Mitsubishi HC7800D Sharpness

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Art Feierman

Sharpness is excellent. Single chip DLP projectors always have an advantage, and Mitsubishi manages to put some quality glass on this projector (13 elements in 4 clusters).

The HC7800D simply looks sharper than most of the projectors to cruise through here in the last 6 months. That includes pretty much all the LCoS projectors and 3LCD projectors. The image sharpness certainly also looks as good as any DLP in the price range, including the pricier Optoma HD8300.

Mitsubishi HC7800D: Bottom Line Sharpness

Bottom line: There's nothing like a good single chip DLP projector for sharpness. With no panel convergence issues to deal with, a good optical path design, and a good lens, should yield a sharp clear image that lets you appreciate all that good full HD resolution content.

Click to enlarge. SO close

The Mitsubishi HC7800D places a sharper than most of the competition image, up on the screen. You'll really appreciate it more with digital content than film, since film based content starts out a little soft.

Sharpness is definitely one of the real strengths of the Mitsubishi HC7800 projector. While there may not be a "night and day" difference, between this DLP projector and the bulk of the competition, you can appreciate the modest sharpness advantage compared to of the LCoS and 3LCD projectors, and the HC7800D holds its own just fine with other DLP projectors around or below its price.

Click Image to Enlarge

Light Leakage

Nothing to be concerned about. A touch of light leaks though the venting, but not enough to create any issue.

Image Noise

In 2D, the projector looks pretty clean in terms of basic mosquito noise, for a DLP. Such noise seems more evident on DLP's but this one is pretty good.

I didn't encounter any problems with panning on 24fps content, which has showed up once in a while on some other (including very expensive) projectors, where you get jerky pan, when the speed of the panning doesn't match up well to something in the processing.

3D noise, as mentioned on the first page, starts with ghosting or crosstalk. DLP projectors are supposed to be clean, when it comes to these 3D artifacts, and, not surprisingly, it is.

In fact, as far as artifacts go, the HC7800D is probably about as clean as I've seen in 3D.

Audible Noise

Like most DLP home theater projectors (and a few others), the HC7800 projector is a bit noisy when running the lamp at full power. Not too bad, though. I believe Mitsubishi claims 31 db at full power, and that seems about right. The 25db claim for eco-mode also seems about right. The quietest projectors get down to about 16 db in eco-mode (call that silent for all practical purposes). But most home projectors are in the 18-26 db range in eco-mode, and run from about 23 to 33 db at full power.

Bottom line, if you are particularly noise adverse, you won't like the HC7800D at full power, but then, you also won't like about 75% of the remaining home theater projectors either. Not bad, not great, the HC7800D's audible noise levels are nothing to get excited about - but probably won't be a real issue for you.