*Unofficial* Mitsubishi HC3800 Thread - Page 202

The IRIS is very configurable on the w6000. However, you can't increase the native on/off contrast with the IRIS set to manual mode in the service menu like you can with some IRIS's (mostly on LCOS projectors), but you can go in the service menu and reduce the overall light output much like a manual IRIS. I played with the w6000 at Fry's, it is better than the Mits hc3800, but it is only marginally better than the hc4000. Remember I owned both the hc3800 and the hc4000, and the hc4000 was a step up from the hc3800 (albeit incremental).

For some setups (mostly at farthest throws), the difference in black levels on the hc4000 and Benq w6000 (although it is there) will not be tremendous unless you don't mind a somewhat bouncy IRIS.

From what I saw, the Benq did have more image noise, but not THAT much, I mean it was marginal. If you sit really close to the screen, it may be noticeable (1.2x or less Screen Width). The Benq definitely is a tad sharper, but not that much. Comparing the hc4000 to the w6000, well I really didn't get to side-by-side the two projectors, so it's tough (especially given the room I was in). The biggest difference is going to be brightness and noise, the w6000 is A LOT brighter than the Mits hc3800 or hc4000, but it is noisier for sure. The second biggest difference is black levels, but I would put the Benq w6000's black levels pretty close to the Panny 4000 with the Benq being slightly behind once you tame the IRIS.

The 2 or 3 measured native contrast tests of the W6000 that I've read were around 1000:1 (one even being a little under 1000:1). or so I thought.

Ok, just did a little search and found 3 separate measured native contrast posts ranging from about 1000:1 to 1500:1 >>

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...1#post17657161

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...2#post20647182

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...8#post19417978

Possibly, but I'm not confident in those, there was another in the forum at 1800:1, and someone measured the w7000 at 2,200:1 (which is even brighter and has very few if any changes in optics). The w7000 is said to have about the same blacks as the w6000 from people that compared.

As a general rule that I've come to regarding black levels, I would only value an IRIS at maybe half the real value. For instance, if an IRIS does 10,000:1 on/off without being bouncy on a 1-2 second measurement, then to me it would be about the same as about 5,000:1 native on/off in my experience, as IRIS's do not help the image as much as native (obviously). I'm not sure this works out in a linear fashion however (is an IRIS at 5000:1 only equal to 2500:1, probably not, but would need to test). I guess it depends on the IRIS though. When people wait 5+ seconds to measure the black floor of an IRIS, that's pretty much a useless measurement anyhow.

Seeing is believing in this case, the W6000 throws a better over-all image IMHO and I own the HC3800 so no bias here.

The W6000 is not the way to go for a really small screen unless it's gray or something like an SI black diamond (which makes it look like a giant plasma). The BenQ appears to have every bit of the depth/punch that the HC3800 has regardless of measured CR (I think they are actually much closer than what many reviews claim).

If I have any bias here it's due to the incredibly sharp image the W6000 throws, after having a high end projector with a Konica-Minolta lens I have a fondness for sharpness/fine detail. This is an area where the sxrd/lcos units fall short even though their black levels can be drool inducing.

Jason

You can get the lumens down to 500 or less with the Service Menu tweaks using the w6000 IRIS settings. However, on the Benq w7000 we cannot yet find the IRIS tweak, because no-one knows how to get into the Service Menu as the code was changed for the w7000. So the w7000 is too bright for smaller screens, the w6000 not so much (although by doing this, you do lose some DI room until the lamp ages).

The difference between 2000:1 and 3000:1 is not ALL that much, but if you place a w6000 at farthest throw and a Mits hc4000 at farthest throw, you can tell the Mits wins if the Benq has the IRIS disabled (I did place both, although admittedly the w6000 was not in same room). Still the fact you can configure the w6000's IRIS to work like you want is a huge bones and the Benq does have much better blacks with the IRIS enabled.

IMO, not all LCOS fall short on sharpness, for instance the newer JVC's do not fall short on sharpness (I own the RS-45 and also owned the Mits hc3800/hc4000). It's every bit as sharp as the Mits hc3800 I had (except for pixel fill difference), but the JVC has better focus uniformity than any of the (6) Mits I have seen in total, and the Mits hc4000 I had was a tiny bit sharper than the hc3800 (the worse uniformity of the Mits allows JVC to beat the Mits in sharpness for text and things like that). There are MANY other reasons to knock the JVC's, but sharpness isn't one of them unless you get bad convergence. The Mits is much better at handling poorer sources than the JVC is, and the Mits handles noise and motion better, but it's not really sharper. My JVC RS-45 is so close even to the Benq w6000 in sharpness that you'd be hard pressed to miss any sharpness even in HTPC (a tiny little bit). Still there is some GAMBLE as with all LCOS and LCD, but the gamble on the JVC's convergence seems far less than any other model out there right now.

The JVC RS-55 with e-shift is the thing to get, that is what I would want if I could spend that much on a projector (I could but I'd regret it).

Well then you are very lucky because I have yet to see any sxrd/lcos that is as sharp as the W6000 or even my HC3800 (and they fall well short of the 12k mkII which is of course not really a fair comparison being a single chip DLP with a $3000+ lens).

All said the HC3800/HC4000 are very nice units and they are still tough to beat at the current prices.

Jason

I was shocked myself when I saw how sharp the JVC really was.

It's partly luck as always with any NON-DLP, but there are a lot of JVC's that are super sharp, as long as you get one with good convergence. My unit after warmup is on average 0.3 pixels off only on blue across most of the screen. Red is off in some parts of the screen maybe 0.1 to 0.2 pixels, but we are talking miniscule amounts that cannot be seen by the human eye even at pretty close distances.

There have been lots of expert owners of the newer JVC's that have said the same thing, several of the owners coming from the Planar 8150 and Runcos and Benq's and saying sharpness is not an issue on the JVC. In Zombie's shootout thread, he also noted the JVC was sharper than the Epson and Sony, and only beaten barely by the Benq w6000. The real key is for people just to be diligent and not accept imperfect units these days (get a return if convergence is off too much)... BTW, a poster in the benq w7000 thread that just got one said it wasn't as sharp as his JVC (but that's because his w7000 has the pixel mapping issue pending the firmware update).

The Benq is still sharper a little, but not enough to matter to most people (I swear).

Hey guys I am looking to upgrade my hc3800 and was wondering how much you think I could sell it for. Original bulb with about 1000hrs on low mode. Thanks

Not sure, but I've seen them sell for $800 not that long ago. I wouldn't pay $800 for a used one (not that the PQ isn't worth it, but I mean you can get a new hc4000 for $250 more).
However, people were paying around $800.

Right I was thinking around $600 I just wasn't sure if that was to much

You might be able to get about $300 to $400.

Yeah, the last 3 HC3800's that sold on ebay for around $600 had low hrs...under 50 hrs or so for 2 of them and the other one had 200hrs but also came with an extra new lamp--that one sold for $660.

So with 1000 hrs on a HC3800, I'd highly doubt you could get $600'ish for it.

It's probably gotten tighter because everyone wants 3D now, so the value has gone down. I really did see 2 sell for $700 to $800, but I guess that was a long time ago (maybe a year).

However, even with 1000 hours, you should be able to get $500 if the lamp is still working. $400 seems too cheap. I wouldn't be surprised to see it sell for up to $600, I mean there is no other 1080p projector you can buy at that price.

Thanks for all the reply's guys. If they are going for 300-400 I will probably get hang on to it of sell it to a buddy of mine for a couple hundred or just keep it to the bulb dies because it is a very good projector

What are you going to get?

I would say $800 at the high end and $500 at the low end (assuming fully functional with reasonable original hours... say around 1000). If I sell mine in like new condition with less than 200 original hours, spare new in box lamp and fully D65 calibrated I expect to see $800 since nothing else out there at that price point can compare (that I have recently seen) and if someone wants the 10-15% added CR of the HC4000 then they'll be paying $250 to $300 more (maybe a used JVC for $500+ more). The value is really only determined by the person buying it and what it's worth to them. Anyone selling one of these under $400 is underestimating their value by a decent margin IMO (obviously this does not apply if selling to friends/family). Now a unit that has 3000+ original hours and is possibly on its second lamp (or simply ready for it due to lumen's) I could see that being a difficult sale over $500. I just saw one of these sell local to me for $750 with no spare lamp, uncalibrated and roughly 100 hours of use.

* Oh and forgot to mention, the bottom line here is these units are still very competitive with the current market regarding over-all image quality.

Best of luck on the sale,
Jason

I've only got about 400hrs on my HC3800 and still have the extra free lamp.
About the only 'upgrade' I can see for now is a JVC, but the only real advantage it would have to me is the on/off native contrast. While a biggie for sure, I'm ok with what I have now. I have a small negative gain gray screen and it pops pretty damn good, blacks are better and apparent contrast seems better too (over a small 1.0 white screen)

I could easily wait a year or even 2-3 years before I 'upgrade', and by then things will be different enough that I couldn't even speculate what I would get.

Are you still using the HC3800 as your main PJ? Or something else?

Yep, it's still hanging up there for the moment.

I have almost pulled the trigger so very many times on other units but then I either miss the deal or talk myself out of it.

Went to get a W6000 from Fry's when they were $999 but they had no stock, I snoozed on the last deal AVS had on the RS45's and they sold out, I missed a chance on a 8602 by a couple days and so on...

Will be buying an AE4000 on Saturday but this is not expected to replace the HC3800, my wife has recently become somewhat RBE sensitive since her vision has changed, so we'll see how she feels about LCD after years of DLP.

I love that JVC BL and On/Off but to me DLP still has a certain quality to its image that none of the other projection techs can seem to match.

Jason

That $999 deal at Fry's had me almost buying a Benq w6000 as well just for the heck of it, but I didn't just because it was only a temp buy if I had (like I would have used it for 1 month then sold it).

For me, the time where the MITS can on average beat the JVC IMO (regardless of bright scenes or dark scenes) is in GAMING and on mediocre film quality or source content (even a few Blurays and movies fall into this category, but only a handful really).

The biggest downfall to my JVC RS-45 (and I cannot speak for everyone's units) is color accuracy issues and the BIG BAD LAMP. Other than some defective Epson lamps I've had, I've never seen a LAMP dim this fast. It's like when I turn the projector on for 4 hours, I expect to lose another 5% of brightness at this point. I'm thinking it might explode any minute now. There are also sat tracking issues that cause exaggerated yellows in certain scenes. Not sure if every JVC has the issue to the same degree (probably depends on lamp some as well).

The JVC is more of a movie projector, you really need to feed it a bluray, and it does best with high quality filmed productions. For whatever reason, the Mits processes things cleaner but it doesn't matter on a clean Bluray that has good film attributes, because here the JVC is near perfect as well.

I've recently noticed that my projector is vibrating a lot and causing the projected image to be blurry.

when I put my hands on the projector to dampen the vibrating, it projects a true or at least much truer image without blur.

Has anyone experience this and if so, do you have any recommendations for fixing it?

hunsingeruk,

Vibrations could be caused either by the fan or the color wheel. Either a mount has come loose or bearings are starting to fail.
You might be able to tighten a loose screw on your own, and maybe replace the fan, but fixing the color wheel would doubtless require sending it in for repair.

Has Mitsubishi had problems with the HC3800 color wheels? I know they did with my HD 1000 when they came out 4 years ago is the reason I am asking and also the reason I am asking is that I was thinking of buying a 3800.

It always produced perfect images for me.

Then I replaced the bulb and now I'm noticing the shaky/blurry image

I have a little over 1000 hours on mine running at low intensity, and have never had any problems with the color wheel.

Something causes intermittent dropouts of several video scanlines to start when it's been on for more than about two hours at 1080p. I'm guessing it might be a thermal problem in the projector, but I'm not sure. It could just as easily be in my pre/pro. I've seen the same problem with BD players from three different companies so it's unlikely to be them. I get no dropouts at all when the source is 1080i, so I just set the BD players permanently to 1080i, which looks fine to me.

The vibrations were from the fans, not the CW (on 2 different HC3800's I've had).

It was easy to test. Walk up to the screen, bring up the HC3800 menu, and switch between high/low lamps (fan speeds), while watching the pixels in the menu. You will notice the difference in vibrations (or no vibrations in the low or high lamp mode).

The solution was to either tighten the mount or brace it better. If you put the PJ on a table, the image would be fine.

If for some reason that doesn't change the vibration, then you can test the CW---change the CW speed by switching your source (blu ray, etc.) 24 frames on/off. This will change the CW refresh rate from 48hz to 60hz (60hz being a faster CW speed). See if you notice any difference in vibration.

Tnx for all the replies. I'll check it tonight when I get home from work.

If it is the fan, is it easy to replace?

There isn't anything wrong with the fans per se, it's within Mits tolerances.

My view is that Mits (or probably any other PJ brand) don't 'balance' the fans, they are probably just off the shelf computer case fans, etc. Being that they mounted 2 of the fans side-by-side, any little tiny out of balance vibration will resonant between them at various RPM differences. If they perhaps reversed the spin direction of just one fan (along with the blades) this tiny vibration between them might cancel out instead of resonate.

That and the fact that pretty much all PJ mounts tie in to a small central area (u-joint, ball joint, etc), as opposed to a spread out mount (say a shelf hanging from 4 corner points), makes many typical mounts sensitive to vibrations. It's easy to see, just lightly tap the PJ and watch it vibrate for a long time.

The solution is to brace your mount in some way. This is what I did, just a couple of turnbuckles from the hardware store>>

Hey Guys quick question. I am getting ready to pull the plug and buy one of these projectors but before I do I need to know if it will fit my room and screen.

My screen is 10' wide (120 inches), 16.9 aspect ratio, this is actual width not diagonal measurement. The distance from screen to where projector (the lens) will be mounted is 16.3'. This is absolutely as far back as it can be mounted, will I get my 12' screen at this distance? Will this projector work for these measurements. I know there are projector calculators out there but dumb me has trouble understanding them so your help on this will be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much and have a pleasant evening.

PS- Ceiling Height is 12'.

Which would you buy, the hc3800 or the hc5500? Thank you.