Mitsubishi WL7200U Projector - Physical Tour

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Art Feierman

Appearance

The Mitsubishi WL7200U has a rather plain, rectangular, white plastic case with its lens in the center of the front panel. The lens does not protrude from the projector, keeping it relatively safe when not using the lens cap. There is an IR receiving eye on the bottom edge of the front panel, just to the right of the lens and two front height adjustment feet in each corner. There is no rear height adjustment at all, but it’s really unnecessary when you have lens shift. Along the top edge, just to the right of the lens, are indicator lights for power, projector status (lamp life and temperature) and filter replacement. On the left side (while facing it from the front) of the projector are an air intake vent, the lamp cover and an air exhaust vent and a lock bar. On the right side are two air intake vents, one of them doubling as the cover for the air filter. Both the air filter and lamp covers have screws holding them on along the bottom edge of the projector, but they are angled to the side, making removal possible without unmounting the projector when ceiling mounted. There are two lock bars on the bottom of the projector as well.

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Moving to the top of the projector, there is a button to release the lens right near the front edge, right above the lens. To the left of the lens release button is the built-in, 10-watt speaker.

Moving to the rear panel, there is a control panel on the left side that includes buttons for the most used functions. There are buttons for Power, Menu, Navigation (Up, Down, Left, Right and Enter). The Enter button also functions to access the keystone correction and the directional buttons also serve for keystone adjustment when not in the menu. The Left and Right menu navigation button also function to switch between computer and video sources respectively. The Up and Down buttons also function for Volume Up/Down. There are buttons to access the power zoom, focus and lens shift, with the directional buttons providing adjustment for each. Lastly, there is a button to blank the image being displayed on the screen.

To the right of the control panel, we find a wide array of connections. Starting at the top left, there is a second IR receiving eye just above the control panel. Next, we have a LAN jack for network connection, BNC composite video and S-video inputs, each with their own associated pair of stereo input jacks. After that, we have a VGA monitor output and input, with two mini audio input and one mini audio output jacks below them. Next are a set of BNC component video inputs, an HDMI input and a DVI-D input (with associated audio input). Finally, we have a serial control port, remote control input and output (for controlling one or more projectors with a wired connection from the remote), a Kensington lock and the power cord jack.

The WL7200U also comes with a plastic cover for the rear panel that matches the front panel in appearance. This creates a nice, clean look in a permanent installation, with the connecting cables being hidden by the cover.

Mitsubishi WL7200U Setup and Menu

Although it’s most likely to be permanently mounted, the WL7200U’s two front adjustable feet, power zoom, focus and lens shift and light weight, allow it to be easily set up a more portable table mounting installations. This adjustability will usually make keystone correction unnecessary, but the WL7200U offers digital keystone correction that, as usual, should be kept to a minimum to avoid its potential detrimental effect on the image quality. In addition to the usual horizontal and vertical keystone correction, the WL7200U also offers individual corner correction which relegates any negative effect to a smaller area than normal keystone correction. The WL7200U also includes four built-in test patterns that can be displayed to assist in alignment setup, as well as for making other picture adjustments.

Once the image is properly aligned with your screen, you can bring up the menu to select the desired Image mode, as well as additional picture adjustments. Moving on, the next step is for the presenter to select the desired “color enhancer” mode (Mitsubishi’s designation for each picture mode) from the on-screen menu and make the usual adjustments (contrast, brightness, color and tint) to the picture. In addition to the standard adjustments, there is a User color temp setting that allows for full grayscale adjustment as well as a rudimentary CMS (color management system) for individual adjustment of each of the projector’s primary (red, green and blue) and secondary (cyan, magenta and yellow) colors. The CMS only appears to have individual adjustment of each color’s brightness, while saturation and tint adjustments are global. Also, there are three gamma settings available, adjustable “super resolution” (a feature that sharpens fine detail, rather than edge sharpness like the sharpness control would) and an auto iris that can be turned on and off. While proper use of a custom color temp and CMS requires professional calibration equipment, it can be a useful tool for even the casual user to improve color balance, especially in the brighter modes.

Image Menu

Color Temp Menu

Mitsubishi WL7200U Remote Control

The WL7200U’s remote control is charcoal in color and is fairly well laid out. Although the buttons are roughly the same color as the remote and mostly the same size, they are spaced well enough to make it fairly easy to use with some light. However, the small text labeling makes it difficult to find the appropriate button in a darkened room.

Buttons cover all the important functions without accessing them through the menu. Instead of the usual source button that scrolls through the inputs, there are individual buttons for each input source. There are buttons for the usual menu navigation, as well as buttons to control the digital zoom, keystone adjustment (and volume), accessing the power zoom, focus and lens shift, and freezing or blanking the displayed image. As is usually the case with multimedia projectors, the remote’s buttons are not backlit or even glow-in-the-dark.

The remote can also be wired to the projector via a jack on the bottom of the remote. This not only enables installation of the projector in a hidden location (where it would not be able to “see” IR from the remote), but also allows for control of a second projector daisy-chained through the remote output jack on the projector.

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