*Unofficial* Mitsubishi HC3800 Thread - Page 203

It will work for the size, BUT it will be too dim, only 10 foot lamberts.

Thank you Jim for that info. So are you saying the hc3800 is not as bright as my older hc3000 or hd1000? Both of these projectors are plenty bright at 16'3".

OK if the 3800 will not work for me then would you all please give me some model number suggestions that would work that I consider buying.

Again my sizes are:

Screen is 120" wide - 16.9 ratio
Ceiling is 12'
16'3" is as far back as I can mount the projector from the screen. So I need a projector that will give me a 120" wide screen at 16'3" back from the screen and I can hang it as high as 12' because it will be a back wall mount not a ceiling mount. Thanks guys for your help.

I don't know about those other projectors. I'm going by the info from the Calculator Pro at Projectorcentral.com. Are you considering LCD also? What is your budget? If you enter your criteria in the "Search by Feature" at Projector Central, it will show you which projectors will fit. BUT you still have to check each one to make sure it will be bright enough. Minimum foot lamberts should be 16.

Thanks again Jim. I've only owned DLP, never LCD because I have always heard the picture was not as sharp on the LCD's. I've never viewed an LCD so I don't know. I currently own the Mits HD 1000 and HC3000 both are great 720p projectors but I am ready to upgrade to 1080p via the used market, budget is only $900 so it's hard to buy new at that price.

The 3800 is actually brighter than the HC3000 (which I also owned) and not too far behind the HD1000 when properly calibrated which causes the HD1000 to lose a bunch of those lumen's.

I measured over 16 ftL with my HC3800, 120" diagonal screen (HiPower but when ceiling mounted gain is about 1.3) and I am not as far back as you are looking to go (I am about 14' throw).

You have a large screen and at 16'+ in your price range you'll have a hard time really lighting up that screen with solid image quality (maybe a used W6000 if you can find one) but if you found the HC3000 and HD1000 suitable then you're not likely to have issue with many other models (including the ones you are looking at, and not just saying that because one of them is mine, just being honest).

With that said the HC3800 will throw the better image vs the HC5500, the 3800 even bested the HC6800 on many counts which is superior to the HC5500.

* Oh and I can tell you that after owning DLP for a long time you'll have a hard time converting to LCD. I have an AE4000 here now and this is one of the better LCD's and the HC3800 still bests it in many areas, especially sharpness.



Best of luck with your choice,
Jason

Thanks Jason, I was hoping you would chime in.

I know I do not have the ideal room and dimensions but I have to make do with my family room as my HT room. It is a perfectly square room, 17.5 x 17.5 with an 18' ceiling, that's why I mount my projector on the back wall which is 18' high. I think the projector is mounted some where around 9.5 to 10' high on the back wall, if I remember correctly. Honestly, both the HC3000 and HD 1000 are plenty bright in that room and for 720p projectors I am very impressed with the sharpness and true color saturation of both, blacks could be considerably better on both. Do you think I would see a significant improvement in picture quality with the 3800, I mean a real noticeable ''WOW" difference? Thanks Jason.

golffnutt, are you using your current projector(bulb) in high power mode? If not, you must be used to a dim image.

You'll be wowed by the added detail/pixel fill of 1080p (unless you are also sitting 16' back) but black level is not significantly better than the HC3000 (especially with an aged lamp + manual Iris on the HC3000 versus an HC3800 with a newer lamp).

Jason

Jim I will swear to you, eventhough I am using an aged bulb, the picture is not dim to me nor my wife, nor my 28 year old son who has better eyes than me or his Mom. The picture is still great, that's why I haven't changed the bulb yet.

The RS-40 B-stocks are the best deal right now for 2D picture quality. For sharpness though, you may have to exchange it once or twice if you get one with sub-optimal convergence (since it is a B-stock). That might be out of your price range or more than you wanted to pay though.

Thanks coderguy. Where do you think I could find a refurb? How much are they running in price?

About $1800, but considering new these were $3,500, and the RS-45's (this year's) were running near $3000, it's still an incredible deal. Right here from AVS (the forum sponsor), look up the user "AV Science Sales 5" in the forum. You'll have to email or call him, they don't take PM's.

To be honest, I wish I had held off on buying the JVC RS-45 and bought a B-Stock RS-40 instead, I would have saved a ton of money and it comes with the same 2-year warranty either way.

An hc3800 does about 3000:1 after calibration, a JVC RS-45 does about 45,000:1+ after calibration and doesn't even need an IRIS to do it. That's about 15x higher native on/off contrast, you will definitely see the difference in movies. In movies like Harry Potter or Star Wars the difference will be night and day (literally, the hc3800 will look like day, the JVC like night :O)...

Unfortunately this old guy can't afford that. Now that I am retired and on a fixed income I can't enjoy all the fancy toys I once could. I would love to have one of those RS40's, it sounds great but I guess I will have to settle for the 3800. Like they say, "champagne taste with beer money". Thanks again for the info, I really appreciate it very much.

But you didn't answer my question. Are you using the bulb on low or high power mode?

Wow - I never realized how small the HC3800 was compared to the LCD's.

I'm considering upgrading my ancient Optoma H31 as cheaply as possible. There seems to be quite a few 3800's on the used market right now for 4-500 less than a new HC4000. That's a lot of savings, although an old unit with no warranty still has me worried.

On LOW.

WOW. That makes me wonder how accurate the Calculator Pro is, as far as foot lamberts. I use my 3800 on low also, but my screen is only 106" diagonal.

Me too.

The 3800 is about 2/3 of the AE4000 but then the AE4000 is a large unit, but yes over-all the 3800 is smaller than just about every home theater designed LCD.

All in all Mitsubishi is one of the more reliable brands regarding projectors. There are some brands that I would not even consider buying used.

Jason

My HC3800 is just out of warranty (2 years, 2 months). The well documented checkerboard issue pop up about a year or so ago. Turning on/off the project would get rid of it. Unfortunately, it seems to be getting worse now.

I called Mitsubishi tech support. Apparently, my firmware is currently V4. The tech support person said that V7 would fix the checkerboard issue. Does this sound right to people? I always thought the checkerboard issue was a hardware problem and not a firmware issue. I have to pay for shipping the projector back to Mitsubishi and pay for any other repairs (assuming the firmware does not address the issue). I'm concerned that I'll just be wasting time/money by sending the projector back to Mitsubishi.

I'm thinking about not bothering returning the projector and just getting a new one.

I appreciate any advise/guidance more experience members can share.

I am under the impression that the only firmware that possibly created known issues was the initial launch firmware. I think the common issues reported in this thread seemed to have little variance based upon any firmware beyond the launch firmware.

On the other hand it could be that your particular unit has a hardware issue that they figured out how to correct (if it shows itself) via firmware.

It's also possible due to tolerance variables or even chip availability that firmware will have little to do with any of the common reported issues. Seems there are even people out there with launch units still working fine, I talked to someone last month that has a launch unit with initial firmware and about 2500 hours with no issues.

Best of Luck,
Jason

95% certain it is not related to firmware, how do I know?

I was one of the few people that had the checkerboard issue on both the hc3800 and hc4000. If it was firmware, then that means (1)+ years after the hc3800 came out and many firmware revisions, then the same issue was added back into the hc4000 firmware.

My inclination is that it is a defective component or purely a heating/electrical issue. Those types of checkerboard like patterns often happen to video equipment when it overheats. I can make some video cards do some similar things by overheating them.

Another reason I suspect heat, is because on my first hc4000 that FAN was TOO quiet, I do not think it was spinning fast enough. It is probably NOT just heat, it is probably also electrical, but the two are often related, when an electrical problem starts to come up, it can cause overheating in the components. Even applies in reverse, when a device starts overheating it can cause electrical problems.

Would vibrations also be dampened or stabilized by investing in a better ceiling mount?

A quality ceiling mount will reduce the quivering of the chassis and lens. It won't stop the "hammering" that is being inflicted by the spinning hardware onto the electronics, or the gradual destruction of the bearings themselves -- which eventually leads to the fan or color wheel locking up completely. Replacing their bearings and/or tightening their internal mounts would reduce the latter problems.

Note that I'm a paranoid, "cup is only half full" type of person. Once you've minimized the quivering, your projector might last longer than you can stand not to upgrade it.

Again, in my tests the vibration was coming from the fans, which was easy to see when switching between hi/low fan modes.

And this 'vibration' appeared to be a resonance of the dual fans mounted side by side, as the vibration would 'resonate' in/out at intervals that would last a few seconds, then stop for a few seconds, etc.

If it was the color wheel, the fan speed wouldn't affect the vibration/resonance.

My guess is that the CW is balanced (or balance is checked) to a much closer tolerance than the fans, which I suspect are just off the shelf fans that aren't specially built for projectors or to be finely balanced.

Your diagnosis sounds\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ reads right to me.
I suspect the easiest "fix" would be a more rigid mount. You might check to make sure the fans actually are the same models and perhaps send it in for repairs if they aren't. (Where I work, we discovered that some of the 1U file-servers had mis-matched fans which caused enough of a vibration to dramatically reduce disk throughput due to the seek retries.)

Well, from the outside (through the vents) they looked the same, but I wasn't gonna take apart the PJ to confirm. I actually think that if they were different models/sizes, it would be better, since they would resonate at different frequencies, not the same freq.

I went through 3 HC3800's during the teething period, they all had some sort of vibration resonance with my mount, of which I fixed by using some turnbuckles from the hardware store (see my pic in the previous page).

Just finished a full D65 calibration on my HC3800 and now scratching my head wondering why I sold it, this calibration came out even better than the initial calibration and it looks fantastic. Initial calibration was done at around 50 hours on the lamp/unit and the calibration I just finished is at 150 hours total use. Perfect 2.2 Gamma, Grayscale under dE 1.5 from 10 IRE to 100 IRE (6498K @ 70 IRE). All colors other than Blue sub dE3 on the CMS and Blue was under dE7 so still solid results even though it is not a FULL CMS.

Well ok, I know why I sold it... my wife has recently developed a slight RBE sensitivity and so we say farewell to the DLP (and pretty bummed about it).

If anyone out there with an HC3800/HC4000 is in need of a new sealed OE lamp let me know via PM and maybe we can work something out.

Jason

I can't remember, but I think the best advice is to contact Mits support directly> (888) 307-0309 (ask for projector tech line if that isn't direct).

They can tell you for sure the latest firmware, and they might also be able to let you know of any service history on that serial # (if it ever went in), or if it might be marked as a refurb, etc.