The Epson TW9400 is a 3lcd, high brightness, high contrast 4K pixel shifting projector with active 3D capabilities. At approx £2550 it's at a fairly unique, highly featured, very flexible and cheap price point for what it offers.

There is also the Epson TW9400W this is a white version at approx £2900 which comes with a wireless HDMI connection allows easier placement, though it's 10Gb and NOT 18Gb. You however can use a cable if you need this functionality (predominantly 4K, 60Hz HDR)

Technology - 3 x 0.74 inch LCD

Brightness - 2600 Lumens

Contrast - 1,200,000 : 1

18Gb HDMI & HDR10, HLG support

Eco (31db), Medium (35db) and High (45db) power modes (as measured) - Epson rated (20 db, 24 db, 31 db)

FUJINON 16 element glass lens

US Models

TW7400 is HC4010 in white & PC4050 pro in black, longer warranty, mount and extra bulb

TW9400 is the PC 6050UB (1,200,000:1) and very similar to the HC 5050UB (1,000,000:1)

Comparisons

4k Vs Faux K

4k IS better, it will be sharper, there's no getting away from this!

However to get much of the benefit from this expensive upgrade you either need a MASSIVE screen or to be sitting very close. Screen size and distance are related, this is how a tiny VR screen next to your eye can be perceived as a massive screen from the perspective of the viewer. The bigger the screen, the further away you can sit from it

We're approaching the limitations of the human eye and it's ability to resolve detail at distance. I've a 120" screen and I sit about 12 feet from it. You can certainly see an improvement by going to faux K, It's a smoother, more solid image. However Native 4K would not add much extra beyond what faux K is doing. I doubt the second row of seating behind me could tell much difference between Native 1080P and the Faux K.

Vs. DLP

DLP suffers from the colour wheel. It's a feature of the design. Some DLPs may have a higher stated brightness, but this drops heavily under calibration when trying to even get to close to Rec 709 HD standards.

DCI P3 is pretty much out and they won't get close to Rec2020, so Wide Colour Gamut isn't going to happen and High Dynamic Range.

All DLPs (at this time) are not Native 4k, they do a double pixel shift. This can give a slightly sharper image than the Epson in the right circumstance (see also 4k vs Faux K). They sit somewhere between Pixel Shifting and Native.

Vs. Native 4K

Sony & JVC now do native 4k. They are 2-3x and up in terms of price. The fact that the Epson is compared with them is very flattering to the Epson. The Epson TW9400 is punching well above it's price tag!

There is ALWAYS a better projector if you have more budget, however it may be worthwhile testing the Epson. The differences for the cost increase are not huge, particularly once you factor in the environment you are using the projector and your needs.

Colour/Brightness

The JVC's do a better job with DCI P3/Rec2020 than the Sony. The Epson is rated as brighter than both and can pip both with it's filter, but at a heavy light output cost. You get EITHER brighter than either of them, or More accurate colour.

The Epson just beats the Sony (VW260/VW570) in Natural for DCI P3 Colour and light output, whilst in Digital Cinema it gives the full DCI P3

The JVC does very close to DCI P3 and at a higher light output than the Epsons Digital Cinema accurate DCI P3, but doesn't have the option of Natural should you need more light and are willing to sacrifice a little more colour accuracy

Epson gives you the choice, which is possibly this projectors biggest advantage, you get to make the compromises that work for your situation.

Vs. Epson TW7400

The TW9400's "little" brother. Physically they share the same chassis, same light source, has the same firmware and a lot of the same features. It's list price is ~£2200, though can be got a bit cheaper shopping around. It's only available in white which hints as to it's aims.

It has slightly less quoted brightness (2400 lumens) and much lower contrast ratio (200,000 : 1), it doesn't have HLG but the big difference is the HDMI is 10Gb and not 18Gb as the TW9400 has. This means a choice of 1080P 60Hz HDR or 4K 60Hz SDR on many games machines and can limit which media players can be used.

If you don't need the 18Gb HDMI, budget is tight and the projector is going to be used in a Living Room type setting with light walls where contrast is already compromised then the TW7400 has a nice cost saving.

It looks like the settings are a little different too:

4 HDR presets in Dynamic Range replace the variable HDR slider on the 9400. There isn't an 8 point Greyscale CMS just offsets/gain

There is an Epson Superwhite setting added though!

The noise levels are also different to the TW9400 in both Normal (31 db)and high power mode (40db)

Vs. Secondhand

This area is far less clear cut as the price advantage of the TW9400 is reduced. For some people the risk of a few thousand pounds on a secondhand item is an instant no. For others it could be a bargain. A low hours, high end JVC is a very tempting prospect.

Personally it was missing out on a X9000 for £2800 that made me realise I could afford a substantial upgrade to my cinema set-up. The JVC is less bright but I would expect the black/contrast levels to be an improvement in my batcave set-up. For a 1080 source i'd expect it to be an improvement and probably sharpness of 4K. They are very good and respected projectors. However HDR is becoming the future, the Epson is new, supported and with warranty. The bulbs are significantly cheaper too. One came up for sale at a similar price, a couple of months after getting my TW9400 and I can't say I wasn't tempted though!

The X9900/X7900 will still be too expensive, probably the X9500 too. The X7000 is a bit old and perhaps even the X9000. I'd guess the sweet spot for second hand here would be a good X7500. There are however risks!

Installation

Epson Calculator - Use Home, TW9400 (though the TW9300 has the same throw and was used by people before Espon updated their calculator)

There has been some discussion about shelf vs ceiling as some earlier projectors used to increase the fan speed when inverted. This is not the case with this projector, so freely choose the method which suits you.

Some consideration should be given to how close the projector is mounted. Reviews show that min-max zoom is 30% light output (this is comparatively pretty good), so the closer your projector is to the screen for the size of screen you want, the more light you will have to play with. It could restrict later increasing your screen size, if that is something you may do.

I'd also advise as a general rule to go to at most 95% of any setting (min or max) - This gives flexibility and should there be any aberrations they tend to be towards the extremes of things.

W - Wifi model, not actually White - Alas this is older tech from the 9300W and whilst making installation easier at the ~£300 premium not needing to run a long HDMI cable, it is limited to 10gb. Fine for 4K, 24p HDR UHD, but will limit streaming services and gaming - See BLACK SCREEN in troubleshooting

Physical Setup

See here for a visual guide for an easy perfect alignment without needing to measure!

Calibration

Colour Modes

There are numerous colour mode presets on the Epson

Dynamic, Bright Cinema and Natural - All without the cinema filter - These are best for SDR

Cinema and Digital Cinema - These engage the cinema filter (you can hear it engage) - These are best for HDR

3D Dynamic - This is best for 3D SDR

3D Cinema - Engages the Colour filter which suggests 3D HDR?

Natural needs an extra mention as it operates slightly differently to the rest. The Colour temp is in Kelvin rather than a simple number. This is the best one for Calibration of SDR.

It is also recommended to calibrate a BRIGHT HDR mode using Natural as a base. Whilst the colours will be slightly less accurate than with the Cinema filter, there is a light cost to use it and some may prefer more light output depending on their installation (large screen, zoom, ambient light etc) and the film (high nits)

General user calibration

Non of the calibration settings will damage your projector. There are multiple memories to save anything whilst you experiment. There is a default button that will reset that individual setting to the projectors default and you can also reset the whole lot. You only have time to lose and you may improve things!

Brightness / Contrast

After getting the physical alignment, zoom and focus this should be your next stop.

These are easy to do using flashing patterns. Many Disney/Pixar discs have a Maximizer option in the settings. These can be used to set the brightness/contrast on bluray/3D. You can also use AVS HD709 patterns

Colour / Tint

If you have coloured Gel filters from various DVD/Blu-ray set-up discs these can help setting the options. There are flashing colour patterns where you look through the gel filter and match the flashing squares to the backgrounds.

Sharpness

There are 5 presets and Off. All of these adjust the settings below them, to preset levels, for quickness of setting. You can improve perceived details with these settings, but as ever there is no such thing as a free lunch. Any sharpness is artificially effecting the image and you can't sharpen one area without out sharpening the whole image, thus if it is a noisy image to start with, this will increase it, as such it can be a setting that is changed from film to film. Ironically the sharpest cleanest image is the one that tends to improve the most. Conversely, A grainy noisy transfer will look far worse with a high sharpness level.

Off - The purist setting. No perceived improvement, but no noise

1 & 2 - Very low noise, a low level of sharpness. Well worth a try

3 - Medium improvement at the expense of more noise

4 & 5 - High perceived improvement, but much lower accuracy of picture.

Iris

Off/Normal/Fast + 0-20 slider

The iris shrinks down to reduce the light output. On a bright scene it will be fully open to let the most light through, shrinking down for a dark scene to reduce light output and increase black levels and contrast. Fast does this a little quicker, but you may notice a little extra noise and light/dark/light/dark may make the iris pulse.

It can also be stoppered down. If the image is too bright, you can reduce the light output. Particularly handy for SDR images in a light controlled room. If the light output on a full white image is over 12-16fL then reduce it down to 12-16fL and with the Iris and you'll improve your black levels and the travel of the iris!

Beyond

You can view the grey scale patterns and see if they look the right colour. It is tricky by eye, but you may be able to improve any gross imbalance.

Some basic suggestions are listed here. Batcave enivorment, 100" screen

My settings and calibration journey are detailed on my Set Up Page

Projector Reviews Calibration details

Meter Calibration

To properly set the grey scale and various other settings a meter is highly recommended. This is an alternative to PRO calibration and can be quite a big rabbit hole to jump down. If you like fiddling with settings then it may be a better option to explore. If you just want to watch the best image, wait for approx 200 hrs for the projector to settle and call in a pro. This takes research, time and tools.

The general recommendation is for an X-Rite i1 display pro (~£180) - There are a few variants of this meter. OEM, Branded and Retail. All work with HCFR which is free. Some work with other paid software.

There is also the Colormunki Display (~£100) - This is the same physical meter. It is firmware crippled and has an artificially slow read time, it's about 70% of the speed. It supports some of the other paid software. For use with HCFR and grey scale calibration this is actually fine.

As a process guide, Set Brightness/Contrast, the work through the following list in order. It's worth getting reasonable values the first time round rather than accurate as they all interact, so loop through this at least twice.

Greyscale

The Epson has two main methods to adjust this. There is the more well know RGB Offset / Gain control in Custom. There is also a special Grey Scale section. This has RGB+/- for 8-1 levels. The projector also shows the grey scale levels or you can press <enter> and it shows the background.

I use Offset / Gain to move the RGB tracking levels to the best overall, Slightly low at black (1) because there is only gain and slightly high at white (8) because there is only cut.

GAMMA

There are settings +2, +1, 0, -1, -2, Custom

-2 equates to about 2.3-2.4 as a rough setting, though custom gives the opportunity to balance out the gamma more correctly

RGBYMC

Used to correct the colour component. There is Hue, Saturation and Brightness (Luminance) for each of the Primaries and Secondaries. Roughly hue is how much of the colour there is, Saturation how much grey and Brightness how much white. The first two move the colour on the Gamut Chart (colour space) and Brightness is involved with lumenance error. All three impact on the overall error Delta e.

HDR

This is a new an emerging standard that augments UHD / 4K. The Epson supports both HDR10 and HLG.

Use INFO - Projector Info to see what the projector is actually receiving

There is a slider in SIGNAL for HDR which has a setting from 1-14. This is a tone map setting. Adjusting it effects how bright and dark the image is and how it is mapped or compressed. 1 is the brightest setting. 14 is the darkest.

Alas there is no specific way to adjust this, beyond what looks good.

One HCFR tip is to use the override targets feature in the preferences menu, to set the diffuse white target to c.25% of peak to give a good APL with sacrificing spectacular highlights too much.

AVS HDR calibration thread and process for the prior model with HCFR, but mostly holds. Ccast uses a chromecast or shield and avoids level/window pattern issues

Modifications

Ekki Schmitt ( Cine4home ) has again created a Powerlite Filter for the TW9400 - Previous versions exist for the much older TW9200 and the TW9300 and were very well received by the reviews i have seen.

There is talk about it on this youtube video and details on the Heimkinoraum web site. It currently appears to be sold only to existing customers or new ones who purchase their new projector from them.

The filter is a much larger and higher quality filter than the internal Epson one, which is placed over the lens aperture (after the automated dust cap). Because of it's size, type and position the light loss for the HDR accurate colour modes of using Cinema/Digital Cinema is far less, because Natural is used and the filtering is external!!! This should give a big jump in accurate light HDR mode!

3D

The epson TW9400 is active 3D Capable using RF

Epson ELPGS03 are the epson recommended brand. Rechargeable battery, non replaceable. Usually the cheapest to buy direct from Epson currently £66 a pair - Edit -Epson appear to have stopped producing/selling any 3D glasses - Ebay/Cex etc may be the best source now or a 3rd party pair

Also know to work:

Xpand x105-rf-x1 - Recharable battery

3d3 Universal A1112 glasses - Wrap arround style. Rechargable battery

Samsung SSG-5150 (22g inc battery) have been reported to work and probably the older versions 3150 & 4150. These are headband style and use a CR1620 coin battery. There's a video review of them. This mentions the SSG-5100 (24g inc CR2025 battery) being a slightly older style revision, which are more readily available

The above spreadsheet is a comparison of what the 4 models of 3D glasses that I own, perform like when placed over my Spectracal C6 (EODIS3) meter in HCFR. A 100% white field was used and measured to be 100% for RGB then the reading was taken again with meter reading through the right lens. The glasses were off, so this is the colour cast of just the lens. You will get a second drop of perceived light when the glasses are used to watch 3D as one lens is black 50% of the time. This is why light output really counts for 3D and one of the reasons this epson is well positioned to give a great 3D image

Trouble Shooting

No Frame Interpolation (FI)

Fi is only available for 1080P or less signals. Check Info - Projector Info and see what the projector is actually recieving. Many players / amps scale up for Bluray/DVD/etc

Also to note is that FI and 4K for non 4K sources is limited to 24P - 50/60Hz will be FI or 4K

Black Screen

As per this user experience a black screen on initial set-up is likely down to cables/settings - If you are exceeding the bandwidth of a cable then it will result in a black screen. You should be able to get the menu up and check the projector info. You can reduce the settings on your amp/player to get an image and then order a Premium Certified HDMI 4K cable or equivalent - I got this 5m one off amazon for £15 or for longer lengths optical is recomended such as this ATZEBE at ~£50 for 10m though often on sale (I upgraded when at £35 for 10m).

3D Issues

With a Sony UBP x700 one user kept getting a non supported 3D device. Disable the Sony HDR/Dolby Vision settings from On/Auto to off. This may be Sony/Epson specific, but worth checking similar if you can't get 3D from other players.

Firmware Update

The USB drive must have just the .BIN file on it, extracted from the zip file. It must be formatted in FAT/FAT32.

A lot of more expensive USB drives have hidden security folders which can confuse things, there also may be some issues with larger USB sticks. Smaller older simple drives seem to work best!

Epson Support - Firmware location - currently : V1.02 - (25-May-2020) 44mb zip

NB. Your settings, memory and calibration are not changed when updating firmware, so all are as before

There is an Australian firmware at v1.04 (9/10/2020 ) - Alas lacking release notes means i do not know if to recommend and as such install at your own risk!

Observed Firmware changes (Epson oddly don't seem to provide release notes!)

1.01 - 04/02/2019- Fixes an issue where frame interpolation was disabled when 4k enhancement was enabled even if there was a 1080 signal. Further to this when someone asked Epson firmware notes had 1.01 Modified the Lens iris value and position in regards to the menu setting!

1.02 - 25/05/2020Potential HDR & E-shift improvements

1.03 - 3x shift on 4k 24hz vs normal 2x shift - observation on AVSforum by DaGamePimp (~july 2021)

1.04 - 02/11/2020

Service Menu

To access, Press Menu for 8 seconds, then press Esc twice

It gives some interesting information, Hours used and in what mode, firmware and hardware models, some signals seen and some error codes and descriptions. May be useful for troubleshooting and if curious, but no settings to change

Hitting the right key accesses more pages, Where there are multiple pages (signal) you can hit the down arrow for the next page!

There are 7 pages - Model, Versions, Codes, Error info, Temporary info, Signal Info and another log.

Useful links

AVS HD709 - Downloadable HD test patterns. (Rec 709 - Bluray/DVD)

AVS Mehanik HDR10 - Downloadable HDR10 test (DCI P3/Rec 2020 - UHD/HDR)

X-rite I1 Display Pro (EODIS3)

HCFR tutorial (french, but translation helps)

Contrast Vs Projector Vs Enviroment - How the room plays a massive difference

AVS Calibration basics - A guide to some of the basics of calibration

Lightspace Free - A limited DPS version of Lightspace

Reviews

HDTVPolska - Indepth Polish Review of the TW9400 (google translate helps)

Av Forum Norway - Review of the TW9400 (there's a google translate link on the page)

Passion Home Cinema - French review of the TW9400 / W (google translate helps)

Tech 4u - Italian review of the TW9400 (google translate helps)

AV Forum.no - Norwegian review of the TW9400 (google translate helps)

Turbofuture - Review including my settings from here!!!

Avforums - TW7400

Avforums - TW9400

HDTVPolska - Indepth Polish Review of the TW7400 (google translate helps)

Projector Reviews - USA varient (4010/4050) of the TW7400

Cinehome - German battle between the TW9400 and BenQ W5700 (google translate helps)

AVS Forum review of the 5050ub - USA variant

Techradar - 5050ub - USA variant

Projector Reviews - 5050ub - USA variant

Home Theater Review - 5050ub

HDTVPolska - Reference Polish Reviews of the Sony VW570 , RS540 (X7900) , RS420 (X5500)

Forums

AV Forums TW9400/7400

AVS Epson 5050\6050 Rumors?

AVS Epson 6050UB Specs & Manual

Credits

This is a bit of an AS IS resource. If it's useful to you then awesome. If you've got issues with it then there are plenty of other sites out there that may be more sympathetic to "MY projector is the best" kind of views. There may be a touch of bias as most of this are my views and I bought one, though I've tried to be reasonably subjective. Epson are not directly involved, I've received nothing from them apart from what I've paid for, alas! If there is some factual inaccuracy then by all means let me know ulfilias at googlemail should work. I'm also Alaric on AV Forums where a lot of this info has been complied from / for.

FYI - My Set-up

Stuff - This bit may have the odd thing in of use, bits i'm working on, bits to update or add above etc

https://www.avsforum.com/forum/139-display-calibration/2936334-calibrating-hdr-epson-5040-6040-projectors.html

https://www.avsforum.com/forum/139-display-calibration/1393853-hcfr-open-source-projector-display-calibration-software-379.html

https://www.homecinema-fr.com/forum/le-colorhcfr/tutoriel-colorhcfr-v3-t30082601-15.html

http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35322

https://www.lightillusion.com/hdr_calibration.html

https://www.lightillusion.com/manual_calibration_idiots_guide.html

http://performances-home-cinema.fr/2016/12/03/test-calibration-video-rec709-rec2020-epson-tw9300/

http://spearsandmunsil.com/2nd-edition-articles/

http://dtsman.fr.free.fr/hcm/index.html

The official version is 3.5.1.4, which I believe is on Source Forge. The latest beta I’ve seen is 3.5.1.7

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/hcfr-open-source-projector-and-display-calibration-software.1393853/page-715#post-61131669

3534 above