Mitsubishi HC6800 - Performance
5/29/2010 - Art Feierman
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Mitsubishi HC6800 Brightness
The Mitsubishi HC6800 is one of the brighter 1080p home theater projectors out there. Immediately below are the measured lumens of each of the preset modes, (and also the color temperature they produced at 100 IRE) (white)
Mitsubishi HC6800 Projector - Uncalibrated:
Lumen Output at various Color Temps at 100 IRE:
Medium= 687 @ 6583K
High Brightness= 946 @ 7864K
Cool= 573 @ 9459K
Warm= 652 @ 5937K
After doing our calibration of "best" mode, we measured: 578 lumens
Brightest mode - High Brightness, cannot be calibrated, and remains 946 lumens.
The Effect of zoom lens positioning on brightness:
Using Warm Temp setting:
Zoom out (closest position - wide-angle): 739 lumens
Mid-zoom: 687 lumens
Zoom in (furthest from the screen - tele): 608 lumens
The 18% drop from wide angle to telephoto lens settings should be consistent in any mode.
The Effect of low lamp (eco) mode on brightness:
Low lamp power, Medium Temp mode: 471 lumens
High lamp power, Medium Temp mode: 687 lumens
That translates into a drop of approximately 31% when going from full, to low power lamp setting. That's a slightly bigger drop than average. Most home theater projectors lose about 20% - 25% of their brightness going to low power. Perhaps the larger than typical drop partially explains the jump from 2000 hours lamp life at full power to 4000 at low (eco) power, as most others go from 2000 to 3000 when dropping down in power.
Sharpness
The Mitsubishi HC6800 is sharp. I believe the HC6800 appears sharper than any of the other LCD projectors out there, but for their own HC7000. It appears sharper, than the LCoS projectors as well. I don't believe it's quite as sharp as the better DLP projectors like the competing W6000, but I'd place it closer to the W6000 overall, than to many other non-DLP projectors. I give credit, primarily to the optics. I say this because I'm guessing that by going with only a 1.6:1 zoom, instead of the 2:1 zooms found on most LCD home theater projectors, makes a difference. It's not huge, but the HC6800 without doubt has a slightly crisper image than even my JVC can produce. Sure, we're splitting hairs, but, I'd say the Mitsubishi stands out over a lot of projectors in its price range, in this one area which is very important to a significant number of folk.
For your consideration, our usual close up images:
Top left: Mitsubishi HC6800, Top Left Center - LG CF181D, Top Right Center - JVC RS25, Top right - Mitsubishi HC7000
2nd row left: Panasonic PT-AE4000, left center: Epson Home Cinema 8500UB, right center: Optoma HD8200, right: InFocus IN83
Please note, we are slowly switching to using the Playstation video logo as our sharpness example, instead of the old dts-hd logo. The original sample test disc from dts died, and they can't find me another.
Below: Close up of a computer monitor, from Space Cowboys (Blu-ray), left to right: Mitsubishi HC6800, DLA-RS25, Epson Home Cinema 8500UB, and BenQ W6000. The DLA-RS25 holds its own against most, but not a few of the sharpest DLP projectors.
Mitsubishi HC6800: Bottom Line Sharpness
Along with the HC7000, the HC6800 becomes a prime candidate for a lot of folk who really want a sharper image. I hear this a lot from folk who have owned a DLP, followed by an LCD, and some complain they sorely miss the sharpness. Well, this is one LCD projector they should find acceptable, it may not be the best, but it should come close enough for most people.
Light Leakage
The HC6800 is very clean when it comes to light leakage. No problem here at all.
Mitsubishi HC6800 Image Noise
The HC6800 performs very nicely on the tests I use on the HQV test disc. Nothing worth reporting.
Mitsubishi HC6800 Audible Noise
Nice and quiet. Mitsubishi claims 20 db in low power mode. I'd say they're right. That should put full power mode around 24 db, or at worst 25 db. And that's still very quiet by home theater projector standards. Can you say "Excellent!"?