Sometimes you have to see a product in the flesh to believe that it actually exists; many products show up at CES in prototype form but never see the light of day as a finished product. Mitsubishi Electric Visual Solutions America shocked people when it announced that it was getting out of the 65"-under TV market, but drew even greater gasps when it announced the release of the massive 92-inch WD-92840 3D Home Cinema DLP HDTV. For $5,995, this 194 pound wall-o-screen can be yours in early July.
The images supplied by Mitsubishi certainly piqued our interest, but until you see this room-filling HDTV in the flesh, you can't appreciate how large it really is. Unless you can supply a wall close to 10 feet wide and have a viewing distance of at least 13-15 feet, you need not apply in this case. Mitsubishi does offer 73-inch and 82-inch models for "smaller" rooms, but the WD-92840 was the most intriguing HDTV at CE Week in New York by a considerable margin. Say...92 inches.
The rear-projection 3D DLP TV utilizes replaceable bulbs (the same 180 watt bulb is being used in all three sizes) that will run a very affordable $99 each; giving this set a very laffordable overall cost of ownership. Mitsubishi supports active 3D playback (which goes against the trend that was clearly emerging this week as more manufacturers get behind passive 3D technology) and is pushing hard to get the price of active 3D glasses below $100; possibly as low as $50-75 in the near future.
The set's 3D IR emitter is inside the set and based on our admittedly unscientific walkaround tests on the show floor at the CEA Line Shows, you should be able to walk around the room without losing your connection.
The set comes with 4 HDMI inputs, 2 USB 2.0 ports, a LAN Ethernet port, 1 component video input, RCA stereo output jacks, a variable subwoofer output, and a coaxial digital output which will output Dolby Digital+ for VUDU users.
The set utilizes Mitsubishi's Stream TV Internet Media; which basically includes VUDU, Pandora, and a few others. Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video on Demand are not available yet on this set, but if you need more streaming content, chances are good you can find that on your Blu-ray 3D player or Roku/Boxee/Apple TV media streaming device.
The set has a 120Hz sub-frame rate which seemed to work fine with most of the 3D content that we watched. The set has two ISF modes; you can save day/night calibration settings, or one 2D/3D combination.
Mitsubishi is using a new clear contrast screen on the 840 series and while that certainly has some advantages, it also has some drawbacks. The image on this DLP is very bright and black levels (at least on the 2D Blu-ray content that we looked at) were quite good. The screen, however, is fairly reflective and that might become an issue for users who can't control the ambient light levels in their home theater room. Under some rather poor show conditions (Mitsubishi was in a corner of the exhibit hall with rather large windows on one side bathing the set in sunlight...even with black drapes in front of them), we could see our own image from 12-15 feet away reflected in the set's screen.
The set also has 16 speakers built into the front base and while they sound quite good, you'll want to run the audio through a surround system with this set to get the full theatrical experience.
The $5,995 price tag seems like a bargain compared to the $40,000 85" 3D plasma from Panasonic, but the two sets utilize very different technology and there is a strong case to be made for the jaw-dropping image quality of the Panasonic panel. Granted, one could build a reference quality 120" 3D set-up (JVC D-ILA projector and Stewart Filmscreen screen) for less than $13,000, sbut there is something to be said for the one-piece simplicity of the Mitsubishi set.
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