HC5000 Projector Setup and Installation

It seems these days there are almost too many projectors. What?! Too many? Nah, but it makes the playing field very confusing for consumers. In each review I try to narrow in on the type of person who might be looking for the product being reviewed - and consequently, the type of person for whom this product is targeted. I'd like to say that there are products out there which would make everyone happy, but that's not necessarily the case. With the Mitsubishi HC5000 projector, the focus is on combining high quality picture with absolute silence and much-appreciated convenience features. It's a pretty good match-up if you ask me, and it separates this projector from the absolute budget products that are simultaneously hitting the streets.

Things We Really Liked About This Projector
Continuing the above thought, Mitsubishi has entered a projector into the marketplace with several very nice convenience features which help distance it from the pack and set it apart:

• Side-loading 5000-hour Lamp
  I almost always utilize my projectors in low-power modes for the deepest blacks possible. With a light-controlled room, this ensures you get the best possible black levels and has the added benefit of extending the life of your bulb. At 5000 hours (until 1/2 brightness) this is one of the longer lasting systems on the market. Now let's talk about lamp replacement. If you're like me, you'll mount your projector on the ceiling - and that means that with the Mitsubishi you don't have to remove it from the ceiling while performing a routine bulb replacement. One screw and you're done.
  
• 19dBA Fan Noise in Low Mode
  Whenever anyone figures out how far away they are when most manufacturers make fan noise measurements, let me know. Until then I'll classify projectors as loud, medium, or quiet. The Mitsubishi HC5000 is near-silent at any practical seating distance. It is one of the quietest projectors I've heard in a long time.
  
• Silicon Optix Reon-VX HQV Processing
  The Reon-VX chipset is nearly identical in practical performance to the acclaimed Realta and offers exceptional performance, especially when viewing standard definition DVDs and cableTV programming. Noise reduction and scaling should be particularly good on this projector.

Basic Setup and Installation

The HC5000 was easy to install in our viewing and testing room. We placed it onto our temporary front projection platform and set the horizontal and vertical lens shift to fine tune the projector, squaring it to the screen. This is when we discovered the bitter-sweet lens shift system. While it was refreshing to have a motorized system, the relatively tiny 5% horizontal allowance meant that this system is meant for an accurate placement with only minor adjustments. In a practical sense, this is perfectly acceptable - why would anyone not want to accurately mount their projector in the first place. But in our temp setup it caused us to do a bit more work before we aligned the system perfectly with no keystoning.

Zoom and focus are also powered and we had a hard time adjusting either with the remote in a front projection configuration until we changed the batteries on the remote. Even then the remote seemed to not have a very strong signal to the IR receiver - but more on that later. We took practical note of the easy-to-replace lamp and wondered why more manufacturers didn't take into consideration the fact that many people would like the ability to replace the lamp without first having to remove the projector from a ceiling mounted installation. I was proud of Mitsubishi for not requesting users remove the system from a ceiling mount before replacing the bulb. My Yamaha LPX-510 states this in the manual which seems ludicrous as it is another projector with ample side access to the lamp even with a ceiling mount installation. In summary, installation was a breeze and I don't expect any difficulties from installers or consumers.

Throw Chart for Distancing the Projector from a 16:9 Projection Screen
The Mitsubishi HC5000 has an adequate zoom lens, though as we mentioned, the limited lens shift made us have to scramble for a better placement in our room to avoid any keystoning. With a ceiling mount this will not be an issue for any users. In our room we had the unit positioned from around 11 feet projecting onto a Studiotek 130 screen.