Epson Australia has launched its most advanced home theatre projector to date, the Epson EH-LS12000B 4K PRO-UHD1 laser projector.

Shane the Gamer’s Darren Price was one of the first to watch this new projector at the product launch in Epson’s Sydney HQ.

Epson had set up a makeshift cinema, complete with hotdogs and popcorn for a select group of technology journalists to view the EH-LS12000B 4K PRO-UHD1 laser projector in action. Whilst a price tag of the best part of nine grade Australian, its an investment that is out of reach for most, however, when you consider that LG over an 83” 4K TV for about the same money, home theatre projectors are getting, comparatively at least, a lot more affordable.

According to Epson, the EH-LS12000B redefines 4K theatre-quality expectations for home theatre viewing, faithfully reproducing all source material the way the original content creators and artists intended. The projector incorporates an all-new laser array light source, next-generation image enhancement, and processing algorithms, expanded HDR10+ and HDMI 2.1 support, and real-time scene adaptive correction.

Epson’s representative was at pains to explain that they are effectively all about the end result. As they should, and like you, the consumer, should be. It is easy to get tied up in technical specifications. It’s something that I’m really bad for, it is like a fear that you are missing out, even though you should be very happy with what you are provided with.

The Epson presentation included a few scenes from Godzilla vs Kong, a movie that for what it lacks in a coherent plot more than makes up for in the sort of outlandish action scenes that are perfect fodder for showing off a home cinema projector. The picture quality, especially the brightness of the explosions was totally immersive. There was no rainbow from the LCD projector (something that can drive me mad), and all-in-all a pretty perfect cinema experience. It did detect a cheeky bit of motion smoothing, but it was subtle, unlike that employed by the audio-visual heathens in your JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Normans.

A short clip of 1914 was also used to show off the projector’s picture processing. The device removed the artefacts caused by a panning shot across a wooden fence. Again, the subtle use of visual processing helped maintain the cinema film look but still create a better home theatre image. It made me question my usual policy of switching off all the bell and whistles that can make epic movies look like a 1980s videotaped sitcom.

The EH-LS12000B produces a beautiful image, the likes of which you’d be paying double the money for only a few years ago.

Epson explained that the big problem with a 4K projector is maintaining brightness. To produce a picture with the brilliant brightness required for HDR, Epson’s boffins have come up with a unique solution. Imagine a 1080p picture, it’s made up of two million dots, but really, it’s a grid with two million holes that light shines through. Up the resolution to 4K and you have a grid with eight million holes that light is shining through.

The more pixels (holes) on the (same sized) grid the less light can get through. Rather than go for a larger LCD or a larger, brighter lamp (and associated costs / fans / noise) the EH-LS12000B uses pixel shift technology that effectively splits the 4K image up into 4 sections and tilts the projector to produce the 4K display via a 2K output.

Before you go “hold on” (as I did), yes, you still get the same 4K image displaying 8.3 million pixels at a resolution of 3840 x 2160, but with a higher maximum brightness. Epson states that the projector is capable of up to 2,700 lumens of colour and white brightness.

As well as demonstrating the projector playing movies, Epson also put on the game, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, a favourite of mine.

The laser optical engine created a rather exceptional and vivid image for the Viking game with the brightness, contrast, colour still looking very natural. The EH-LS12000B is capable of projecting a 4K HDR image up to the maximum 120 Hz supported by both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

The location of the projector shouldn’t be a problem when installing. This is helped by a front-facing exhaust, so the projector can be pushed to the back of a shelf, out of the way. The motorised 3-axis lens can be precisely shifted up to +/- 96% vertically and up to +/- 47% horizontally without any loss in picture distortion so you don’t have to have the unit in a central location.

The laser engine has a lifetime of up to 20,000 hours, which is about one movie a day for 18 years. After this time the projector will likely be unserviceable. The EH-LS12000B comes with a 3-year, 20,000-hour warranty.

Whilst still not cheap, the Epson EH-LS12000B 4K PRO-UHD1 laser projector is a huge step forwards towards affordable high-quality big-screen projection home cinema.

The post Epson launches 4K PRO-UHD home theatre laser projector appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Time to drag all those boxes of photos sitting in your cupboard into the 21st Century.

There was a time when I lamented the death of the physical photo. I intended, naively, to take the few hundred digital photos that I had taken down to Officeworks and get them all printed.

Well, those few hundred digital photos are now several thousand. It’s fair to say, no photo I’ve taken since 2003 is ever going to end up in a physical photo album. All our photos now tend to be stored on our hard drives, in our phones and in online storage.

But what about out old photos?

If you fear sticking you beloved memories into scanner, you can stop worrying. Epson’s FastFoto FF-680W will lovingly scan your old photos, by the box-load, in just a few minutes.

The setup is easy. You plug it in, insert the CD (or download the install software), follow the prompts, press the WPS button on your router and you are all set for wirelessly scanning your memories. You can also directly connect to your PC via USB.

The scanner itself is pretty small, easily small enough to fit in a bag to take around you relative’s house to plunder the family photos. This small size means that there’s no display. Just a load of buttons that, to be honest, are not very intuitive in their function.

The scanner unfolds to revel a feeder that’ll take up to A4, and a tray to catch your scanned photos.

Scanning is easy. You simply load your photos in the tray and press the scan button. On your PC, the driver software asks is you want to label the photos with the date and a prefix. The scanner quickly draws in each photo and places it in the tray.

Unlike most scanners, the FastFoto doesn’t make unnerving crunchy noises as if it is moments away from screwing up your original documents. The scanner is virtually silent, cleanly picking up your photos, even if they are dogeared, creased or have dried up mounts on the back. If you are nervous about a particularly important, damaged document or photo, the package comes with some protected sleeves for a bit of insurance.

As part of the scanning process you can elect to have the software clean up the images for you. As well as a cleaned-up image, you can also have the machine save an untouched image for each photo. I found the process a little harsh for some of my black and white photos, losing some of the detail in the dark areas, but perfect for cleaning up washed out colour photos from the early 70s.

The scanning software really breathed some life into my old childhood photos, making them pop like they never did before. The scanner also picks up anything on the back of the photos, scanning an extra image (appended with “_b”, the primary photo being “_a”). The scanning software isn’t magic, in that it won’t add detail were there wasn’t any, but it’s not far off it.

You can switch from 300dpi, which takes about a second to scan each photo, to 600dpi for archival quality scans (at about 3 seconds per photo) or to an interpolated 1200dpi resolution, which takes 10 seconds per photo, for enlargements and cropping. You can also choose to save as either jpg or tiff files.

The Epson FastPhoto FF-680W is an essential purchase for anyone with boxes of photos sitting around in cupboard. It’s easy to set up and easy to use. Scanning is ridiculously fast and it’s careful with your precious photos. A recommended product, for sure.

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