EMP-TW10H

The successor to Epson's EMP-TW10, the EMP-TW10H improves on its predecessor's brightness and contrast, but uses the same LCD resolution.

The EMP-TW10H has rounded lines and a silver and white chassis. It has a widescreen resolution of 854 x 480 pixels. This vertical resolution is perfectly matched to material using the US NTSC broadcast standard, but falls short of the 576 lines required by standard definition PAL TV, DVD movies and games consoles. All content has to be rescaled to fit, shedding image definition on the way. Because the EMP-TW10H lacks a powerful image processor, it doesn't do this effectively, and artefacts like moire and interline flicker appeared on composite and S-Video signals (but not on our progressive scan tests).

Colour was also excessively vivid at the projector's default setting, so you'll probably find yourself toning down the saturation. Other irritations include the lack of backlighting on the remote control and a rather high level of fan noise at full brightness mode. Depending on how close you are to the screen (and how sharp your eyes are), you may also spot the lines between the pixels-this is known as the 'flyscreen effect'.

These niggles aside, the EMP-TW10H was pretty quiet in Theatre mode, and offered a respectable level of contrast for an LCD projector when used in a darkened setting. The internal speaker is handy, though unsurprisingly low-powered, and it was easy to set up and operate.