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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bright! Superb Contrast and Color Balance for entry level HD projector, December 17, 2008
This review is from: Mitsubishi HC1600 720p DLP Home Theater Projector (Electronics)
Purchased this projector to be the focal point of my 13Ft x 20Ft "man-cave" in my basement-which has now turned into our favorite family room. Paid retail at a big box store to later have it price matched within 30 days for $760 to one of the Amazon sellers price that has a store in the area. With what i saved on the price match on the projector and an Onkyo HTS-5100B, i basically got a killer Bluray player for free. Its incredible what a serious beginner HD Home Theater/Projector rig you can put together under $1500 with products like the Mitsubishi HC1600 on the market.
It is projecting ~12ft onto a floor standing 80" 16:9 silver screen. System consists of an Xbox 360 w/ HD DVD player, a Panasonic DMP-BD55K Bluray player and HD Cable box(Optimum/Cablevision). The Xbox 360 and Bluray player both feed the picture via a 25Ft HDMI cable from an Onkyo HTR576 Receiver. Cable through Component.
Pros: The HC1600 delivered with its excellent brightness and superb image contrast. The picture is quite outstanding regardless of media, fast paced Xbox 360 games like Gears of War2 and NBA2k9 have great colors, sharp and solid contrast, and play without a hickup visually. No scaling lag notable, courtesy of DLP's superior response time. I am very happy with this projector's performance for gaming!
The same can be said of watching HD film Bluray or HD DVD's, the picture really pops for a 720p projector and i found the black levels to be surprisingly good(Go DarkChip2!). The picture puts up a fight against my Samsung 1080p 120hz 61" DLP. When the wife notices, it further cements ones judgement. When you take price/value into consideration, this Mitsubishi has made me a projector convert. Theres no better way to watch film on a large screen. HD Cable looks equally as vibrant via component, however cant say I've tested the VGA port as of yet.
HD cable sports look impressive, just like being at the game. This projector achieves a very bright picture in LOW LAMP mode, achieving a very close to Normal Lamp mode brightness by engaging the Sports Gamma Mode setting, of which sitting directly under the Projector the fan noise is super quiet. I cant say even in normal lamp mode the fan noise has become an issue either, never caught my attention and thats a good thing. I found color good out of the box, but it was not very far from the current sweet spot after a little tinkering with color and contrast settings. I found plenty of flexibility in framing the picture with its shutter functions,digital keystone, and vertical location options. It is currently custom shelf mounted. I have a dimmer switch and we can watch this thing with plenty of ambient light and be very satisfied with the picture. Remote is straight forward, nothing fancy but effective and is backlit.
Cons: If you are one who 'looks' for rainbows you may find'm on occasion.
For me its when I blink my eyes terribly fast or quickly pull your sight away from a moving image and back, its not some sort of 'ghost' that will haunt your viewing experience..lol. I dont suffer from eye fatigue/headaches watching this projector, nor have I had any of the dozen or so people that have auditioned or sat though a whole movie mention it or point it out. So i think the whole rainbows/DLP thing can be grossly taken out of context as most critical things one reads on the internet. I play lots of fast film content and video games through this thing and its not an issue for me.
My only other quirk is the lack of additional HDMI connections, but for a product in this price range I havent found another option that offers multiple HDMI.
Conclusion: I gave it 5 Stars because for the price it is not a pretender- it packs exceptional value and performance for an entry level rig, that is bright enough to use in non light controlled/ambient light filled environments and also serve well as a business projector. The color balance, solid contrast and brightness truly make the HC1600 a viable HDTV solution in the era of LCD and Plasma displays...only ala carte BIGGER picture!;-)
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Is a 720 projector second rate?, March 15, 2009
This review is from: Mitsubishi HC1600 720p DLP Home Theater Projector (Electronics)
I see today that this projector which I bought two weeks ago for $671 on Amazon is now $654. I had been considering the Panasonic AE-3000 which is the best selling 1080 projector. I happened to see the Mitsu and its low price and I bought it on a whim. I guess my whim threshold is around $675.
The Panasonic is not dropping in price. It has cost about $2,200 for the last half year.
So if the most popular 1080 Panasonic costs three times as the most popular 720 Misubishi, does that mean that the Mitsu is junk?
I don't think so.
When the 1080 projectors first were released a Dutch HT hobbyist group set up an experiment. They took a 1080 and a 720 model from a major manufacturer and showed them to their membership in a controlled setting. Most people thought they looked very much alike but a small majority favored the 720 version.
How could that be? Well 1080 LCD projector were generally less bright then. But the Dutchmen had tried to make the projected images equally bright. In the end they couldn't explain why the lower resolution projectors looked slightly better than the higher resolution machines.
Today 1080 machines are praised by all the reviewers as being sharper than 720 models. But remember these reviewers are all in the video equipment sales business in one way or another. You can't get demo models of new projectors unless you are seen as helpful by the manufacturers. If you imply that the latest technical advance in projectors is trivial you won't get invited to the preview demonstrations or get a test sample to review.
Video front projection equipment is almost never available in a standard store for critical review by the customer. Who has ever seen a 1080 machine side by side with a 720 machine? This makes the front projector customer uniquely vulnerable to a few "impartial" experts.
I'm not saying that there are no differences between a $2,500 or a $7,500 projector and a $650 Mitsu 1600. I'm just pointing out that few of us really are in a position to judge so we are forced to rely on the opinions of web journalists who have an economic stake in the question.
I suspect that under controlled conditions most people would ignore resolution differences between 1080 and 720 projectors. Brightness matters as does ANSI contrast - and the Mitsu 1600 has plenty of both. As a DLP machine it has no screen door. Screen door was a 480 problem for LCD projectors. IMHO color differences between projectors are also trivial. Most customers never adjust much of anything and of those that do probably as many misadjust as properly adjust. Some people prefer a rosy tinted picture just as some people liked HiFi speakers with a mid range bump.
I run my projector in a room with a ten foot wide window for which I have opaque drapes. However the Mitsu is so bright I can now watch TV in the daytime with the drapes drawn. Today is overcast and still winter, the screen is brighter than the view out the window. That probably won't be true in August. Nor would I suspect that the image would look very good at High Noon in the Kalihari, but I'm happy.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not Bad, but not as good as the HC1500, September 23, 2008
This review is from: Mitsubishi HC1600 720p DLP Home Theater Projector (Electronics)
I won't get too detailed, but this projector was one of two projectors I had in my mind to buy. I bought this unit and the optoma hd65, and I wound up keeping the optoma due to the better color reproduction that the unit produced. The Mitsu has wonderful sharpness and extreme brightness, but overall satisfaction, I went with the Optoma. I actually had a test room with both units running on different screens (side by side) and the optoma right out of the box had much better color. Especially the black detail. The mitsu really had issues with the black detail. If you want a much more extensive review, check out projectorreviews.com. I have nothing to do with them, but they do extensive testing and research.
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