[Keith Hurst]

Here you go peeps...

http://www.projectorcentral.com/mitsubishi_hc5000.htm

KH

[the_oldhams]

Does not say much about image quality/contrast etc. - too much waffle about lens shift etc. Waiting for the one from projectorrevieews.com - they are also meant to review AE-1000 soon as well

[Anim]

They have gone LCD now i see, thats interesting. Scaler/de-interlacer sounds nice too and with upconverting all our normal stuff that should extend SD shelf life a little more. Its these kinds of advancements and value for money that make the projector scene a very exciting industry for punters like us.

Anim

[Keith Hurst]

Yes exciting is not the word.... The PJ market has been blown wide open this year with some of the releases that are coming out, and the prices they are coming out at !!!!

KH

[Zag]

Originally Posted by the_oldhams

Does not say much about image quality/contrast etc. - too much waffle about lens shift etc. Waiting for the one from projectorrevieews.com - they are also meant to review AE-1000 soon as well

I couldn't agee with you more. That review my PJcentral was diabolical. It doesn't tell me anything really. Also how can PJcentral also give a 5 star peformance rating to the AX100 and the Z5. Does it mean they are just as good as the HC5000 for a lot less money???

I want to know how good the ANSI contrast and black level is with these new D6 C2 fine panels in comparison with DLP and SXRD.

I trusted PJcentral once in the past I bought a PJ based on one of their reviews. Never again will I make that mistake. I think they're reviews are almost useless to be honest. There are much better sites out there.

[keep_it_legal]

Try the one at www.projectorreviews.com then.

Although they do seem to give every new projector their 'Hot product award'

[Zag]

I would have but PJcentral beat PJreviews to it.

A much better review. Direct link below.

http://www.projectorreviews.com/Manu...00BL/index.asp

[warbie]

Sounds good.

I'm a litle worried these 1080p projectors are going to cost an arm and a leg in the uk. The Pearl seems to be one of the cheaper options and it's 3.5k!

[Zag]

For most people, according to Art's review, will be better off with 720P projectors anyway.

The benefits of 1080P only really come apparent at lower sitting distance to screen width ratios.

What does that then say about 1080P Plasmas and LCD TV's???

Anyway back to the HC5000. Sounds like a great machine in terms of colour, sharpness, processing and contrast, just very concerned how close in price it will be to the Pearl.

[VirusKiller]

Originally Posted by Zag

What does that then say about 1080P Plasmas and LCD TV's???

Quite. 50" is the minimum size. Complete waste on a 42" or smaller display IMHO. Our peers in the US have enjoyed HDTV for many years and they typically use 60" (4:3 diagonal) screens.

Anyway back to the HC5000. Sounds like a great machine in terms of colour, sharpness, processing and contrast, just very concerned how close in price it will be to the Pearl.

I agree on all counts. Pearl is now available for £3250 from a trusted dealer. I think that the 1080p LCDs will have to have at least £750 clear air between them given the quality of the Pearl and its much higher calibrated lumens.

Unless the 1080p projectors have much improved contrast and black levels, they aren't very attractive purchases regardless of the rez. Sure 1080p from clean 1080p sources will look very good, but unless the contrast and black levels is a significant jump up from the current crop of 720p LCD's like the Sanyo Z4/Z5, Panny AE900/AX100, Hitachi TX200 (HDP-J52) and the Sony HS51A (HS60) then there isn't much there to bite on. I must see way better contrast and blacks in the next projector I buy. I like my TX200, so upgrading has to provide significant improvements in order for me to justify the costs, and in this case, the difference in quality of blacks/contrast must be looked at in terms of what it costs me. The 1080p C2Fine lcd projectors like the Mits HC5000 must compare very favourabley to the 720p units AND not cost too much more, otherwise, it isn't worth it. Again, as far as resolution goes, its nice to have higher rez and more detail, but my priority is contrast/blacks first, higer rez second.

[Oakleyspatz]

Originally Posted by morkys

Unless the 1080p projectors have much improved contrast and black levels, they aren't very attractive purchases regardless of the rez. Sure 1080p from clean 1080p sources will look very good, but unless the contrast and black levels is a significant jump up from the current crop of 720p LCD's like the Sanyo Z4/Z5, Panny AE900/AX100, Hitachi TX200 (HDP-J52) and the Sony HS51A (HS60) then there isn't much there to bite on. Again, as far as resolution goes, its nice to have higher rez and more detail, but my priority is contrast/blacks first, higer rez second.

Then surely DLP should be the way to go for you then? Better blacks/contrast than LCD or are rainbows a problem?

Rainbows have been bothersome for me most of the times I haved checked out dlp. I usually get Head-aches too, which is more of my concern. Something about dlp just looks soft and weird most times. I will check them out again, but motion-blur and dithering are also not my fave video artifacts.

[AML]

I wanted to ask about 3 new 1080p Pj's.

First the Mitsubishi in this thread followed by the Pany AE 1000 and the new Epson TW 1000.

The Epson has HDMI 1.3 while the mitsubishi is still 1.2. Does anyone know what the pany is?

Im leaning towards pany coz of the 14bit processor http://panasonic.jp/projector/ae1000/imaging.html

But i like the HDMI 1.3 in the Epson.

The Mitsubishi also has many good points.

Price wise, in Japan they are all the same 350.000 yen (about $3500 US)

[Zag]

Originally Posted by morkys

Again, as far as resolution goes, its nice to have higher rez and more detail, but my priority is contrast/blacks first, higer rez second.

I agree. I was hoping this year to see a 3 chip 720P DLP machine for around the price of the Pearl to be honest but obviously it's too expensive and too risky to bother making with the advent of 1080.

In terms of contrast though I don't think the HC5000 will offer much of an improvement over my current HS60, and to be frank I doubt even the Pearl with offer a night and day improvement over it.

For me though the most important improvement I want to see in these new LCD projectors is the elimination of picture artifacts most specifically vertical banding. I have slight VB on my PJ and I find it spoils an otherwise very good picture.

If I wasn't prone to the RBE I'd go for an Optoma H81 by virtue of its contrast improvements over the Pearl.

My top runner for a PJ upgrade is still the Pearl closely followed by the HC5000.

I, like many other people are eagely awaiting the 1st reliable shootout between them.

[grunta]

Another review here, no screenshots though:
http://www.hdtvexpert.com/pages_b/hc5000.html

Overall, very positive regarding overall image performance,
with some very minor points re shadow detail and auto iris function.

It would appear to be very good value for money - at least at US prices.
We'll just have to see when it is announced in the UK!

[Alistair_M]

Another review (in german) - mostly very positive

http://www.cine4home.de/tests/projek...HC5000Test.htm


Is this projector up for preorder anywhere in the uk yet?

I tried to translate but not much luck so far. Babelfish is useless as it gives me a "error" and google left out the last part of the review. Anybody else?

EDIT - ok I got it to work this time.

I want to see the Mitsubishi in action.

Quite frankly, I want to see a Hitachi PJ TX x00 using these panels. I would love the C2Fine panels and Hitachi's colour uniformity adjustments, gamma and colour tweakability and dual-iris

[VirusKiller]

The one major issue identified by cine4home (who usually do excellent and thorough reviews) is a poor PAL film mode . However, there are comments knocking around AVSForum that all the review models have this problem and Mits are trying to fix it for production models.

[richard plumb]

Originally Posted by VirusKiller

The one major issue identified by cine4home (who usually do excellent and thorough reviews) is a poor PAL film mode . However, there are comments knocking around AVSForum that all the review models have this problem and Mits are trying to fix it for production models.

I was about to say that'd be a deal killer, but as most HD seems to be conforming to US 60Hz standards, maybe its not the end of the world? Still, they need to get it fixed pronto

[VirusKiller]

Quite. The Reon processing is one of the key selling points for which they are charging a premium.

[VirusKiller]

Has anyone else spotted that noise reduction is not available for any HD input?

[Zag]

I like the reports of the better sharpness of this unit over the Pearl. Sharpness without any screendoor could be enough to tip the balance of this unit for me. Although I am concerned about the lack of transparency in the operation of the DI but I'm sure the PAL problem is more easily fixed.

Does anybody know how the Mitsubishi HC5000 does with 1080i ?

Is noise reduction important? I don't know if my Hitachi TX200 has it.

[VirusKiller]

It looks like the Mits does very well with 60Hz material, be it 480i or 1080i. The 50Hz performance would appear to be the deal-breaker for me though (at the moment).

[samhain]

These PAL issues that are mentioned in cine review. In laymens terms what exactly is the problem and how can it be overcome?

Unfortunately, these outstanding results did not repeat themselves during the half-image feeding of film material: with film material, each cinema picture is divided into two half-images and transferred, which afterwards must be adequately merged by the de-Interlacer. With our PAL standard the film is accelerated from 24 into 25 pictures/sec. and the 25 frames are changed into 50 half-images. Task of the HQV would now be to merge those 25 original pictures together again. HQV signal processing exhibits such PAL Film mode, but stability leaves much to be desired. With the usual test film scenes the projector falls out of film mode again and again in very short distances, which immediately leads to picture unrest and loss of sharpness. Here we clearly expected more, particularly since a Denon 2930 DVD player with the same chip set obtains clearly better results.


For watching TV the de-interlacing characteristics of the HC5000 are outstandingly suitable . The television picture is astonishingly sharp in detail. With Film material its a different story. Here should one should fall back to a good DVD player with Progressive Scan to get the best quality.

[phillfyspoon]

it means the onboard deinterlacing for a PAL film is poor, some pj's ignore the PAL market.

The way to sort it is to deinterlace the material from the dvd player, so if your watching a PAL film a good quality progressive scan player is needed for good quality.

[samhain]

Originally Posted by phillfyspoon

it means the onboard deinterlacing for a PAL film is poor, some pj's ignore the PAL market.

The way to sort it is to deinterlace the material from the dvd player, so if your watching a PAL film a good quality progressive scan player is needed for good quality.

Cheers for this.

How do you think it will be with Sky or Sky HD and XBOX 360? My 360 upscales over VGA so would this be the source to use for PAL films until I get a decent DVD player.

[phillfyspoon]

Tv material will be fine and the sky HD and 360 will be progressive in native form so no problems there, Im not sure how good the 360 is as a player but set it to output progressive and your be fine untill you can get a decent dvd player.

Hi

I've been looking at the HC5000 and according to Mitsubishi they have updated the firmware on the HC5000 to version 3.0 (nearly all of the reviews - def the USA ones - will have been on v2.0 machines). The update to the firmware is to take care of issues they became aware of with PAL.

Hope this helps