Product Description

Black reproduction is the key to stunning home theater and the HC5500 LCD projector brings more life to your screen with faster transitions between light and dark scenes and sharper overall details in dark areas. This portable home theater projector projects at a full HD(1920 x 1080) 1080p resolution. Digital video output gives you seamless performance with the Blu-ray 24P next generation optical disk. And a 1.2x powered zoom and focus lens lets you enjoy the big screen even in smaller spaces.

Product Details

• Brand: Mitsubishi
• Model: HC5500
• Dimensions: 4.90" h x 13.10" w x 13.80" l, 12.30 pounds

Features

• Native 1080p High Definition Projector
• 1200 ANSI Lumnes
• Auto Zoom and focus
• 14,000:1 contrast ratio
• 2 HDMI Inputs

Customer Reviews

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...

Good Projector if you don't live in the mountains!
After much research into DLP projectors, I decided on this one becuase of it's features, resolution, high contrast, and price (the rebate and free bulb helped me decide too!) This was purchased for a home theater. We saw it in a home theater store and the picture was AMAZING. We purchased a professional grade screen to use it with and acheived the same results... as long as the room is pitch black. The only problem is after around 1 hour and 15 minutes, the unit flashes temperature/overheating warnings and shuts down. I live in Colorado at an altitude of around 9400 feet. I read the manual and discovered that Mitsubishi does not suggest using it above 5000 feet. We seem to have over come the problem by installing 2 CPU cooling fans into the air filter shroud. It makes a little humming noise, but we can get through a movie without it overheating.

Pros: Price, contrast, clear picture, easy setup and menu
Cons: overheats if above 5000 ft, pictures gets washed out VERY quickly if there's ambient light in the room

Good for dark rooms
I would rate this projector 4 or above if I want to use it only in dark room. If you have reasonable ambient light in room then forget about any night scene. May be this was with my unit only so I returned. Good service from Amazon no hard time in returning.