Summary: 2006-03-16 08:08:46 After four years of waiting on technology, debating over bang for buck, visiting brick and mortar stores countless times, and researching every professional and user review of big screen TVs, I finally pulled the trigger on the Mitsubishi WD-52628. The main reason is the picture quality looked the best to me among all the DLPs and against the competing LCoS, LCD, and Plasma offerings. The Mits is not a 10 out of 10, but the picture quality, design, features, and overall ease of use won me over. You can find a very detailed review of the larger Mits WD-62628 on CNET.com. They rated the Mits at 6.9 out of 10. The editor’s choice went to the Sony SXRD at 8.8 out of 10. You’ll find quite a few user reviews that confirm or deny the respective ratings. You can find my full review of the Mits on e-pinions.com.
DESIGN of Mitsubishi WD-52628:
Nice compact flat-black frame with a footprint of only H-34”/W-49.6”/D-18.6” weighing only 121-lbs. I get very little reflection in the TV. The remote is large, but well laid out and it is completely backlit for darkened rooms. It is universal/learning capable and has some easy-to-use buttons. One draw-back in design is the fan noise. I had to raise the volume level to at least ‘15’ to drown it out. Most of the time I can’t hear the fans or color wheel unless there is a quiet moment in the broadcast or DVD playback.
FEATURES:
Huge feature set with gobs of inputs including memory cards and fire wire on the front panel. You’ve got 3 component, 2 antenna/cable, 2 HDMI, 3 fire wire, 3 video, and CableCard inputs. One of the HDMI’s will accept a PC input if the PC has DVI output with HDMI adaptor. My favorite feature is of course the 1080p up-convert. This along with “DeepField Imager,” “Dark Detailer,” and “SharpEdge” really make the analog signals on my Comcast Cable watchable! . The 1080p resolution is native, but like most new DLPs does not accept 1080p input signals except maybe on IEEE 1394 input. The ‘video’ button reveals many of the standard settings you’re used to, brightness, sharpness, color, tint, and contrast. In “Perfect Color” setting you can manually adjust six individual colors or leave it on automatic. The ‘format’ button reveals six modes for SD but only two for HD. The ATSC/QAM tuner is outstanding, pulling in those unscrambled HD and Digital channels over Comcast analog cable for no extra charge and no cable box!
A couple nitnoids: There is no optical out for audio, but the digital coax out (cable included) is doing a fine job of providing Dolby 5.1 to my receiver. “Net Command” looks a little complicated to set up, so I have not hooked up the IR emitters (cable included) from the TV to my VCR for recording. Also, the channel changer takes about two seconds to display the next channel.
PERFORMANCE:
My wife and I dialed up PBS channel in HD and said, “Wow” at the same time. The signal coming in on a Comcast cable with no CableCard was brilliant. On some HD stations some resolution is lost and manifests itself as pixilation during fast motion. CNET.com found that the Mits lost 25-50% of the horizontal resolution for a 1080i source during their testing but admitted “the loss of resolution was not as noticeable as we thought it would be.” According to CNET you can see visible dithering if you sit closer than two screen widths away. I agree.
The Mits color decoder needs attention due to “red push” and some color inconsistency across signals. The “Perfect Color” in automatic mode helps prevent this. Fortunately, you can use the manual mode and dial down the “red push” with the individual color settings available. With tweak adjustments across the board I usually get what I want for a display.
Analog channels look good which is a pleasant surprise in a digital wide-screen TV. I set ‘format’ to Standard Narrow for best viewing of analog signals because resolution is much better if you don’t force a poor analog signal to be stretched across the entire 1920 lines of resolution.
A couple more nitnoids: Putting a splitter in the cable line can cause some interference in the signal to the TV on a few channels. Audio/video out-of-synch showed up in one of my backup DVDs that had about 25% compression from the original. I see the rainbow effect typical for DLPs.
FINAL TALLY:
I’m quite happy with my new Mitsubishi WD-52628 1080p. I’m pretty critical when reviewing, so it is unlikely I would ever rate 5 of 5 or 10 of 10. When trying to make a $3000-4000 decision on a TV, you only have the store demos and the reviews you can find on the internet. Take them all, including mine, with a grain of salt and go see the TV for yourself.
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