EPSON POWERLITE 5040UB
Kinda 4K. Definitely a projector
WANT A REGULAR 4K monitor? Not a problem. You can have one for 300 bucks. Hell, you can get a 40-inch 4K TV for even less than that. Prices really have plummeted. But projectors? Not so much.
Projectors always have been a niche market. Volumes are lower, prices higher, innovation not as brisk. It also doesn’t help that one of the major projector technologies, Texas Instruments’ DLP, remains locked down under patent protection. The likes of Intel flirted with shaking things up with LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon), then decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.
Anyway, just as 1080p FullHD was slow to make the move into the projector market, so it is with 4K or UHD. But it is happening. There’s been a number of mega-money 4K projectors available for a while, but now the first consumer models are appearing. They’re not cheap—the Epson PowerLite 5040UB rocks the scales at $2,999, but it’s not some $20,000 monster aimed at professional installations.
There is a catch: It’s not true 4K. In fact, it’s a triple-LCD projector, with a native resolution of 1920x1080, and what Epson calls “4K enhancement.” The details involve what’s known as “pixel shift.” The idea is simple: First, project the native 1920x1080 grid, then use the optics to shift the grid up and to the right by half a pixel, and fire again. Rinse and repeat, except so fast the eye can’t see the oscillations, and add clever image processing to smooth everything out.
The result isn’t true 4K. The math works out to around four million pixels, where 1080p is two million, and 4K is eight million. But from your video card’s perspective, the projector accepts a 4K input. But what about your eyes? Without question, it’s a huge leap over standard HD. The crispness and detail is on a whole new level. If you’d never seen a true 4K projector, you’d probably believe this was the real 4K deal. Even if you had, you’d probably be fooled. The step up to true 4K isn’t as dramatic as the step from FullHD to this pixel-shift option.
It’s a very nice projector in general terms, too. LCD technology has come a long way, and the contrast and colors are superb. The full-feature optics are remote-controlled, which makes the 5040UB a cinch to set up, even when installed on a ceiling mount or similar. It’s virtually silent in operation, too. On the other hand, it’s physically a big ol’ box, and the usual projector limitations apply. You can’t just stick it in any old room and use it any old time. Ambient lighting conditions need to be managed. But for gaming and video on a truly cinematic scale, nothing else here comes close.