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Mitsubishi HC-5000BL Projector Review – General Performance-5

Posted on October 15, 2013 By Art Feierman

Mitsubishi HC5000BL Calibration

I found in measuring the HC5000BL, that the warm setting was a bit too warm (red),.measuring (depending on the level of grays/white) between about 5900 and 6200. Conversely, the medium temp setting was a bit cool, but overall better, with white at 6730, 80 ire at 6734, 50 ire at 6938, and 30 ire at 6996. Of the two, I preferred watching movies at the Medium temp setting.

The real solution though is to calibrate – adjust the grayscale temperature. So I do recommend, at least getting a basic calibration disk (they have good tutorials, you can handle it), such as the AVIA disk.

Bottom line, I did a basic calibration, adjusting the R,G,B Brightness and Contrast, in the Color Temp User area.
Contrast R=0G=5

B=-4
Brightness R=0G=-1

B=-2

Note, no two projectors will end up with the same settings working best, as there is too much variation from lamp to lamp. Still, if you run out and buy an HC5000BL (and it is worthy!), you might try those settings, and see how they compare to the Warm and Medium settings.
100 IRE (white) 6552
80 IRE (light gray) 6488
50 IRE (med. gray) 6621
30 IRE (dark gray) 6521

Now, I got lucky! (Calibration, is to some degree a trial and error process). That’s about as close as one can possibly get to hitting the 6500K on the button. Note, there is only a 137K difference between them all. As expected, the end result looked great. Mind you, the Medium setting was pretty good, but though subtle, the user settings produced beautiful fleshtones, and color overall. By the way, those numbers are very similar to the “right out of the box” Samsung SP-H710AE I just reviewed, which is essentially pre-calibrated.

When measuring the brightest mode, that 886 lumens was at a color temperature around 8400 (on white), just a bit too cool (high) a temperature for HDTV, and well above optimum movie watching (6500K). I did try the user settings I created for movies, and was able to get the color temp down to 7053 (for white), while Gamma was still set for Sports. I didn’t measure the brightness with those user settings, but I would suspect that the lumens dropped down under 600.

Mitsubishi HC5000BL Image noise

The HC5000BL uses Silicon Optix HQV processing, highly touted as one of the best. I have Silicon Optix test disk which looks at jaggies, noise, cadence, and motion artifacts. Not surprising, the HC5000BL passed all of the tests easily. Overall though, there is the usual amount of background noise. I would say it’s a bit better than the typical DLP projector (often LCD’s are better in this area), and not objectionable. Could it be a bit better? Yes. Will you care? Not likely. Not an issue for all but the true perfectionists. I certainly had no problem with its image noise at any time while watching, and I do sit very close.

HC5000BL and HDTV in my theater

One technical problem I encountered, not mentioned previously. I had a problem trying to get the HC5000BL to work with the HDMI output from my cable box. I spoke with the Mitsubishi product manager, however, and I have concluded, that most likely the problem may be tied to the fact that this is a pre-production sample, and that I have on occasion suffered difficulty in my theater with other projectors, and none of them have been reported to have a problem overall. So, I attribute it to my own gear and wiring scheme, and possibly the pre-production aspect of this particular HC5000BL. I was also told that other reviewers have NOT reported any problems with HDTV feeds. I therefore believe you can dismiss this as an issue. Mitsubishi will be sending me another unit in the near future, just to confirm, and I will update when I get it. (That is why there are no HDTV images such as football or Jay Leno in this review).

Mitsubishi HC-5000BL Projector Review – General Performance-4
HC5000 Projector Review – Warranty