Home > Consumer Reviews > Mitsubishi HC1500 720p DLP Home Theater Projector

When I first bought this, I was a little apprehensive. I don't have a screen, just an off-white plaster wall in my living room with a seam or two, and some nail holes thrown in for good measure. With that, and a fear of rainbows and mounting limitations (my ceiling is only 7.5 feet tall) I was expecting to be a little disappointed. How wrong I was.

This projector is absolutely amazing. My friends and I are all shocked at how fantastic the picture looks! No one that has seen it has seen any rainbows, and I watch a lot of old black and white films! I put it on a coffee table, which makes any minor adjustments simple.

My living room is 19' x 17', and I paired this with a inexpensive surround sound from Philips, and everyone that comes over for movies is blown away.

the HDMI looks REAL GOOD with movies with an upscale dvd player and I can only imagine it gets better with true HD.Though with standard video sources and video games especially,there is ALOT of rainbow effect and with the lower resolution motion leaving much to be desired.It's nice and bright on all sources but it lacks warmth and a natural look.Digital cable looks pretty bad on this unit so if you are using it for daily watching I would highly suggest a plasma or lcd.To my surprise this unit runs REAL cool compared to the other projectors I have owned,it has front vents ,a dual fan intake/exhaust system that runs both really quiet yet really efficient in keeping things cool..great for both longevity and performance.The body of the projector looks real sleek and sturdy,standard buttons on top easy connections out back.My only gripe is that anything other then hdmi and it looks really grainy and dark,but then again it's not the projectors fault..it's image quality is only as good as it's native source.If everything came in HD it would be perfect lol but for standard tv watching I would almost recommend a 480p projector over this one being that though this unit may have extra resolution,it doesn't really matter anyways being that standard NTSC broadcast is about 480p standards anyways,though from the looks of things it looks more like 600X400 at best..which is pretty bad.Color and brightness is great,pictures are clear and crisp.Barely any pixalization at all.I highly recommend for movies/games in HD though for standard video I would suggest the Infocus IN72.

I bought this projector for my father, and it has been a great choice.
He is now the owner of a fantastic movie theater (located in a small living room with a white wall) and couldn't be happier about it.

The projector has a wonderful image, and can be used during the day without any issues (it's pretty bright). We hooked it up to a small home theater receiver/DVD with HDMI and up-conversion, and the resulting image was great. We have not had the chance to test it with HDTV signals because there are none available there (he lives in South America).

you just cant go wrong with this projector, i have like a week with it and i love it. the quality of the images are just jaw-dropping. I`m projecting that into an almost white wall (no projector screen yet, actually i don't think i need it).

You all can check the pictures i'm uploading here. If you looking a cheap way to get HD into your home, this is your best choice.

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.