Home Theater Hero

RATING

EPSON’S Home Cinema LCD projector lineup ranges from basic, inexpensive beamers designed for portable use to high-end models meant for serious home theater installations. Of these, we typically devote space to the company’s premium UB (Ultra Black) offerings such as the 5050UB 4K PRO-UHD (reviewed in the August/September issue and also on soundandvision.com), along with mid-range models like the 3800 under evaluation here. A big plus of the Epson projector family is that the costs usually top out at $3,000, with mid-range offerings priced about one-third to onehalf that amount while providing many of the same features found in the high-end offerings.

To provide one example of the above, the Home Cinema 3800 ($1,699) features the same 4K PRO-UHD technology and HDR10/Hybrid Log-Gamma display compatibility found in the 5050UB ($2,999). Epson’s 4K PRO-UHD tech diagonally shifts the pixels on the projector’s red, green, and blue 1080p display chips to double resolution to just over four million pixels. While this process doesn’t deliver the four-times onscreen resolution boost (to 8,294,400