Business LCD projectors that can pull double-duty for home entertainment purposes are becoming commonplace. Mitsubishi has a unique spin with its Mitsubishi HC3: It's an HDTV home theater projector that can also handle business chores.

Designed primarily for motion video, the HC3 delivers a true 16:9 wide-screen picture at its native resolution of 960-by-540. The 5.9-pound unit can also interpolate a traditional 4:3 aspect signal of up to 1,280-by-1,024. Setup out of the box is easy and minimal. A VGA dongle will connect to the component jacks of a progressive-scan DVD player or HD receiver. A standard VGA cable is included for your PC, and you can also use the composite or S-Video jacks.

To see how it fares as a business projector, we tested the HC3 on images generated by DisplayMate (www.displaymate.com). Using a 1,024-by-768 signal in 4:3 mode, the HC3 did very well. Color reproduction was excellent, and the HC3 showed off its 500:1 contrast in the gray-scale screens. Fine text was a bit difficult to read in the PC images, but for PowerPoint slides this shouldn't be an issue.

The HC3 really shines as a home theater projector. The rated 1,300 ANSI lumens of output created a terrific-looking 80-inch (diagonal) image in subdued room lighting. We found 100 inches to be the point where you want to start darkening the room significantly. In both cases, the old home theater rule of thumb applied: a seating distance of about three times the height of the image yielded best results. Getting much closer reveals some pixelization; moving too far back robs you of the impact.

When playing the Underworld DVD, the image was very realistic. All the challenging dark, blue-filter scenes were crisp and showed amazing detail. Mitsubishi's ColorView engine delivered accurate flesh tones, and explosive firearm bursts exhibited gorgeous reds and oranges.

Switching to a 1080i HD version of Shrek was not quite as free of artifacts, but the image was still good. The occasional jaggies occur because of scaling, since the HC3 has a quarter the pixels of a 1,920–by-1,080 native 1080i display. That said, we've seen plasmas in this price range do far worse with 1080i signals, and you get a much bigger picture with the HC3.

So if you're in the market for a flat-screen or rear-projection HDTV monitor, consider adding the front-projection Mitsubishi HC3 to your decision tree. It delivers a bigger picture than the other choices, and you can take it with you on the occasional business trip, as well.