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Hitachi CP-X275WT by Tor Arne Hustvedt - Apr 14, 2002
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| XGA (1024x768), 1200 ANSI Lumens, 5.0 lbs, $5,495 (MSRP) |
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| Personal Experience |
| I bought this projector because I got a great deal and it had the features I needed for home theater use. It would take progressive PAL (576p) on component (in addition to prog NTSC) even though the manual makes no mention of this. I used a Denon DVD-2800 modified for 576p and multi-zone. I particularly like the option to move the 16:9-picture inside the boundaries of the 4:3-projection because this enabled me to position the picture about 15cm lower by just moving it down in the projector-software. The projector does a very good job of scaling video-material and the quality of the picture is very good. The digital keystone correction is very good too and doesn't produce the jaggies which normally appear. I positioned mine to avoid using the keystone correction though, and only tested it. The black-level could be better but shadow-details never suffer. Picture quality is good and a good color-balance can be achieved with the color-controls for red and blue. The component connection looks a lot better than the s-video connection and is of course the connection of choice unless you plan to use a PC. I was surprised to see how little difference there was between interlaced and progressive component which might be that the projector has a good line-doubler built in (?). The noise-level is bearable but it is louder than I thought 33dB would be. My conclusion is that if you get a perfectly working unit then you have a cracking projector for home theater and business. If you are going to use it for business presentations you probably won't notice the faults I mention because they are not as visible with a little ambient light. Tor Arne |
| Problems |
| When I got my unit and fired it up I looked for dead or stuck pixels. There were no stuck pixels at once but after about 15 minutes one stuck open blue pixle appeared in the middle of the picture. The pixel focuses with the picture and is not a dust-spot. It always takes about 15 minutes before it appears. When the projector is table-mounted the brightness will vary randomly. This does not happen when the projector is ceiling-mounted. I believe this is a fault of Hitachi's line of ultra-portable projectors beacuse I have heard of many other owners of Hitachi ultra-portable owners who have experienced the same thing. I don't mean the blinking that happens during the first few minutes of operation, but a problem where the brightness changes randomly all the time. One other CP-X275W owner I know sent his unit in because of this and has not yet received a replacement after over a month. It also has severe vertical banding which seems to be the green LCD-panel. When I use the green blank-screen in the menu of the projector the banding shows very well, but it's not so visible with red or blue. After about 70 hours of use I have also started to notice that the left side of the picture has turned slightly red. I have sent the projector back for repair once but they couldn't find anything wrong with it which only proves the incompetence of the repairmen. therefore I'm returning it. I can't live with it's faults. Just because my unit was bad doesn't mean all units are, I always have bad luck with all my electronics-purchases. I want to try DLP now because I'm tired of the problems LCDs can have. This is not the first LCD I have use with problems. These problems are the reason I chose "poor reliability", it has never failed to start or function. |
