Epson - Home Cinema 1440 Ultra Bright 1080p 3LCD Projector - White

I purchased the Home Cinema 1440 without any first-hand reviews available on-line simple based on Epson's reputation for reliable office projectors. The 1440 form factor is based off of those office projectors, so it isn't truly a home theater projector from the ground up, but it certainly has the guts of one! I am pleased with my purchase and have enjoyed a few good movies on the setup already. The background story is this is an upgrade from a circa 1997 Sharpvision XV-H37U 3-LCD projector that at the time was state of the art. My old record-sized laser disks looked wonderful on it, but you would need to watch them at night or go through lengths to darken the room due to the low lumens of the projector. Somewhere along the line the bulb blew about 8 years ago, and it wasn’t worth fixing it due to bulb expense and that technology was marching on. I ceiling mounted the new projector, and struggled with finding the setting for flipping the image. It wasn’t in an intuitive location in the menus. Once found though, it was a breeze setting things up. I then played a Blue-Ray of “The Life of PI” while setting up the image. All I can say is I was STUNNED at the brightness, color saturation, and resolution of the image. This is on a screen that is 110” diagonal. Something I always liked about 3-LCD projectors is the apparent lack of being able to see individual R,G,B pixels on the output. The colors are blended on top of each other making the output look more like film than a TV. One thing this projector lacks is a very high contrast ratio rating. The assumption is that the far brighter output of this LCD projector requires a different technology to pass more light, so the blacks are not quite as black as some. For me, this isn’t an issue as experience shows that a bright high contrast image will “splash” light around a room and reflect off of the screen negating the need for “black” in a front projector. The only remedy is a darkly decorated room. So paired up with a new Yamaha RX-A1050 and a bunch of old mis-matched speakers, we watched a Blue-Ray of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Yikes! At the beginning when the old man comes up the stairs with the flashlight to Voldemort, it lights up the room like the flashlight was actually there! And this is in ECO mode to stretch bulb life to 4400 hours as rated. We then watched Despicable Me, and as usual, 3-LCD imagery has great color on animated movies. Pay attention to those Color Lumens people, it is truly a great rating that separates business projectors from Home Theater. Some notes: If you mount the projector with the optics centered on the screen and at the correct distance and height from your screen, you won’t need to keystone correct the image so you can maximize the resolution of the unit. Otherwise this projector will down-scale lines digitally, not optically to correct the image. Still, there is plenty of resolution to work with. ECO mode fan noise is very low, on full output the fan spins up faster and it becomes more audible. The projector is mounted directly overhead in our setup. I haven’t yet figured out how to have the projector turn on and off with the receiver. Many settings to wade through on the receiver still.

In 2005 I built my home with a dedicated theater. At that time I installed the Yamaha projector I just replaced with this Epson model. Considering the Yamaha lasted ten years and operated flawlessly until the last three or four months I would have been happy to replace with the same model, which of course is no longer manufactured. In mid-August I went to Best Buy and explained my intended use and they scheduled a Geek Squad site survey. After multiple no shows by Geek Squad, a tech finally showed up to spec out the project. He sent me a proposal from an email address which does not allow any response, forcing a return to the store. After returning to the store to place my order I came to learn a few weeks later the recommended projector had been discontinued. After another trip to the store, where the Epson projector is recommended a time for installation is scheduled. The install crew shows up without all of the parts required to install, which they only discover after they removed the old projector and partially installed the Epson. Ten days later after finally getting the remaining required parts to install, now mid-October, they return to complete the install of the new projector, a new blue-ray, and a new system remote. The next day I go into the theater and find that the audio and video are out of sync yielding the appearance of an old dubbed over Japanese horror flick, and I discover the remote is not programmed as requested. I call and email repeatedly, it is now mid-November and there is no response from Best Buy or Geek Squad. As for the projector itself, the picture quality is really quite good, however between the fan and the projector mechanicals the noise is quite annoying, and requires significantly increasing the sound system volume. This is not the right projector for any home theater, unless the projector can be placed in a separate projection room, and Geek Squad appears incapable of properly installing the projector they recommended. By the way, after much trial and error I have managed to get the audio and video in sync, although in TV mode if I switch channels I often have to shut the system down and restart on the desired channel to re-sync sound and picture. Still waiting for a response from Geek Squad or Best Buy. I have given up on both Best Buy and Geek Squad.

We purchased this product expecting it to support 3D. The printed best buy label for the product on the store shelf indicated that it supported 3D and the sales person helping us knew we were looking for that feature. Once we received the product (had to wait several days to order as it is not carried in the store) we found out that his model does NOT support 3D. Best Buy apologised and the local store management said it was a corporate issue as they are the ones that print the product labels for the store shelves. We asked that they remove the label or manually adjust it so others are not mislead. It's been over a month and the erroneous able is still on the shelf. We called Epson directly to get their advise as to which model we should purchase. They recommended the 3600e and offered us the same price that Best Buy was selling it for, free expedited shipping and no sales tax. We decided to order the 3600e from Best Buy after discussing with a store manager who reduced the Best Buy price by the amount of the sales tax and waived the shipping charge.

I needed the lumens to project onto a darker screen in an attempt to watch during the day while preserving black levels. While its brightest mode - Dynamic - was bright, the color was way off and had a greenish tint to everything. Cinema mode produces a much more pleasing picture at the the expense of brightness and so, in my setup, did not work for me. The picture also didn't seem as sharp as my Benq W1070. Also, the fan was very loud when the lamp was set to anything but eco. If your room needs a slight boost in brightness, this may be the way to go but if you are like the new wave of projector owners seeking a solution that makes a 100+ inch projected image look like a flat panel TV with ambient light present, you will need a brighter projector.

Bought this to make a home theater and absolutely love it. 4200 lumens is quite bright, I find that 3000 lumens is certainly sufficient. Would definitely recommend, but wait until it's on sale...16:10 is no big deal, you get used to seeing a very faint black line on bottom and top when watching 16:9 TV or movies. I don't even notice it unless I think of it. Like hearing fluorescent lights hum. Sorry to those of you who can now hear your fluorescent lights!

I recently purchased an Epson 1440 after careful research online. We have a very bright room and needed the 4400 lumens tro make sure we had a crisp picture quality. In addition we purchased an Elite Screen which is ALR(ambient light rejecting). The combination has been worth the money and adding a surround sound receiver...our total purchase was comparitable to a 75 inch screen. Our screen is 110" and the projector has enough power & options to fine tune it..

Epson has really hit a home run with its Home Cinema 1440 Ultra Bright 3LCD Projector. The images are crisp and clear with brilliant colors and deep blacks. My favorite feature is the built-in timer. The default setting from the factory is for two hours. If someone forgets to turn off the projector when finished watching it will turn itself off thereby preventing early bulb burnout. Awesome projector!

Bought this beautiful machine because I moved into my apartment and noticed that the living room was so big that my TV just won't do. So I went to Best Buy and bought the Epson. Now My living room feels like my very own movie theater. Also, I like to game out so imagine playing GTA5 on a movie theater screen. I'm going to be hibernating until summer.