Mitsubishi HC1500 720p DLP Home Theater Projector

Brightness is great, color is great, HD is great. SD is somewhat lacking, but what do you expect from a projector. The angle of projection can be troublesome if your mounting locations are limited, but not a problem for me. Fast action is slightly muddy but again, getting what you pay for. would definitely buy again.

Updated July 18, 2008

Go ahead and read this but the HC1600 is now shipping. Specs are the same as this one but 100 lumens brighter. Take a look at it to! My Review for it is coming soon! Mitsubishi HC1600 720p DLP Home Theater Projector

Apr. 27, 2008

I am the lead installer for a company that installs RealHomeTheaters, so hopefully my experience can be of some help. I have installed 100s of projectors and at least 50% of the time we choose the HC1500. If you name a quality of a projector, this one has it. Great contrast, shadow detail, brightness the list goes on. To be used to it's potential it should be used with Component and HDMI interconnects only, any cable such as composite (the Yellow RCA)or S-video can't transmit the lines of resolution needed for the screen sizes this projector is designed to display. I have installed this projector with as large as a 135" diagonal screen, most people can't even tell they are looking at a 720p projector and not 1080p. I'll end with some good pointers:

1. Don't go to big on your screen. (a good rule of thumb is your seating distance should be 1.5 times your diagonal screen size or less, (simple math / if your seats are 15' away from the screen, your diagonal screen size should be 10' or smaller, 120" or less)

2. Control your room lighting. (the dimmer the better)

3. Use quality video sources. (at least a good up-converting DVD player, we like the Onkyo DV-SP405 or for best results a Blu-Ray player, we like the Panasonic DMP-BD30, PlayStation3 also works. If you haven't already, get some HD programming form your provider, DirecTV has the best selection.)

4. Set all the proper settings. ( All DVD players and HD receivers, including Blu-Ray, have resolution settings. For this projector set them to 720p.)

5. Top it off with some good surround sound to create and enveloping environment. ( if your on a tight budget check out the Onkyo HT-SR800, if you have a bigger budget use floor standing cabinet speakers with at least dual 6.5" woofers and 100watts per channel, 5.1 or 7.1 will be dictated by the room.)

6. Start buying widescreen DVDs. (16:9 and 2.35:1 are the two most popular widescreen formats.)

I could go on for days but this should get you started in the right direction.

The bottom line is you can spend more money on a projector, but in most cases all your getting is a more expensive projector. We have put the HC1500 up against 1080p projectors costing 5 times more and the difference is so slight that in most cases we can't justify going with anything else.

Hope this helps get your RealHomeTheaters off the ground!

Hi, I got the Mitsubishi HC-1500 after a fairly long, though pleasant, search on the internet. Reviews for this toy were flawless, so I went for it expecting a great image quality. When I started to project movies from my laptop, a MacBook, I immediately noticed some problems on the way colors were produced on the screen. Colors seemed in continuous motion. Especially dark areas never looked still, the saturation seemed extremely artificial and the sharpness wasn't that great. After some research, I discovered that some people see the rainbow effect with DLP projector. Is that my case? Or perhaps I should have tried to connect through a video porto instead than the computer one? However, this latter point shouldn't seem that crucial (I might be wrong on that). If what I had is the "normal" image quality of low-cost DLP projectors, I am very surprised of their success. I had an old Chisholm (LCD) which, in spite of the horrible black contrast and low resolution, produced much more natural images than the HC-1500. I returned it after tried for a bit, and I have to say that AMAZON is, by very far, the most trustworthy, functional and modern online seller. No problems with the shipment, and hopefully everything will go smoothly with the return. Anyway, it would be great if anybody can give me some opinions on my comments.
Gianluca

This is a fantastic product. I could not be happier with it. The original order was canceled due to non-availability, but I found it at an even better price. I'd recommend this to anyone.

I have this ceiling mounted and currently projected on a beige wall. The image is 120" and stunning. I haven't even fiddled with the contrast, brilliant color, or any other settings and it is awesome. I viewed the Sony Projectors (NOT DLP) at a store and the way below average image quality nearly made me abandon the idea of a projector. I am glad I bit the bullet and didn't let so-so sony steer me wrong. I have a 120" TV for a tenth the cost of a plasma!