2012 Mitsubishi 3D DLP Owners Thread (C12/642/742/842 series) - Page 6

Just to make that a littler simpler. Perfect Color and Perfect Tint are effectively the same as the Global Color and Tint controls in a preset but are available for each individual color. The problem with all these controls is that they have limited authority in a particular preset. They do not allow you to increase or move the color points out on the triangle to create a wider gamut (color space) and the TV set is not linear. That means that while you can get color pretty close at 75 percent or 100 percent brghtness at other points color is way off.

Basically you can only control 6 colors out of the about 10 million the display can produce. The newest way to deal with this is to use an external box (Lumagen Radience Video Process). With a device like this you measure color not at just 6 points but 125 points. The box does interpolation to figure out the adjustments for the other color in between and build a 3D LUT (look up table). This allows you to effectively correct color pretty much across the board. You still can't increase Blue Saturation in a preset like Natural but you should be able to get fully saturated color and a correct gamma in Bright or Brilliant with correct colors across color gamut in those modes. That is theorectical, I will tell you in a few weeks as I am about to order a Lumagen Radiance and the software upgrade for Chromapure to configure the Radience. Hopefully there are no gotchas on the Mits. Again theorectically if your primaries are not undersaturated to begin with then the Radience should be able to make all the other colors in the TVs color space dead on, or at least as dead on as your meter allows.

Not cheap to do this today, but this kind of thing will be built in the TVs of the future. The display will come with a meter and as part of setup you will plug it in and run a program on the display itself and that will take into account the effect of room lighting and wall color etc. It will be pretty much like the high end autocalibrations on upper end Denons etc only not with sound but with color. Current displays are not very accurate when it comes to color beyond a certain limite range of brightness and saturation. Some are simply god awful about it.
Edited by gtgray - 9/27/12 at 3:38pm

I just pulled the trigger on a 73642. Any "tricks" I need to do with this year's DLP? I know last year had the 2D image problem that was resolved by enabling 3D or something like that. Not sure if that was fixed in a firmware update... But anything goofy like that this year?

Thanks in advance for your answers!

I have a 73835 and calibrate in natural mode due to wacky gamma on other modes as you noted. Also as you have noted the cms tracking at various saturation points is terrible to the point i only calibrate grayscale anymore and leave all cms controls at default. I have debated purchasing a radiance to go along with my i1pro and calman v5. Im very curious to see your results .

It all remains to be seen. The Radience I will get at the end of next week. It is not simple interface so it will take some learning on my part. I currently run in Natural mode. I have a DUO and you can use the Duo in other modes but the results get strange. With the DUO you can run Auto-cal and the gamma gets right, the gamut look okay but the skin tones go red.

They say you have to have at least a full 709 gamut to fully take use of the 3D LUT calibration on the Lumagen Radiance. It should work fine as long as I can get the gamma to correct in Brilliant Mode. Bright looks like it might be wide enough but you really want the starting color points to oversaturated and be outside the CIE Triangle. After that the Lumagen should basically head fake the Mits into producing the right color at the right time. I will actually try Bright first because the gamma in Bright is not so low that correcting it should cause too much weirdness. I have seen Blue be outside the CIE triangle in Bright but it was not to the left enough on the X axis.. there really is not much room out there on the Triangle in the Blue area. The 709 target is almost all the way to edge of the chart. Blue is a bit more saturated at the default in Advanced mode than in Natural.

Truth is, it probably doesn't matter that much if the edge of the gamut at Blue can not reached unless the Auto-cal starts cranking back luninance like crazy. If the software behave reasonably and just accepts a small amout error in Blue and pulls the rest of the colorspace where it is supposed to go it should not really be visually detectable. I suspect it will be a lot of trial and error and a lot of Auto-cal runs The eye just can really see small deviations in blue saturation from ideal anyway.

OneEyedPony,
That backlight looks great. What light did you use? My 82742 arrives next week and I would like to setup something like that.

I plan to pull the trigger on a 73642, 742 or 842 over the holidays or shortly thereafter. WHen they are usually being heavily discounted by Paul's and others. BUt I have a question. Can someone tell me what the feature differences are between the 3 models that justify the higher prices. On the websites (even Mitsu's) they all appear to be the same. So I am a bit confused about this. If the answers are in this thread on a different page...can someone direct me to the pages where it is being discussed. Are they all authentic 3D models or just 3D ready (where you have to buy add-ons).

If you open the PDF spec sheets on the Mitsubishi web site, they mark bullet points on the step up feature each series.

Non-bulleted are standard across the line. Blue box bullets are 642 setup over the C12 series. Yellow box bullet are 742 step up features from the 642 series. Green diamond bullet point are 842 series step up features over 742.

However no one but you can say if the step features are worth the price. It depends on which step features are important to you. However if you are looking for specific step ups in picture quality, that is not the basis of the differences. Except for the LaserVue, the basic out of the box picture is very similar. The ability to adjust further for a more refined picture improves as you go up in the line.

Thanks GEP. After viewing the steps you mentioned on their website, I will pull the trigger on either a 642 or 842 series. The 742 seems lost in that mix of features. With me...either all of the enhanced features will matter or none of them. I will be scouring Paul's and Circuit City ads over the next 4 months for the right time to pounce.

GEP, do you have any impression of how much better the laserview picture might be, particularly when calibrated? It is currently selling for approximately 2.5 X the 73840 price at one of my local retailers. I have looked at both side by side, but they are calibrated so differently (both poorly) that it is tough to say if the Laserview is worth the difference.

I would love to be able to look at a calibrated L75-A94, but cannot find one in the bay area.

In my opinion there is not much difference in the picture quality of the lamp sets and the laser sets. The laservues are slimmer, use less electricity and make less heat. They theorectically maintain there brightness for the life of set. That means you should be able to calibrate one right away and then forget about it. They don't make more light when calibrated to the correct 709 gamma standard. The 73" lamp set makes much more light, you should be able to get 50 ft lamberts out of the conventional lamp set. The numbers I have seen for calibrated laservues are low 20 ft lamberts. The later sets may be better that what I have seen reported.

They should ( I say should, cause I have no evidence) maintain calibration better. I don't know what the price differential is these days at street prices but if it is a grand or two grand more then the 840 with a Lumagen Mini 3D. Lamp set with the external video processor will produce the far better image as it can calibrate across the saturation range. Now if you are sensitive to rainbows then the LaserVue might keep you in rear projector dlp. Lasers don't use color wheels.

Bottom line if the 75" class is your size get the 73840/42 and a Lumagen Radiance... either pay somebody to do a calibration for you or buy a meter and software, the calibration is auto process gets past the inferior color management systems (CMS) that Mits provides built into their sets.

Thanks for the great response gtgray. Based on your response it sounds like I would be better off skipping the LV, and moving up one size class to an 82840. I would get the set calibrated and possibly think about a video processor down the road. I do have room for the 82, and the wife will forgive me eventually.....

My current set is an older Samsung 50" DLP with color wheel at 720P. I have changed lamps twice and the color wheel once and don't mind doing this. It still has a great picture, but any of the new 1080p DLP's put it to shame. Time to move the old set to the playroom for the kids.

If you can find an attractively priced 82840 that would be my preferred set of all the DLP Rear Projectors. It is brighter than the 92" sets is a less expesnsive perhaps as well. These are not current models. They are 2011s and maybe harder to find. I needed the larger screen but the 82840 is capable of throwing a better image on the screen just because it is smaller then the 92".

It won't be as bright as the 73" but because of the clear screen will be close. Just make sure your room lighting does not require a matte finnish to control reflections. A sub 2K 82840 and Radiance Mini3D for about $1400 will present a much better image overall. It may not get quite as black as a LaserVue but with the Radiance managing the color with 3D LUT, the color will be much more accurate across the space.

I personally have trouble seeing the advantages of the LaserVue. They tend to get broken when shipped.How serviceable they are in the field seems in debate. Repais out of warranty would be much more expensive and the parts are special to the model so they are likely to be scarce to non-existand 4 years down the road. They are rare and exclusive but so are dodo birds. If the current laservue technology was really the answer to DLP illumination I am sure Mits would have standardized on it by now. My guess is the technology is currently too expensive to go mainstream, does not provide much benefit over the current lamp sets, does not make much and is fragile and difficult to repair. That could all change next year, but right now clearly the laservue light engines are not suitable for the bigger displays that Mits is needing to sell to keep the Mits brand on consumer TVs in this zero margin TV business.

After completing an initial calibration on our new 82742, I find the picture has a subtle grainy texture on all sources (Blu-ray, DVD, and DirecTV HD). The unit lacks the creamy, liquid picture of the Hitachi 65” RPTV it replaces.

The “sandy” grain structure of the Mitsubishi’s picture cannot be eliminated or even slightly altered by reducing the sharpness to zero or utilizing the onboard filter settings. I’m not sure if the grain is a result of a poorly designed or defective video amplifier (it appears to be luminance, not chroma, noise, as it is visible on black & white sources, too). Or does the screen itself have a sand-like texture? The TV has had about 12 hours of use since taking delivery on Wednesday--does the unit require more burn-in time? Or is the graininess normal for a Mitsubishi DLP?

Anybody else have a recent-model Mitsubishi with a grainy-looking picture?

I can't answer this because I haven't bought mine yet. But I plan to within the next 5 months. I am very interested in responses to your question, because I have the Hitachi 65f59. And the Mitsu would replace it. And that is what I fear most about switching. I love the lifelike, natural, rich, "Creamy" color texture of the Hitachi CRT. And the rich deep Blacks on my Hitachi are simply awesome. But I also want the greater detail/sharpness of DLP without all of the constant convergence inconveniences of CRT. I was on the fence about switching to DLP, or just buying a Darblet for my Hitachi. So I am interested to see how the very knowledgeable people on this thread respond to your question.

I'm thinking about purchasing the WD-73742 (73") but concerned about whether I'll be able to reduce the "soap opera" effect via the TV's menu options. The Mitsubishi owner's manual suggests that this adjustment is NOT available for 1080p signals:
"Film Mode Auto, Off 480i and 1080i signals only. In Auto, the TV automatically detects and applies film-decoding correction to movies filmed at 24 frames per second."
Unless I can defeat the high-refresh rate that makes movies look unnaturally crisp (as opposed to film at 24 fps) for all HD programming, I do not want to purchase this set.
Can anyone clarify the matter for me? Really hoping this is ultimately not a problem since the current pricing on this model is very attractive.

Here's where I bought it/be careful, there are many different types of the RGB LED strips(different SMD LEDS/LED count 150 vs 300) for sale: http://www.amazon.com/Ledwholesalers-Waterproof-LED-Strip-Controller/dp/B0054U46Y2/ref=pd_cp_MI_0

Go with the waterproof LEDS with the 44 button remote(more colors and create your own color settings and save 3 presets. If you want to "Dress Up" a clean install on the back of your set, you should purchase the right angle and extension clips. The LED strip has 3M adhesive on it which is great bonus, but measure twice, cut once. There's so many resellers and the products vary, but whats great with Amazon, if you don't like it, you can return it (uncut). Search through amazon and ensure you purchase the proper clips, extension cables-clips/4-wire wiring, with the specific LED-RGB strip lighting ribbon. You can't beat the price



Edited by OneEyedPony - 10/7/12 at 6:31pm

There is no "soap opera" effect on the TV! The talk about "Film Mode" only relates to 2:3 pull down. (Detecting a 24fps source in interlaced material and converting it to 60fps... This can cause judder you see in typical 60hz TVs, including CRTs, but it is NOT motion interpolation!)

You probably had an old Sharp LCD TV which confused people with it's "Film Mode" adding the Soap Opera effect.

These TVs don't feature any sort of motion interpolation WHATSOEVER!

I'm replacing a 47" LCD with a 60" Panasonic Plasma, a 60" Sharp (unless there's a bigger/better BF sale) OR a 73" Mits DLP, for less than 1.5k. I live in a loft condo in Chicago with 7/8 glass wall in an eastern exposure about twice the width of a standard sliding glass door with roller blinds that reduce light by about 85 percent. The glass wall is at a right angle to the stand and most of my viewing will be at night. My viewing area is about nine feet from the screen. Three-D is not a must-have for me, a Comcast/Moto cable box/DVR will be most of my source material, with an HTPC providing the blu-ray player, each fed by HDMI. Audio is provided by a Technics A/V receiver with Dolby Digital/DTS processor in a 5.1 arrangement. So, its not a videophile/audiophile setting.

My son and I went to CEDIA and my mission was to narrow this further. Unfortuntately, CEDIA is the wrong venue for this price point, Panasonic didn't have a display and Sharp was the Elite inside the Pioneer display. Worse, the Mits booth was mainly pushing projectors and the one DLP TV they had looked pretty forlorn and was not well supported. The TI booth was using an LED TV and the guys there said development of DLP was mostly for projectors (such as the one Mits is selling), suggesting DLP TV is an orphan product. We're not going to CES this year and I want to upgrade before we get to winter, anyway.

Most of the big stores in CHI (Best Buy/Magnolia, Sears, MicroCenter, Abt, hhGregg, TigerDirect/CompUSA) don't have DLP TV's on the floor and Aarons doesn't seem to me to be a place to go TV shopping. Frys had two Mits DLP's on the floor, but they were not current models and looked pretty dim, like they've been running all day, every day and the bulbs were near EOL. I'm in St. Louis most weekends and one hhGregg had a 73" MIts on the floor, so I remain interested in DLP TV. I left the hhGregg unit in "brilliant" in hopes of them being able to sell it, since the salesman had his doubts.

Knowing this posting is in a DLP segment of AVS, I'm wondering what this group recommends among my above choices. My son is concerned the Mits 73" doesn't do one-to-one (dot-for-dot) pixel mapping and I guess that's important. I'm concerned about an obsolete/orphan product (but not so much that I'm replacing my non-HDMI receiver or my old Infinity speakers).

I skipped the $999/shipped/no tax C12 sale from Dell, but still think the dollar-per-screen-size makes DLP TV hard to pass up. Your thoughts are welcomed.

If I was only sitting 9 feet from the screen, I think I might go for a 60" Panasonic plasma. The main reason I'm looking for a 73" DLP is because I my couch is like 13-14 feet away from the TV. Just my opinion. I have a 65" DLP and I like it on Bluray, but I feel on DirecTV the picture can be kind of soft. I sometimes wonder what I'm missing picture quality wise vs a plasma.

Thanks for the reply! Not sure I follow, though ... the problem I'm referring to has to do with the newer sets having a picture that's TOO (meaning "unnaturally") good. Most of the displays I see on display look like crap to me ... just unnervingly "real" rather than cinematic. What I have currently is the first HD TV that came on the market .... a 70" Mitsubishi rear projection set (1080i) I purchased in 1999. I much prefer its "soft" picture to a 240mhz refresh display I saw recently. Anyway, if I buy this 73" Mits DLP (which I can't see anywhere because no stores want to put a DLP model on the floor) and the picture isn't more like my old set than the latest ones, I won't be a happy chappy. Technical, I'm not ... but I do know what I like visually. Hope this makes some sense ........

Perfect since indeed ! I recently switched from a Pioneer Elite 64" 1080i set to a Mitsubishi 73' 73738 and have I've seen the set which you have, while you may give up a tad in the deepest black level but at times when displayed True HD Blacks are just as deep the Dlp's have an incredible cinematic image and for this reason I chose it over other display's to replace my Pioneer. and glad I did.

Hope this helps!

And this is exactly what I said the new Mits won't do. You will be fine. It doesn't do motion interpolation, which is the "unnervingly real" effect that you dislike.

Thanks, I was actually considering that kit and you sold me on it. I did not know about the right angle connecters, they should make life easier. I plan to put a kit around my TV and possibly behind my seating if it is bright enough to make a difference.

Excellent! Thanks for very helpful reply!!
(and to sodaboy581 for his clarification of "motion interpolation")

I got my new 92a12 today. This really is a great looking tv. I'm really impressed. I'm just wondering I'd anyone has a decent baseline advanced picture setting I could try.

Just purchased a WD92840 at Aarons Rentals (cash sale, not rent-to-own). Out the door at $2557.00! They're running 20 % off right now. Free delivery (I'm super close to the store) tomorrow afternoon. So stoked...

Barrelbelly:

For comments on my Mitsubishi 82742 vs. my seven-year-old Hitachi 65S500, go to the Mitsubishi 2011 thread. See posts interspersed from number 3588 to 3598. They may be relevant to your Hitachi RPTV.

Thank you Alex F:

That is exactly what I am so worried about. I was debating whether to get the 73742 or just have Mr Bob eventually come to Boston or phone consult to professionally calibrate my Hitachi...and reinforce it with the Darbee Darblet. It's not really that old for an HD CRT (5 years old). I am going to Pauls this weekend and do some extended viewing of that set before I do anything. When cleaned and adjusted, the Hitachi is just awesome IMO. It blows away the smaller 1080p LED, LCD's I have elsewhere in my house. But I am/was seriously at a point of moving on with newer technology. And DLP was it. But I would never forgive myself for parting with the Hitachi, if the WD73742 had a degraded image like you described. Based on this feedback...I will get the Darbee Darblet first. Because I can always use it with a new DLP if I go that route. Then see what it looks like with my Hitachi...before taking such a big plunge. Your issues just stopped me dead in my tracks, because it was exactly what I feared with some of the new tech. And I had observed it in stores before too. I don't get that effect at all with the Hitachi.