Mitsubishi HC7000 - Image Quality-7

Posted on November 19, 2008 by Art Feierman

Picture quality is respectable, but hardly great, out of the box. In that regard the HC7000 is probably about typical. Very few projectors offer excellent out of the box color accuracy.

The color temperature (Warm setting), is a bit warm, averaging a little less than 6150K instead of the ideal 6500K. The other Color Temp settings are all significantly off, on the cool side (stronger blues, weaker reds). A basic calibration is recommended, whether you buy a user calibration disc, or hire a professional. I suspect that most of the dealers selling the HC7000 (link to specs) either will have a calibrator on staff, or can recommend one. The third option is to plug in the settings we list in this reviews Calibration page. Due to lamp variation, each projector calibrates a bit differently, but our settings should get you very close to where you want to be.

Mitsubishi HC7000 Overall Color & Picture Quality

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The HC7000 is an extremely well balanced projector, when it comes to overall Picture Quality! With great black levels, very good shadow detail, excellent post calibration color accuracy, and a dynamic looking (pop and wow) image (in part thanks to those black levels), I found the HC7000 one of the most enjoyable projectors to watch. That has been true whether I'm just kicking back and watching content, or when I'm being very critical in my viewing, looking for weaknesses.

The point here, is that the HC7000 has no significant weaknesses in any areas directly dealing with color and overall picture.

A mix of additional images to show off the HC7000:

From the DTS Blu-ray test disk, consider the images from below slider:

Mitsubishi HC7000 Projector: Performance, HDTV and Sports

Overall performance on HDTV was most impressive. The most critical weakness has to be the brightness issue. If you have that covered (smaller or high gain screen, great lighting control, etc.), consider the HC7000 projector to be excellent.

The rich colors, the dynamic image, and the extremely sharp image really makes the HC7000 shine on HDTV sporting events, and boy, does it look great on all that nature, concerts, and travelog type programming (Discovery HD, History Channel, Palladia HD (the old M-HD MTV music video channel). It really does make you think, for a moment, like you are looking out of a large window. Excellent! If only more lumens.

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