, I couldn’t believe this Runco was able to even compete with this 2500$ digital projector. Owners of 7’’ CRT projectors should be proud to own one. The projector really gave a great fight. I wouldn’t be surprised if a good LC 8’’ Machine could beat this Epson’s overall performance. But I do have to say that after doing this comparison the Runco 947 is one heck of a projector and it has my respects. CRT is still king in many aspects of home theater even now going into 2013. It’s truly amazing.

[mc86]

For the price of a 7" CRT (ie, free + gas + exercise), a person certainly can't complain about the image they make!

You can't trust your eye for calibration -- without ability to do greyscale such that you get gamma correct, your CRT is crushing a lot in the shadows, right? Also....No offense as I share (with my ECP) your marvel at what these old 7" machines can do, BUT having now personally seen two prominent forum members' setups (G90 setups in which craig or ken did the calibration/setup) I think I can say one really shouldn't compare anything to anything without even having done a calibration!

That said, I am in the "If you like it, that's all that counts..." camp, so rock on!

cheers
Matt

[fefrank]

I totally agree about the eye calibration. That's why I stated in the review that I didn't do it. But anyway. I mostly wrote the review to share my thoughts on CRT vs digital still today. I think crt rocks

[draganm]

[digitalayon]

Felix,

The question here is did you cut the polarizer yourself?

[fefrank]