Hitachi Home-1 User Reviews

I had this projector when it first came out almost 2 years ago and I have a 1,537 hours. I did alot of research this is also my first projector it blew me away! I also trust HITACHI because they have a very good service and will not abandon their customers. I also use this to play games with my XBOX 360 it's awsome I can't wait to play GEARS OF WARS on my xbox 360. The xbox 360 will have a HD DVD external add on coming this year for $200 dollars. Also I brought DVDO i-scan video processor to improve the projector's picture it improve the alot and I will not plan to upgrade in the future. Has anyone out there have DVDO connect to HOME 1 projector it makes big difference.

Any Problems: NONE.

I have had this projector for about 6 months now. At first I had it temporarily in the family room. It was good projecting on a blank wall, but I could only watch it after dark because the room had lots of windows. I just finished a basement theater, and now the experience is much better! I have total light control and can watch any time. I also have a real 92" screen which improved image quality quite a bit. Here are the pros and cons I have found with this projector. Pros: Colors look great when adjusted. At 92" the image is impressive. Quiet -- most of the time I don't hear it at all. The only time I hear the fan is when I make a concious effort during quiet scenes. Cons Screen door is noticable, but not extremely distracting. I sit about 12 feet away. This is not an HD unit. I do watch HD broadcasts through a tuner. When downconverted to 480p, the images are vivid and high quality, but some of the fine detail is lost.

Reviews have helped me immensely, so I finally need to post my opinion to continue to help others. I have had this projector for about 10 months. It was purchased new for $710 from a very reputable internet retailer, quite a bargain. When it came down to get a projector, I had very limited choices given my budget concerns and the restrictions by my wife. The restriction was the projector had to go in the back wall. What I soon found out was the very limited focal range and short throw distances of almost every projector in existence. At 14.5 feet back in the wall, I wanted a managable screen size between 80-90 inches not possible with most projectors. In comes the Home-1. The Home-1 was on Projector Centrals' Highly Recommended list in part because if its great setup ability. It has a huge 2x focal range and vertical and horizontal lens shift. This plus the price essentially made it the only projector I could get. Oh, and to top it off, this projector has a low lamp price. I am very impressed by the construction, features, menu functions, and most off all, setup ease. I cut a hole in the back wall of the living room, constructed a nice shelf for it to sit on, installed power and cable connections into new junction boxes just below, and made a 88" screen of MDF board with Behr Silverscreen coating and poplar frame painted flat black. The back of the projector and cable connections are exposed in my office 7' up the wall, so its completely unobtrustive and trimmed to look good. The projector fit nicely between the standard 16" on center studs and the placement of the front exhaust, and side intake more towards the rear worked ideally. All components were moved to a rack in the basement and controlled through a Xantech IR sensor and extender block for accuracy. I made my own component cables and S-video used standard RG6 cable, and I'm very pleased with the results. So far, with 800 hours, I've had zero problems. This is our main TV in our family room. We watch standard TV (Directv) thorugh S-Video, and DVD though component. TV with the lights on looks fine, nothing spectacular since its a bit washed out, but fine to watch Boston Legal or Stargate SG-1. With the lights dimmed very low or off, TV looks much better, but the source it clearly the limitation. DVDs look great and HDTV would probably look similar. Constrast is very good with the lights off. Movie watching in the dark is simply fantastic. That being said, this is still a 480p projector and there is some screen door effect more or less noticable based on your distance/screen size as we all know. With eyes about 12 feet away on 88" screen, and playing DVD, screen door is not noticeable. Somehow it is more noticeable playing standard TV. I used a setup DVD to calibrate, but ended up using the configuration used by a reviewer of the projector I found online. If you like watching Golf - this is not your projector. Golf uses long camera zooms that when blown up on a projector to this size, looks grainy, more pixelated, and just plain awful. More resolution I'm sure is needed to help with the bad original signal. Based on my experience so far, I don't regret my purchase and would easily buy another Hitachi product.

Any Problems: None

Nice picture quality for a light controled room. Great flexiblity with the lens shift and zoom capabilities. Sold build quality. Colors are very arrate with a few tweaks to the factory settings. Quite a bargain.

Any Problems: None, yet.

This is my first projector, and living in Western NY, I had no basis of comparison. I had to go by user reviews and the reviews of this website to determine what would do what I want, and that was to set up a very theater-like home entertainment system. I picked this up incredibly cheap, as well as a 113" elite screen and some component video cables. I went 113" because I wasn't sure what to get, and was afraid of going too small. If I had to do it again, I might have gotten a 100" or 90", but I may find this larger screen useful in the future. This projector also has extremely cheap lamps compared to most, making the deal over the long term even more appealing. If you look carefully, you can get them for well under $200. Once I got the projector, which took about 3 days to ship after ordering (they're quite fast in this area), I was very pleased with the results. The picture was brighter than I expected, but not too bright to be annoying. It's quite easy on the eyes. Interestingly, and perhaps this is some kind of illusion, it seems like the total light output goes up as you increase image size, because even though it gets dimmer, it doesn't seem to get as dim as you'd expect it to. The image is still watchable beyond 100". I've read a lot of complaints about the colors, but I did not experience any. I some some horrible colors at first, but discovered that the red component cable had slipped from the dvd player. After that, it was practically perfect, if a bit too saturated. For most people, there's nothing to complain about. The adjustment features should get it exactly how you want it. I didn't think the adjustments for screen position would be that important, but if you're new to this stuff, it's crucial. It allowed me to place the projector next to the couch on a small table and it was just able to center with the screen at full size. Any other entry level projector would not be able to do that. I'm so glad I got a projector with these features as I may want to take the projector to other locations, and this makes it so easy.

Any Problems: Screen door effect. I'd read so much about it and still, I didn't realize how it would affect the image. It probably isn't a problem for most, and when you show movies to people on this thing, they'll be quite impressed and probably not see it, but when you're the one who bought it and did all the research, you notice every little thing. For those who've never had an LCD projector but have done some research, you might think (as I did) that the screen door effect is just pixelization. It's nothing like that. What it is is that the projector represents each pixel with a cluster of 3 colored dots on the screen. When the image you project has scenes that include large areas of sky or things like that, oftentimes the dark dots appear to line up into a grid, and you see what actually looks like a screen door. Look really close at a tube tv to see what that is, but the projector won't look quite that bad. If you project the image very large and perfectly in focus, you might notice it all over the place. There are only 2 ways to deal with this. One is to shrink the image size. The other is to adjust the focus slightly so that it's not too sharp. The de-focusing can be quite effective, but it's best to just do it a little, as watching a blurry picture can be worse and more tiring on the eyes than seeing the screen door. This problem may be amplified for me, however, as a typical widescreen movie on my screen is 100" or so diagonally, and I'm only sitting about 12' away from the screen. If I were 20' away, I doubt I would notice it at all. And consequently, I believe that the projector can be that far away and still make the image the same size... not exactly sure, but you can find out using the calculator on this site.

I bought this PJ because of its adjustability. I have it ceiling mounted in my basement HTheater. It was so, very easy to setup. I have it about 13 feet back from a 80by48 inch Frosy White formica screen. Seating distance is about 12 feet. I received an Hitachi combo DVD/VCR player with the unit. It was a very good player. I figured I could get better and ended up going through about 3 DVD players before I ended up with a Pioneer 563 a. I did need the 563 a's adjustments to dial the settings in on this PJ. I have about 125 hours on the unit now and I couldn't be happier about the purchase. The colors out of the box are horrible. So, buy Avia to dial it in right away. Once you run Avia, you'll find that the contrast never quite washes out the Avia bars even set at max. So, I run it at plus 21 (now). The colors on this time are perfect and so no or very little push in Red, Green or blue after running Avia. Mounting and initial setup is an absolute breeze with the vertical and horizontal flexiblity of this thing. I didn't want to spend the time with other PJ's getting the mounting location perfect and I wasn't disappointed. So, if you don't want to measure all day - this is the PJ for you! I have no stuck pixels. Lotr 3 was incredible last night. Everyone loves this PJ. One thing is that I notice the picture seems to get better after about 45 minutes. I don't know if that's my eyes adjusting to the dark environment or the PJ warming up. Screen Door is there but you really have to look for it. No one notices it unless I point it out and after 45 minutes, for some reason, it seems I can't see it at all. I do slightly defocus the picture. So, I'm very satisfied and I'd recommend this PJ to everyone on a budget. I'm not looking to upgrade and won't be for some time.

Any Problems: None so far.

Read all the reviews and compared the Home-1 to other PJs in it's class. Extremely happy with the Home-1. Lens shift made ceiling installation a snap with no use of keystone correction. Color reproduction, shadow detail, and black level are better than I expected, i.e. very good! 85" wide High Contrast Da-lite screen with seating distance of 12' gives a beatiful picture with no noticable SDE. Quiet in normal mode, silent in whisper. If you are looking for an entry level PJ, I can't image a better choice than the Home-1.

Any Problems: None

Great entry level projector. I've watched movies every night for the past 2 weeks since I've gotten it. I matched it with an inexpensive samsung prog scan dvd player and my bose wave radio for sound and for my money it is definitely providing movie theater class impact. Although the review on pj central cautions against too large an image, I have a 130" diagonal image at a distance of a little less than 2x screen width and I don't think the image loses much of it's punch in terms of color saturation and contrast. If you are new to the front projector experience like me you will be amazed at how good this image is and in a dark environment it can seem almost blindingly bright in some scenes. Screen door is definitely noticable even if I zoom the image much smaller. I don't find it particularly distracting though, I obviously prefer the impact of a large image to the slightly improved image quality and reduced pixelation of zooming it smaller. I agree with the projector central review that color accuracy could be better, it is a bit too green. It's not terrible but I am looking forward to getting a calibration disc to try to adust it somewhat. The big zoom lens and lens shift features are great and almost enough reason to buy this unit on it's own. I've got the projector tucked away on the back wall and to off to the right which was incredibly convenient to be able to do , especially considering that I had no plan on where I would put it when I first ordered it online. Bottom line is that if you are concerned about buying a low end projector, don't worry, you will have a blast with this one and you'll never feel like you made a compromise at all.

Any Problems: Deinterlacing capability is not that good, noticed lots of jaggies when I used it with a non prog scan dvd player.

Hitachi Home-1 16:9 native Projector A new player to the Home Theater market (but an early pioneer in front projection) is Hitachi with the new Home-1. Another entry in the entry-level native 16:9 front projection category, this unit sets some new standards that will help continue to bring front projection closer to the mainstream buyer. With it's native 16:9 480p (854x480) resolution, 700 ANSI lumens, 800:1 contrast ratio, and 28dB (25dB in the preferred Whisper mode), this unit will compete directly with the established and successful Sanyo Z1 and the Panasonic 300 twins, as well as the new Epson Home 10. The Home-1 is a medium-dark silver, with a gentle sloping curve to the front, interrupted on the "driver's" side by the large lens. In the back, which is rounded, a hinged door pops open to reveal the connection panel. An odd design choice, but the door looked easy to remove, so it's not really an issue. The power connector (standard IEC320 C13) and the hard power switch are located below the door. The most unique feature is certainly the lens. With a 1.15-2.35:1 throw ratio, it's like getting a short throw and standard (or even slightly long throw) lens for one low price. For those lamenting the days when a 1.6x variable lens was common, this 2x lens will bring back the good old days, only better. In case a ridiculously adjustable lens isn't enough, this unit also features manual lens shift - both horizontal and vertical. Controlled by two separate adjustment wheels, it is easy to adjust the shift in one plane without disturbing the other plane. The amount of lens shift was quite impressive as well. Sitting on a coffee table, at its highest point, the bottom edge of the image is just at lens center (72" wide image from about 96" back). Shifting down, one can bring the top of the image also to lens center. In the horizontal plane, at the same settings, the image could be shifted till the lens was approximately 8" from either side edge. Along with the usual horizontal & vertical mirroring modes (for ceiling-mounting, rear-projection, or both) this lens will make it hard to find a bad spot to put the Home-1. To complement the lens, the exhaust is routed to the front and angled safely away from the lens. This will allow the projector to be mounted closer to the back wall than with traditional rear-exhaust designs. This is good, as there is a bit of light spill coming from a rear vent. The monkey-like antics of the lens would be for naught if it didn't project an enjoyable image. Using the expected 3 LCD light engine (apparently in the L-cube layout that is the fashion this year), this unit exhibits a typical amount of screen-door at a 1:1 viewing distance. The pixel separations disappear at 1.2 or so back and the "touch of defocusing" trick works well with this unit. For a torture test, I chose "A River Runs Through It". With many scenes of various brightness, lots of close-up shots, panning shots of still photos, and some fast motion scenes it will put a display through its paces. The encoding seems mediocre at best, and the film had 6 or 7 years to degrade before going digital. The first fear one should put to rest is that 700 ANSI lumens might not be bright enough. In a dark room, even with the image blown up to about 108" wide, it was a little too bright. As expected, the "whisper mode" deepened the blacks, added depth to the colors, took the already quiet fan down another notch, and gave my eyes a break. The 800:1 contrast won't make many DLP projectors look washed out, but it won't generate many complaints, either. Especially considering improving on it without surrendering the native 16:9 aspect ratio will cost 2-3x more. Overall, the colors were good, shadow details were much better than I expected, black levels were very good for an LCD, and the scaling on 480i was very good. Fed 480p, the picture was a little cleaner and the colors a little deeper, but anyone who doesn't already have a progressive out DVD player probably wouldn't notice the difference anyway. Menu settings were numerous, and probably excessive for the target audience, but for video-pros on a budget, hours of endless tweaking and adjusting are just a button push away. Most viewers will find one of the 3 preset video modes more than adequate. Labeled Cinema (bright and warm), Dynamic (dark and warm), and Normal (bright and cool), I liked each of these settings in different ways. Cinema and Normal displayed incredible shadow detail, still with decent black levels, while Dynamic sacrificed some of those details for deeper blacks and richer colors. Going to the Custom mode allows you to set the image to your liking with adjustments for Gamma, and individual Red, Green, and Blue controls, in addition to the normal Contrast, Brightness, Sharpness, Color (saturation), and Tint. There is even an adjustment for overscan, which came in handy as I noticed the image expand a bit as the projector went through its auto-adjust routine. Once the overscan is set, it seems to hold that setting even with picture mode adjustments, source changes, and even force auto-adjustment of the image. The remote is better for home theater use than the ones bundled with the low-cost business projectors that this unit will compete with, but it's not quite perfect. With discreet buttons for the various inputs and for the 4 picture modes, it reduces or eliminates journeys into the menu system. Unfortunately, it is short on real estate and there are too many similar buttons with tiny labels. While it does have a solid feel to it, the buttons were not backlit, making it difficult to use in the dark. I may have missed the secret to getting the buttons to light, so I'll have to consult the manual. Don't expect to see huge discounts off of MSRP, as Hitachi is following the trend toward more reasonable list prices. Still, bargains will always be available to those who look and this projector would be a great buy even at MSRP, so if you get one for less, consider yourself lucky (or smart). Tomorrow night... The Matrix: Reloaded. This time I'll try a screen and fire up the surround sound. For further testing, of course... The DB15 port can accept component signals, both interlaced and progressive. Strangely enough, it also resolved a composite video signal through the DB15 port, but with a noticeable cross-hatching in the image. Go figure. The component images seemed a bit better through the VGA input, but that may have been my imagination. The image from CVBS was pretty good. Definitely a step down from the component images, as expected, but a cleaner picture than I've seen from some other HT projectors using the composite input. It was better than I've seen previously from either Faroudja's DCDi or the Pixelworks chips. It's either a better implementation of one of these (or an upgraded version) or (I'm guessing) the Sony CXA chip. I didn't test the S-video input. The Matrix Reloaded looked pretty awesome. I would really like to see this projector in action on a high-contrast screen. It held up pretty well with a little bit of ambient light in the room (75 watt incadescent bulb about 12 feet away, with a lampshade on). I think a Da-Lite High Contrast Cinema Vision or Stewart Firehawk screen surface would improve the image and help with ambient light situations. I would personally rather use a High Contrast Da-Mat surface in a dark room with the projector set to normal (non whisper) mode. The reduced gain would help tame the slightly excessive brightess, without losing much of the shadow details.

Any Problems: No backlit buttons on remote - minor issue

See my review for PJ-TX10 (they are the same projector - different names for different markets) Note this is a FCC Class B projector (from some reason it does not state this for the PJ-TX10 which is also class B) which is good - its the home theatre standard.