Mitsubishi HC-5000BL Projector Review – General Performance-3

Posted on October 15, 2013 By Art Feierman

Screen Door Effect and Rainbow Effect

Of course, being an LCD projector, there is no spinning color filter wheel, and therefore, no rainbow effect.

When it comes to pixel visibility and the Screen Door Effect, the HC5000BL performs extremely well, by virtue of being a 1080p projector. While sitting my usual 11 feet from my 128″ diagonal Stewart Firehawk, pixels (barely visible on occasion on my 720p resolution DLP), were essentially gone! Only on credits could I really spot them when looking, and couldn’t pick them out during normal movie or sports content. As a result, let’s say this projector can comfortably be watched at close as a little less than 1 times screen width. That should make everyone (like me) who like to sit close in order to have a huge image, and better immerse themselves in the image, to be extremely pleased! After all, that’s what front projectors are all about. (Who wants to watch on one of those tiny 60″ plasma displays – they just don’t give you that theater effect!) The only LCD projector I have seen with less visible pixels is the new Panasonic PT-AX100U (720p) using their smooth screen technology, and the Mitsubishi overall, is much sharper. When I get my hands on the new Panasonic 1080p – the PT-AE1000U, which also has Smooth Screen, I suspect pixels will be less visible on it, but the question is, will the Panasonic appear as sharp?

Mitsubishi HC5000BL Light Leakage

No issues here, virtually no light leaking anywhere, especially out the front!

Audible Noise Levels

This is easy. The HC5000BL is easily the quietest home theater projector I have yet encountered. It claims an almost silent 19 db in low power, and even in full power, is quieter than most other home theater projectors in their quiet (low power) modes.

Mitsubishi HC5000BL Projector Brightness

I’ve been accused by readers of my reviews, of putting Projector Brightness too far down on the list of items in this page, just so people will read the rest. Hmmm, never really thought about it, but that’s how it worked out.

The HC5000BL is definitely not a light canon (particularly bright). However, neither are any of the other announced 1080p projectors anywhere near the price range, so, for those wanting a really bright 1080p home theater projector, looks like you’ll have to wait for the 2nd generation, a year away.

First, in ” best” mode, with the HC5000BL projector in full (Standard) power, Cinema (gamma), and Color Temp set based on my calibration (see calibration section), the HC5000BL measured a very reasonable 480 lumens. Dropping to low power, brightness decreased by approximately 23% to 371 lumens. Note, dropping the power to low had a significant effect on the color balance (temp), which I will go into later.

The Video setting produced just a handful more lumens than the Cinema setting.

In brightest mode – set at Full power, Gamma = Sports, and Temp = High Brightness, the HC5000BL cranked out 886 lumens. Not bad, but it pales by comparison to the lower resolution Panasonic PT-AX100U, which cranked out a full 2000 lumens. In fairness, most home theater projectors have similar brightness to the Mitsubishi, except for that new Panny, the Optoma HD72, and a couple of others – the “light canons”.