17. Nothing But Pleasant Surprises

Looking at the menus, you find all the adjustments you'd expect, but also quite a few others that will have some users scratching their heads over what purpose they might serve. Like the PLV-Z4, the Epson has a plethora of possible adjustments for fine-tuning the screen output. There are seven color modes, including Dynamic, Theater Black, Living Room, etc.; there are adjustments for white level, black level, brightness, and contrast; there are sharpness settings with such functions as high-band and low-band enhancement, RGB gain, skin tone, gamma curve, and on and on. As you can see, you'll be able to tweak to your heart's content to get exactly the image you want, and purists will be able to approach perfection.

After making the basic adjustments to get a picture that looked good, we launched our series of movie excerpts to see what the 550 could do with some high-quality video.

Right away we noticed the relative softness of the image, which is typical of Epson products. You'll need to increase the sharpness level if you want a little more clear-cut image. Having done that, go into Theater Black mode and fiddle with the black and white levels and the contrast. With the automatic iris adjustment on or off, the images were natural and very close to what competing products deliver.

The sharpness left a little to be desired for our taste, but the black depth was excellent - possibly better than that of the Sanyo PLV-Z4. We quickly got engrossed in the show and forgot about the 550, which like the best of the other projectors we tested here, is very quiet.

Another point in favor of this product is its high brightness, specified at 1,200 lumens, which will let you change from a dark environment to slightly brighter lighting for more convivial occasions. The colors will be a little less faithful and the blacks less deep, but the image is bright enough that you'll forget those weaknesses.