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Mitsubishi HC9000D Projector – Image Quality

Posted on July 20, 2011 By Art Feierman

All of the Mitsubishi HC9000D screen image photos below are from either Blu-ray or HDTV.

In truth, virtually all projectors, including this HC9000D, will look a lot better projecting on to your screen, than in these pictures. That said, much can be revealed by viewing them.

These Mitsubishi HC9000D projector images come to you through a Canon D60 dSLR camera, software, browsers, and even your monitor, all with their own color inaccuracies. There are color shifts, saturation differences, etc. Take them all, “with a grain of salt”.

In all cases, there are slight shifts in color from what I see on the screen, and what ends up on my monitor, or yours.

For this series, I found that the HC9000D images end up with a slight yellow orange caste. The real, projected image definitely looks more natural.

The images of the Mitsubishi HC9000D are provided to support the commentary, but keep in mind the major limitations when trying to compare images from the 9000D with other home theater projectors, when it comes to color accuracy.

HC9000D "Out of the Box" Picture Quality

Click to enlarge. SO close

Pretty impressive right out of the box, the Cinema mode pretty closely tracks the target 6500K in our quick measurements, averaging just a tad high (cool) by about 100K. Translated, out-of-the-box grayscale balance is about as good as most projectors end up AFTER calibration! OK, in fairness, a good calibration would be a bit tighter still, but the HC9000D, let’s say, is one of the projectors in this price range that least needs a calibration for movie watching. (Oh, don’t worry, it will further improve if you invest the effort or money to have it calibrated).

I never got back to “out of the box” after Mike calibrated it, but on the first few hours of watching I was rather satisfied with the picture quality. Reasonably accurate colors, combined with impressive black levels.

Really one of the better efforts, right in the box. There are others though, just as good, out of the box. Figure any projector that’s got a THX mode, will likely be comparable. That includes the higher end JVCs (that’s the more expensive ones), the Epson UB, and a couple of others, of the ones we’ve reviewed.

Check out our recommended settings for items like Brightness, Color, etc. on the Calibration page of this review.

Click Image to Enlarge

HC9000D Projector - Flesh Tones

Beautiful. Not the best ever, but as good as any of the other projectors to roll through here of late, including the Sony and the JVC. Again, note, that the actual image on the screen has a lower yellow/orange component than these images, and perhaps more noticeable, the images came out a bit oversaturated.

Other than our inability to capture and deliver accurate reproductions on your monitor, let me say that the only real tendency to be concerned with is the slight over all oversaturation due to the color gamut. That’s all nice and technical, but the truth is, almost everything I watched looked great, but, the underlying oversaturation, I assume, of primary colors, did have me readjusting the color saturation slighty from some content to other content.

Mitsubishi HC9000D Projector – Physical Tour-4
Mitsubishi HC9000D Projector – Image Quality-2