Design
We've seen plenty of projectors here at CNET.com.au that have strong design motifs; units that are engineered to look good on a projector stand or suspended from the ceiling - models from Sony and InFocus come to mind. Mitsubishi's HC5000 sadly isn't one of those; it's a very plain and fairly big (334(W) x 125(H) x 352(D) mm, 5.6kg) projector in black and white plastic casing. The front of the projector is dominated by the lens, which hides behind a completely removable flap when you first unpack it, while the rear of the projector houses a very no-nonsense arrangement of common display inputs. Controls on the top of the projector are basic but workable, and that's a good way to describe the simple and uncluttered remote control as well, which largely relies on contextual menu controls to change the projector's features. In summary, this is a very, very plain looking projector that won't wow your visitors on its looks alone.
Features
Looks, however, can be deceiving, as the real appeal of the HC5000 doesn't lie in the skin-deep plastic casing, but in the guts of the machine itself, and the promise of what it can do. The HC5000 uses Mitsubishi's C2FINET 3LCD panel using inorganic compounds in its construction. Organic LCD display panels - which make up the majority of LCD projector arrays on the market today - have a tendency to degrade over time, reducing colour clarity, and inorganic ones should, in theory, enjoy longer lifespans before requiring repair or replacement.
The HC5000 supports a top resolution of 1920x1080 pixels and supports every single HD resolution on the market today, including 1080p. It has a top rated brightness of 1000 ANSI Lumens -- slightly lower at 750 Lumens in Low noise mode -- and a contrast ratio of up to 10,000:1. On the input side, it gives you a single shot at every common connection out there -- composite, S-Video, component, D-Sub, DVI and HDMI, as well as a powered connection for controlling a motorised screen.
Speaking of things motorised, all of the HC5000's lens controls are motorised, and with one of the quietest operation modes we've ever heard; if you couldn't see the focus improving or the zoom distance changing you'd swear it wasn't moving at all.
Performance
We tested all of the HC5000's input resolutions after calibrating with DisplayMate Multimedia Edition and found that Mitsubishi's claims about the projector to largely sit true. In the current marketplace of course you're not going to come across too many genuine 1080p sources outside the woeful selection of -- and let's be honest here -- largely woeful movies already released in HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, but while the HC5000 does offer that nice futureproofing, it's also a very capable unit for dealing with most types of lesser resolution content. Using Star Wars Episode III as our guide benchmark, we found the HC5000 a very appealing unit, with good colour clarity and excellent visual reproduction, although switching to other less-well mastered material did tax the HC5000 to the point where it did show the cracks in the existing material. Predictably, going below component-level connections left us with a nice big screen of basically garbled nonsense, but that's the fault of the source material as much as anything.
While the HC5000 is sold as a premium home cinema projector, we couldn't resist using it as a home games machine as well. Wii Tennis doesn't quite stack up as well -- although it's very nice to play on a 100" screen -- but the full resolution of many Xbox 360 games such as Gears Of War or Oblivion looked truly stunning. Our only regret here is that unlike many other home cinema projectors, there's no dedicated "Game" screen mode; you'll have to manually calibrate one yourself.
The bulb within the HC5000 is rated for up to 5000 hours of usage time -- and the projector keeps track as many do -- with a very inexpensive replacement cost of AU$599. That works out to about 12c per viewing hour if the bulb lasts to full capacity, which represents great value for a display of this quality.
