Very nice but missing some aspect features.

The HC1500 is a very nice projector especially for the price. I upgraded from an InFocus Screenplay DLP Front Projector - SP4805. By comparison the HC1500 is much brighter quieter and more crisp. It also fit my existing ceiling mount which was very convenient.



The only problem I've not found a fix for is the aspect ratio selection. The SP4805 was native 16:9 but also had a mode for 4:3 and another which cropped a 4:3 picture to 16:9 and enlarged it to fill the whole screen. This mode was really nice for TV broadcasts and old DVDs filmed in 16:9 but broadcast in 4:3 with black bars. Without that zoomed/cropped mode you have to watch it in 4:3 mode so you see the black bars both on the sides of the screen and then again on the top and bottom. This means you're basically looking at an image 2/3 the size of your screen.



As far as I can tell the HC1500 does not have an aspect mode that works well with this problem. It is also native 16:9 and has the following aspect modes; auto (which as far as I can tell is identical to 16:9 regardless of input signal) 4:3 4:3 stretched to 16:9 (with serious distortion on the left and right sides) and two zooms. The user's guide says the two zooms are optimized for cinemascope and vista images with subtitles but they don't expand the projected area out to take advantage of the better screen/picture aspect ratio match. Instead it simply crops the image within the 4:3 display boundary and leaves the black bars on the sides. This is very annoying when watching 16:9 TV show (broadcast non-HD) because your picture is miniaturized and surrounded by unused black bar screen area. The show is being broadcast specifically to fill your whole screen but the projector leaves bars on all 4 sides of the image.



I don't understand why Mitsubishi omitted that feature it seems requisite these days. The fine print in the user's guide does mention that zoom modes will make the image of a 480i signal smaller. Again it looks fine when you have 480p input which I only get from my DVD player or a native 4:3 TV 480i input (normal TV). And the picture is fantastic with both.



Overall I'm happy with this machine especially for the price and bright HD picture. But if anyone has a work around for the aspect issue I'd love to hear it.More detail ...

Excellent projector. No NVIDIA 3D Vision support.

This is my second Mitsubishi projector. My first one was an XD-450U which also was excellent. The XD-600U is super bright and can deliver a great image even with lights in the room. It is almost silent (much better than my previous XD-450U) and you will not hear it over voice or music.



I bought this 3D Ready projector to use with my NVIDIA 3D Vision kit but sadly it is not supported by NVIDIA. NVIDIA will not say if they will support it in the future (even though they support many/all Mitsubishi 3D TVs that also use DLP technology) and they just told me to return the 3D Vision kit. I ran out of time to return it so now I am hoping that NVIDIA will add support for it in the future (as they have done with other 3D Ready projectors). I also contacted Mitsubishi and they just said that it is not supported.



Besides the 3D disappointment I am supper happy with the features and quality of this projector.More detail ...

Very Good Value

I bought this projector to replace a 6 year old Sharp 720p DLP projector. The primary reasons were the price the $[...] rebate and the excelent video processing chip (Reon-VX). The final straw that broke the camel's back was the fact the newer Blu-ray movies output 480P through the component video output (the Sharp didn't have HDMI).



Mine is hooked up using HDMI with Blu-ray and HD DVD players projected to a 150" gray screen.



What can I say - the picture is excellent. The Sharp was incredible and I would never have any complaints until I see in person what the 1080p projectors can do nowadays. It was immediately obvious this Mitsubishi has a sharper more detailed and better contrasted image. It has a slightly higher lumens output than the Sharp and also better contrast.



Although the Sharp came very close to an average movie theater picture quality this projector at the very least matches and in many cases exceed what one can see in an average theater. No complaints about the picture but I am not some super-nitpicky videophile like some.



This projector has an electronic zoom/focus lens so setting it up initially can be difficult. I made the mistake of hanging it up on the ceiling before making adjustments. The default zoom/focus levels made the picture extremely blurry so I could not read the menu at all. It was also upside down for me making things doubly difficult. I had to use the pictures of the menu in the manual in order to navigate around. Speaking of the manual -- it could use a lot of improvement (the section about the extra filter was buried in the back instead of the front where there should be a series of steps detailing the initial setup). I just feel if it had a manual focus option it would've cut my setup time by 75%.



To summarize some things I wish this projector had:

- Manual zoom/focus option

- More brightness (lumens output). I have to to set the brightness to around 75% to see something to my liking.

- More intuitive menu structure

- Have more frequently used functions be on the remote vs. buried somewhere in the menus

- Better manual



I would've given this projector 4 stars but given the incredible value (esp. with the rebate included) I think it deserves 5 stars.



Addendum: After poking around a little bit it turns out there is another available rebate; this other one is $[...] but with a free lamp which is most likely worth quite a bit more than $[...]. I chose the $[...]+lamp rebate instead...More detail ...

Great Product and even Better Service

I recieved the product ordered and it of course works great - better yet it arrived days before it was scheduled to arrive - GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE from this seller and would recommend them to family and friends!More detail ...