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When the projector arrived my first impression of the box was that it was so big and heavy I thought for a moment an old CRT TV had arrived. Upon opening it I found one very big black projector staring at me, weighing in at 14.5kg with dimensions of 482x215x530mm (whd), the HC9000D is up there leading the pack for room presence. This projector is not for the discreet home theatre setup.
Connections
The input panel is on the side of the projector, the same side as some competition brands. So note the input side for all the cables and cable routing and be aware that the side flips when you are roof mounting the projector. It has 2-HDMI, 1-PC, component, composite and S-video for all the video inputs and 2-12vdc triggers for screen and anamorphic setups, plus a serial service and finally the 3D emitter plug to drive the 3D LED block. Noting the 3D emitter and glasses are an optional extra.
Setup
One of the reasons this projector is big and heavy is that it has motorised lens shifting functions. I had a few location restrictions for this review so I had to locate the projector in line with the bottom left corner of my 106in screen at about 6m throw. The motorised shift worked well and I managed to dial the image in to the screen with the left right and up down through the remote control. My only negative is there is no central or position reference indicator, not a big problem, just would be nice to know when you are centralised. The zoom and focus again works as intended and was able to dial in a crisp focus. There is also a lens locking function to lock down the final result.
An excellent set of keystone adjustments are available that rotate vertically, horizontally, anyplace and pin cushion barrel adjustments. Although a lot of effort has gone into the keystone adjustment design, I would still advise setups that don’t force the use of it for the fact that use of keystone does lower image quality. Still it is good to have it available for flexibility especially in the home with compromised setup.
Panel Alignment
If the panels were out of alignment there is a panel alignment function allowing for a 1 pixel per click shift vertically and horizontally, which is good if they were out a full pixel. If you were half a pixel out of align you would be stuck. The alignment of this review unit was aligned well out of the box, although I did see red slightly smudged or defocused to the left by about half a pixel. Normal to see blue defocused, but not red. You don’t see it in an image though as the SXRD projector displayed a crisp sharp image.
Remote and menus
The remote has most of the functions available through quick access buttons which illuminate when pushed. Although I personally found the buttons a little hard to read as I felt the illumination is a little low after viewing the screen image which can be bright. When using the advanced calibration sections having to scroll through menus to get back to the section being worked upon was a little tedious although the advanced gamma doesn’t timeout when being worked on and it would be nice if greyscale and the CMS also operated in the same way.
Unfortunately there is no way to save what you have tweaked so a manual record of settings is required. For the average user the advanced areas tend to be an infrequent event so for general use the access to settings is good, like the core setup functions which are easily accessible which is the main thing for most users.
Performance
The HC9000D certainly has good 2D performance, especially in contrast levels and great blacks, but it needs it to drive 3D. Sticking with 2D for the time being, out of the box settings are reasonably good on greyscale and gamma tracking throughout the defaults. The best out of the box settings for accuracy is the typically named Cinema mode, 6500k and Cinema Gamma. Unfortunately you cannot see below video black which makes setting the black point or brightness quite difficult. It has advanced user locations for absolute tuning of gamma and greyscale which works well, although I’d personally like a few more points in the middle gamma tracking section. However they did gather more points within the critical areas which is an excellent feature.
Even though we know on paper specs can be for extreme settings, in this case the critical light levels are real and can deliver higher than recommended SMTPE/ISF/THX off screen light levels for my screensize of 106in. This is very good as a lot of people purchase projectors then try to fill overly large screens for the performance level of the projector. Actually the paper lumen spec is one of the most realistic to real world results and nice to see the closer to realistic rating.
This projector is a good choice for the larger home theatre screen or difficult conditions where some ambient light is present. Although it is always best to eliminate ambient light with home theatre projection as most are designed for blackout conditions.
The colour gamut is over driven and saturated out of the box, I suspect due to the highly reflective SXRD panels, but also they are trying to maximise output for 3D. Even though all primary colours are over saturated it does appear to your eyes more yellow, yellow green as we are more sensitive to the error in this region of the spectrum.
The out of the box colour is only really an issue from an accuracy point of view, for some this isn’t an issue, for others it is. The second part of the colour issue is that the built in colour management system does not function as it should, many calibrators have found the same issue and thus the colour output cannot be brought to Rec709 specifications.
After many hours of fiddling with settings I found an acceptable image balance, although this was from an image balance point of view not absolute accuracy. The CMS may be able to be tweaked with a firmware update, only Mitsubishi can really answer that, but it is an issue for enthusiasts and calibrators who like to tweak the image to reference standards.
For those not too concerned about absolute accuracy with colour, it can be balanced reasonably well, bearing in mind colour perception goes hand in hand with good gamma and contrast and here the combined ability delivers a deep vibrant colourful result.
Overall, imagery is very good where it does a fantastic job on high definition source material, with PAL material it handled up-scaling well, where it was a typically little soft, so you can really tell you were viewing up scaled source. The loaner Oppo BDP-95 3D player that came with the HC9000D did result in a superior up scaled image of PAL material but this is no different to the majority of display devices.
I compared the differences with a cheaper BD player, the Panasonic BD35, but found myself comparing differences in players than the HC9000D. The conclusion is the typical result with video where the weakest link will dominate the ultimate performance. I found the higher quality Oppo player a better match overall to the HC9000D as the projectors high definition performance excellent and the up scaled performance better handled by the Oppo BDP-95. Of course the Oppo test player can handle 3D as well which makes it an obvious choice for a source match for the HC9000D.
The HC9000D running in eco mode and 2D output is very quiet, in 3D output settings and high mode the noise levels from the fans does jump quite considerably. The vast majority of the time would be spent in 2D mode though with standard settings where noise is barely noticeable and excellent.
The HC9000D is one of the few 3D capable projectors on the market. One of the hurdles for 3D is light levels to drive 3D where it isn’t the projector so much as the 3D glasses that cut viewable light by a considerable amount.
The LED emitter and 3D glasses are an optional extra as the projector is marketed as a 3D capable projector and focus is really upon the 2D image capability. The emitter comes with short and long leads where the short one serves when the emitter is mounted upon the projector where there is a special mounting point under the lens. Because of my not so perfect test setup I had a little trouble with the glasses cutting out. The LED emitter reflections have some limits in the distance and direction so considerations for placement of the emitter are critical. Once I found the sweet spot everything worked quite well, I’d say roof mounting the projector would improve emitter and glasses function, more direct acting and of course better still is to use the longer lead to mount the emitter to the front of the viewer.
The projector runs at 240 Hz for a better 3D performance and allows for several 3D syncing types. I tested a couple movies supplied with the projector, Despicable Me and Cats and Dogs. I found the 3D quite believable and odd at the same time, despite 240 Hz I noted a flicker in my peripheral, but then I know I am sensitive to flicker, so I had a few test subjects try out the 3D.
Nearly everyone liked it with the consensus that was better than what they had experienced in the theatres. However most also noted the flicker that once viewed became annoyingly obvious. If you forced yourself to ignore the flicker and focus upon the centre of your vision it wasn’t too noticeable, but then this is tiring for long term viewing.
Material also plays a part in 3D, I have to say it is early days for 3D, for the test movies supplied I found Despicable Me more enjoyable as a 3D experience, but then some scenes were wonderful and then others wrong. However this brings us back to the projector being marketed as a 3D capable device, it does 3D as well as the theatre, and many respects better, but still it is a better 2D projector. One could argue light emitting displays do 3D better as they have more light to work with.
Conclusion
The HC9000D is a solid 2D and 3D capable projector, as a result of the new Sony SXRD panels it throws a crisp vibrant high contrast image with great blacks which delivers the pop factor that many like to see. It has an excellent array of setup features allowing for flexible installation and is well suited for larger screens. It is a large projector so some consideration for installation is required, more suited to roof mounting than shelf positioning. The greyscale and gamma tracking is good out of the box, although it would be nice to have below black viewable for setting video black or the brightness control easier.
The only main weak area is the colour management system which does not function well enough to reign in the over driven and saturated primary colours. However many are not bothered by oversaturated colour since it can be a question of balance, here for the enthusiast they can create a fairly balanced image with the semi functioning colour management system, but only just for those with good understanding of how to do it. For those who want the high power and accuracy I’d recommend a video scaler such as a Lumagen mini3D which would reside between the BD player and projector to do video correction for ultimate performance.
Projector comparison
Absolute comparisons can be a personal preference thing, sometimes we just like the way one manufacture may do things. However in the case of absolute accuracy my personal projector, an AE4000E can deliver a far more accurate image than the HC9000D out of the box and calibrated. My wife even commented, despite the more powerful image of the HC9000D, she preferred our AE4000E. This is of course what happens when you view calibrated images, your reference is of greater accuracy, when the image is off you can see it. So an important consideration if you like an accurate image but don’t necessarily need the absolute grunt you can look at other models of cheaper value like the AE4000E.
However, coupled with a video processor the HC9000D will have more lumens, stronger contrast and an accurate image, abet at the cost of an extra piece of equipment of between $2000~$3000nzd. It does come back to considering the installation requirements with your projector set up, if you need power, the HC9000D will give that, if you don’t you have more options to consider.
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