Mitsubishi HC6800 LCD HD Projector (30,000:1 on/off) - Page 9

Thanks for the reply. I did look at the projector central review, but I'm not a big fan of Evan Powell reviews. Art's review should be a lot more in depth and I am looking forward to that.

I forgot to ask in my other post, does the 6800 have a sealed light path, or is there going to be a concern for dust blobs?

Santa,

I understand you own a DaLite High Power. What are your thoughs on this? Teaming the HC6800 with the High Power. I would like a bright screen, but would this impact negatively the contrast ratio or black levels? My sitting angle is not wide and I plan to have the PJ on a rack (not ceiling) closer to the viewers eye level. I understand this follows the high power installation criteria.

My understanding is that all LCD-based projectors are not completely sealed.

Having said that, I'm not sure some FP's are probably less prone to dust blobs than others. I know that the 6800 touts a more advanced type air filter. Whether that really equates into fewer dust blobs I can't really say...

phisch -- The light path is not sealed (AFIK non of the LCD PJs have sealed light paths). However, if you follow the manual instructions and remove and vacuum the air filters every 100 hours of use, you should have no problems.

I have the older HC5500, and I clean my filters every 100 hours. I have a dusty house, and if the filters look too dirty, I wash them in warm soapy water (using a couple of drops of Palmolive dish soap - I've done that twice). Just be sure to thoroughly dry the filter elements before re-installing them.

At just over 1700 hours, I've never had a dust blob. The filter is a double filter, so make sure you put them back in in the right order (the black foam filter goes on the outside - the side facing the room). The filters are on the side of the HC6800 and are easy to remove without disturbing the PJ (read the manual!).

mariokrt64 -- I have a 106" Da-Lite, pull-down, High Power, screen (bought from the AVS store). The black levels look just fine (unless I put my hand into the light path). A regular (gain -1.0 to 1.4) will work fine, but the High Power screen will be much brighter (with some degradation of black levels - that's the price you pay for a very bright image). I've had to calibrate my PJ to the absolute lowest light output level in order to not blind myself. In that regard, a "normal" screen would have been better, but I can't afford to replace my screen right now.

Some DI setting suggestions:

I finally took some time tonight and really experimented with the various DI Auto settings. I moved between modes 3, 4 and 5 for the most part.

After checking some key scenes in the movie Monsters VS Aliens, I have found that mode 5, while delivering the deepest blacks, has some noticeable "pumping" on certain scenes. Mode 3 on the other hand, seems to be the best overall mode, in that it produces fairly deep blacks with a noticeable lack of pumping.

Here is the key scene that really shows the difference: Around 20 minutes into the movie, a scene ends with Susan crying in her cell as she slowly drops to the floor. The next scene begins after a few seconds of total blacks and transitions into a space scene that pans toward Galaxar's space ship. With mode 5, the levels of black within the transition noticeably pump. With mode 3 it fades to black and stays black until the next scene starts. To see this, I had to get my room as dark as possible, but once I did the differences were startling.

Check it out...

One other thing after some detailed viewing tonight: I understand that no picture is perfect (etc. color and white uniformity is never 100% spot-on, etc.)
My particular unit is excellent in most ways (no dust blobs, no dead pixels, convergence is almost perfect). However I have discovered a slight flaw in my unit.

Normally this would not be an issue, however this flaw reminds me of the original reason I returned my HC5000 a month after buying it almost three years ago. I want to make sure that no one else can see this issue and that it is not some kind of chronic problem with the 6800.

** Warning ** If you are satisfied with your 6800 and don't want to go looking for minor flaws then read no further - you have been warned

However way you can, find a scene that has very light or bright skies in the upper half of the picture. Using the setup menu to display a totally white screen will work as well. On my unit, on the right side of the picture about 1/4 way down from the top, there is a very light band about 3-5 pixels in length (vertically), that starts from the right edge of the screen and fades out by the time you move to the left side of the screen. I can only see this with white or bright scenes, especially when the camera is panning up and down. Otherwise it is totally invisible. I hesitate to return my unit because of this, because the next unit could be worse or have different issues.

But since I was one of the first persons to identify a much worse banding problem in the early versions of the HC5000 (which eventually led to a recall by Mitsubishi), I just want to make sure that this is not another chronic (albeit very hard to spot) issue.

Please keep in mind that I just finished watching Monsters VS Aliens on BluRay, and the 6800 presented about a spectacular a picture as I've ever seen on ANY projector with ANY movie. The 6800 is the
REAL deal.

(P.S. I eliminated my screen as a potential source of the issue, by rolling it up and down. I also made sure that the projection lens was as clean as possible)

briandx -- That almost sounds like a static electricity issue. Like a charged wire is running along one side of the panels.

If you can only see it by examining the screen very critically, I wouldn't worry about it. But it's good that you brought it up.

Here are a couple of additional observations regarding the 6800 after indulging myself with weekend programming such as Penn State football, Mad Men and Dexter:

First, I noticed that the small banding issue that I have been experiencing seems to mostly disappear when I move to a sofa on the left side (looking forward) of the projector. Weird. Maybe it is my screen. Now this baby is absolutely going nowhere! However, on the left side of the projector the fan noise, while mostly unobtrusive, is still audible on quiet passages.

So, I decided to play with the low lamp mode. After playing with it for an hour (and bumping up the brightness from 0 to +3) I actually prefer this new setting. The picture seems to have more depth and a more 3-D look, while still being noticeably brighter than my old Panasonic 2000 on high lamp mode with the brightness turned up about 10 notches.

At this setting, the projector is virtually silent, and the lamp life now doubles to 4,000 hours.

For you 6800 owners out there, I would check this out.

I have only used low lamp mode. In my totally dark room, it is still so bright it looks like a giant plasma even in low lamp mode.

Once, I turned the lamp to high and the mode to "high brightness" and had to put drops in my eyes afterwards!

So your brightness setting of zero is based on low lamp mode?

Yes. But, I have since had to raise my brightness level to +1.

Thanks for this- I have moved my setting back to 3 as well.

That's what this Forum is for; Mutual self gratification!

I was also curious. Do you have the means the calibrate (as best you can) the next brightest setting on the 6800? The reason that I ask this, is that there are several hours during the day where I could use the 6800 for "casual" use (sports, news, etc.), however due to the indirect light in my living room I need a brighter setting in order to be able to properly see the image. If so, please publish your results when possible.

Regards,
Brian

I have been informed that the HC6800 is available, but is not on sale price yet. Do you think that it might go on sale for the Thanksgiving Holiday sale? I'm going to get one, but wonder if I should wait until a sale come up or will it stay at this price for a while??

Currently Best Buy / Magnolia has it for the suggested street price, however a few days ago they had a 10% store coupon that you can use for the 6800.

A few folks have been able to purchase this below $2K. Perhaps by Thanksgiving this will be normal price?

I was at Best Buy a few days ago and the manager was willing to drop the price a few hundred dollars on the 6800, so it looks like there is some wiggle room with their pricing. I do believe that it will be fairly easy to get one of these at $2k or less in another month or so.

phisch -- Dream on. If the HC6500 was any indication, their prices didn't change much at all until at the very end, when they needed to clean out their warehouse stock. They do have lots of "wiggle room", any discount depends on what their store costs are (labor, warehousing, etc.), and how greedy the individual store managers are.

What is all your other settings at with the lamp mode set to low?

I copied my settings from larrimore; they should be available a few pages back on this thread.

As far as pricing is concerned, the low range seems to be below $2K, the middle around $2.2K, and the high is the suggested selling price of $2499.

I have the tools, and will try to get around to it soon. However, it does take an hour or so to properly calibrate grey scale- so it may take me time. To be honest, it is not high on my list, but I may try to do it just in case I want to have my ususal football party for new years.

Mitsubishi has always been notorious for keeping pricing in line with MAP. It does appear that the 6800 is available for $1999 if you look around, most likely a response to the Panny AE4000 pricing.

Thanks! Much appreciated

FYI.. Another night of viewing (Criminal Minds, CSI NY) has convinced me that the low light setting is the way to go. The picture seems richer and more 3 dimensional. My admiration for the 6800 continues to grow by the day!

you guys are both long time AVS members, what made you choose the 6800 over the Panasonic 4000, new Epson models, etc?

I have the HC5500 that CT_Weib has. I think it's a great projector for the $$ at the time it was released last year. I also have the high power screen as well. It's super bright but contrast and blacks have always been a concern. I used to like the blinding bright image, but recently moved and now have a light controlled room. I have the HC5500 pointed at a painted wall, and while it's not as bright as I'd like, I can see a noticable difference in contrast / blacks so I might reconsider my screen options for the new project.

I am going for a 2:35:1 / 16:9 masked setup like this fellow member did here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...0#post17238820

I am guessing the 6800 has the same shrink/zoom features the 5500 does to be able to pull this off.


What screen are you folks using with your 6800?

Was wondering the same thing! Would really appreciate the feedback. I'm looking at a new pj as I just sold my 6500UB. Got a sweet price for it - very minimal loss!! I've got the AE4000 and 8500UB on my list but I'm a bit of a sharpness guy and am intrigued by the Mits line. No opportunity to see them where I live so I'd have to go on reviews and fellow AVS members advice. I've got a living room set-up so I know I did not get the most out of the 6500UB. The CFI was nice and would miss it, but I've always believed that the sharper the pic - the more 3D it would appear.
This shrink/zoom thing sounds interesting too, but is this done without an add on lens?

Whenever I get asked about projector choices, I generally mention that the actual differences in picture quality are going to be relatively small when you compare the 6800 to the 4000 or 8500.

The qualities that I value in a projector are based partially on my viewing acuity (which is still 20/15 corrected), personal choices (love sharpness, hate projector noise), and my actual viewing room conditions (living room with some ambient light, 92" 1.0 gain Vutec screen, 16 feet throw distance).

Rather than mention what I don't like about the 4000 or 8500 (which I have not seen), I'll quickly describe what I do like about the 6800:

1) Fabulous combination of picture sharpness, color accuracy, and a non-digital looking image
2) Very bright in the "best" (cinema) mode. This allows me to use the lower lamp settings, reducing both noise and prolonging lamp life
3) Virtually dead quiet operation
4) True video blanking for optimal picture geometry/overscan setup. See previous postings in this thread for a more detailed description of this.
5) Focus, horizontal and vertical shift, and zoom are all motorized.
6) A Dynamic Iris that REALLY works. The best I've seen yet, hands down.

Since I use a 1:85 to 1 screen with no need for anamorphic settings, some of the "gee whiz" features of the 4000 are not that important to me.

Remember though, your mileage may vary!

I'll quickly add more more thing to my Mitsubishi 6800 observations:

I've owned four LCD projectors since late 2006: Mitsubishi 5000, Epson 1080, Panasonic 2000, and my current 6800.

IMHO the two Mitsubishi units were a noticeable step up from the other two units, due to their sharpness and other various qualities. After I returned my 5000 after two months (early product banding defects that were later fixed) I was never totally happy with my next two choices. With the 6800 I am again in the zone!

I cannot speak for others but we always have it discounted.

I occasionally try and spread the word about the Mitsubishi's CIH abilities in the 5500 thread and since there seems to be some interest here...

Yes, the 6800 also has the built in 'shrink method' for doing constant image height. You simply change 'screen size' to 2.35:1 in the advanced menu settings. Then you fill your 2.35:1 screen with a scope movie just like using the zoom method. Hitting the 16:9 AR button will instantly downscale or 'shrink' 16:9 material the perfect amount to fit on the 2.35:1 screen. Yes, you lose resolution, but as long as you are sitting where pixel structure is not an issue, the results should be very good (the Mits projectors are known for having great scalers) Check out the above linked post (and a few more after it) for feedback from a 5500 user. Of course if you already have a Mits projector, just try it out for yourself...

This method actually has some advantages over the zoom memory feature in the Pannys. You have direct remote access to the ARs vs going through a couple of menus on the Panny. You also don't have to worry about losing accuracy(zoom/focus) or the parts wearing out over time (don't know if this happens but it seems like a possibility...) You even get the added benefit of maintaining constant brightness and calibrations for both aspect ratios.(Not the case with the zoom method)

BTW, I've been using the shrink method for months now with my RS1 and an external scaler (Lumagen HDP). I know I've done enough testing to feel confident I'm not losing any detail. Quality transfer 1.85:1 BDs simply look spectacular. Having this feature built into a projector seems like an amazingly cost-effective way to accomplish a classy, convenient CIH setup. (Hey Jason, do I get any kickbacks if I make you a sale?)

They did such a nice job with this.... it is a pity they did not do CFI... as good as their coding is on the rest of the firmware I believe they would have done a good job.

YMMV at any Best Buy.[/quote]

Help me out here..What does that mean???