HD4000 Projector Review - General Performance

Mitsubishi HD4000
Image Quality
General Performance
Warranty
Summary, Pros, Cons

Menus
User Memory Settings
Remote Control
Lens Throw and Lens Shift
Light Leakage
Audible Noise Levels
Lamp Life and Replacement
Projector Screen Recommendations

Menus

Nothing overly fancy with Mitsubishi's menus. There is the small main menu bar, that defaults to the upper left corner (you can change menu position if you want to.)

Select the first icon, and you get the image menu shown here: (You can see the four main menus in the top left.

Gamma mode is your preset control, with Auto, Sports, Cinema, Video...

Color Temperature is interesting. There are several temperature choices, from 5900K to 9300K. I found that they were not particularly accurate, for example, the "ideal" 6500K setting measured just over 5800K.

However, one of the Color Temp. choices is "High Brightness, and when either Cinema, or Video presets were selected, temperature was an almost dead on 6528K and 6538K respectively. (I did note, in the Image Quality section, however, that green was too strong. You can also access User Memory in the Color Temp menu. That allowed me, by selecting User Memory 1, to get to the otherwise unavailable RGB menu (below Color Temp), to correct for the green.

As you can see in the image abovce, Brilliant Color processing is set to 2, the maximum, which is where I left it for my image shots in the previous section.

The next main menu is the Installation menu, where among other things, you can control the lamp brightness (Standard is full power). Other items include ceiling mount, rear screen options, control of the 12 volt trigger allowing the HD4000 to control a suitable motorized screen, and also "Vertical location" which is a digital lens shift. This allows you, when viewing letter boxed movies (for example) to move the image up or down on the screen. For those with a motorized screen, with presets, conceiveably you can drop the screen part way, and move up the image, so that you no longer have the letterbox at the top or bottom. This is a feature found on few projectors, although Optoma also offers it on their home theater models.

The Feature menu is next.

It gives you aspect ratio control, password functions (commonly found on business projectors - to render the projector useless to thieves). Also the ability to adjust the menu, Also handling of WXGA computer signals gives you some choices.

For those countries that use SCART, you have that option as well. And of course, a Reset.

That's about enough of the menus. If you are really curious, you can download the entire manual from the Mitsubishi-presentations website.

User Memory Settings

The Mitsubishi HD4000 projector has three savable user memories. Entering the user memory settings allows access to some controls not available when you select High Brightness, or any of the Color Temperature (6500K, etc.) settings. The User settings are found on the Color Temperature menu option.

To calibrate the color for the separate Red Green and Blue brightness and contrast, you do need to use a user memory.

HD4000 Remote Control

The HD4000 remote is very typical. It is, I should note, backlit - not too common these days for what is officially a business projector, and that's nice to have if you should be putting this in a darker room environment. That said, the backlit buttons are somewhat dimmer than I like, but definitely better than no backlight at all. (Hitting any button lights up the buttons.

Separate power on and off are at the top. This is followed by the input source buttons. Below them are the traditional 4 arrow keys, with a center Enter button, and the Menu button below to the left, and Aspect ratio (right).

The next row allows users to select from the three user savable memory settings.

Next, comes direct access buttons for Contrast, Brightness and Color Temperature.

The second last row has a Gamma button for toggling through the presets (Auto, Sports, Cinema....) and also Sharpness controls.

On the last row, there is Auto Position (auto setup) for analog computer signals, a image Mute button, and Keystone correction.

That covers the remote, except to say the range was fairly decent. I was able to get a decent bounce off of a white surface screen of better than 22 feet, from remote to screen to front sensor. That's as far back as I tested. I should say that this remote probably can't work much beyond that range, as would be typical for remotes running on a pair of AAA batteries. Those remotes using AA batteries tend to have more range.

Lens Throw and Lens Shift

The 1.2:1 zoom lens allows the following placement, with a 100 inch diagonal 16:9 aspect ratio screen:

The closest distance from screen to front of lens, is 11.9 feet, the furthest is 14.5 feet.

There is no variable optical lens shift. The built in shift puts the bottom of the image well above the center of the lens, by about 17 inches on the 100" diagonal screen. Remember that this is a 1280x768 projector (so it can do true XGA 1024x768), not a 1280x720 (720p) projector. As a result, for video viewing of 16:9 material, there is a bit less than 2 inches at the top and bottom, that are not used. I mention this as it can come into play with the digital image shift mentioned above. If you are putting the projector on a conference room table, with smaller screens (up to 6 feet wide), the bottom of the screen is likely positioned above the table. However, if you use a larger screen, you may have to find a lower table, as the screen is likely to hang lower.

In the home, a low table will likely work best, or if ceiling mounting, the top of your screen (to allow for the lens shift, and ceiling mount), is probably going to have to be about two feet down from the ceiling or more. This amount of fixed lens shift is not uncommon. Mitsubishi uses the same on the HC3000 (and other?) home theater projector, as do Optoma and a couple of others on a few of their projectors.

Light Leakage

The Mitsubishi does leak a bit of light out the fan vent. It's not enough to be an issue for home theater viewing, unless you are sitting along side the projector at just the right spot where you might catch sight of it. Of course if ceiling mounted, no issue at all, and the same is true for business use. Overall, the HD4000 does just fine here!

Audible Noise Levels

For business users, this is a fairly average projector in terms of noise, and it should be a non issue, in full power mode, and the projector is very quiet in low power. A definite trade-off here for those putting in their homes. In full power, you will hear the HD4000 slightly, and those noise adverse - demanding projectors with under 30db noise levels, will not be happy in full power mode. Low power mode is still fairly noisy compared to the quietest HT projectors, but should be acceptable for all but the most critical. I said above "a definite trade-off", as the compelling reason for buying the HD4000 for home is for the maximum lumens, and that means full power. Of course if you are watching a football game, you could care less about slightly audible noise levels.

Lamp Life and Replacement

The lamp is rated 2000 hours at full power, and 3000 hours in low power. That is about average in the industry. If you are ceiling mounting the projector, with most mounts, you will need to unmount the projector to change the lamp.

Projector Screen Recommendations (Home Theater Only)

I would recommend staying away from HC dark gray surfaces, like Stewarts Greyhawk, Da-Lite's HD-DaMat, and Carada's Grey HC. Better to stick with light gray HC surfaces if you are going HC at all. I found the darker gray surfaces to "enhance" the visibility of the posterization.

Assuming you are not using the projector in a fully darkened room, unless you are using the HC surface to reject some side lighting, I would go with a white surface with some gain, say 1.3 - 1.5, such as Stewart's Studiotek 130, or Carada's Brilliant White that I use in my testing room.

The black levels are sufficient to not need the HC grays, especially if you have some ambient light which will wipe out the benefits of the gray surface anyway.

OK, that's my 2 cents on general performance. Let's take a quick look at Mitsubishi's excellent and long warranty, then, on to our Summary.

Mitsubishi HD4000
Image Quality
General Performance
Warranty
Summary, Pros, Cons