HD4000 Projector Review: Summary, Pros, Cons 3

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Art Feierman

Summary

For business the HD4000 is one of the first widescreen projectors to sell below the $3000 price point, with typical pricing from authorized dealers now below $2500 at the time of this review (8/2006). The HD4000 combines good brightness with extremely impressive video handling, yielding excellent price performance for a widescreen projector. The HD4000 should find a wide range of users and applications that it is especially suitable for. It is expensive if you are looking at cost per lumen, but that is the nature, right now, of widesreen projectors.

The HD4000 will also do well in home environments. Its slower color wheel will cause the rainbow effect to eliminate some potential users, and its posterization, sometimes detectible in large bright slow moving areas on video, will scare off the purists in search of the perfect image. On the upside, having two to three times the brightness of the traditional home theater projector will enthrall those who want to watch sports, TV and HDTV in rooms with modest ambient light. This is not a traditional home theater projector, but one that will meet the needs of a great many, those who aren't looking for the traditional home theater projector that requires near total darkness.

Click enlarge. So close. The same combination of widescreen, high quality video, color handling, and brightness will also find the HD4000 plenty of commercial applications, including sports bars, church sanctuaries, digital signage, photography, etc.

One of the first of a new breed of affordable widescreen portable projectors, the HD4000 is an early front runner in a rapidly growing market segment. I expect the price will fall significantly over the next year, as more widescreen DLP projectors come to market. That said, if you are looking for a fairly bright widescreen solution with WXGA resolution, be it for business or home, the HD4000 merits serious consideration.

PS. While working on this review I did speak with the Mitsubishi Product Manager for the HD4000, relating to the posterization I occasionally spotted. I am awaiting a response from their engineering team, to see if there is something that, perhaps, can be done to eliminate this effect. If that is doable, it would have to be considered a further boost for the HD4000 in the home market. I will update this review if I learn if there is a solution, or if it is something that can be addressed in later versions with newer firmware. -art