Mitsubishi WT-46807 46 in. TV

I was originally going to pick this set up for $1800, but due to limited quantity of this model I was on backorder for almost a month. Once I made it known that I was looking around for another place that might have the set in stock, an open-box set of the same model suddenly appeared, and I picked that one up instead for a cool grand!

Now, you'll be hard-pressed to find a deal like that one, however it never hurts to ask a dealer if they have any open-box models in the back, or if they would sell you the floor model (which they also offered to me).

I had a lot of reservations about accepting a returned set, especially since nobody at the store knew why it was returned. Also, I had to purchase an instruction manual and Remote control ($15 and $60 respectively) to go with the set. But in the end, all worked out well. The set works perfectly and the remote and manual arrived from Mitsubishi in good time. On a side note, if you do purchase a used model without a remote, make sure you have the remote first, as many of the TV's functions cannot be used without it!

Set up was pretty self-explanatory. There are two main calibration methods. One lets you align the red and blue projectors to the green projector by moving around two symbols until they both align with the green symbol. This was pretty close to perfect right out of the box, but upon further examination I did decide to move the alignment of the blue gun just a hair.

The second alignment method lets gives you a large grid. Actually these are three large grids, again the red/blue/green projectors overlapping eachother, and again the green stays fixed. This was also close to perfect out of the box, but I noticed a couple red points near the edge that needed a bit of tweaking. This is what is called the "64 point convergence".

Alright, so how does the picture look? I had read on various opinion boards like these that regular cable sucks on it, but I was skeptical that it would suck for me because I thought my cable was coming in pretty clearly. Nope, guess again. Regular TV's actually fool you into thinking the picture looks decent due to scan lines (faint horizontal lines you can notice by getting up close), and the natural small size of most tube TV's. Next time you see somebody in the distance on your regular tube TV, get up close to the screen and pay close attention to that figure. Can you notice any features on that person? Probably not, it probably just looks like a blob when you're up close to the screen.

Well, if you were wondering from reading other people's reviews just HOW and why cable sucks so bad on TV's like this, THAT is how. Think about that blob of an image blown up to about 1 foot tall on your new Mitsubishi wide screen TV. It's not going to look very good, and you're going to notice it. I was pretty dissapointed when I saw cable on the 46807 when I first got it. At first I thought it was just the TV, but it's not. The picture is just really that bad.

However, most stuff is still analog these days, so how is the TV when you're watching normal cable or broadcasting? Very good actually. As I mentioned above, I was pretty shocked at first when I noticed just how bad analog signals look when they're not on a crummy TV that disguises them, but the shock wears off.

OK, so here's the cool part. If you're still teetering on the edge like I once was about getting this TV, because you're nervous that the majority of what you watch (regular analog TV) is going to suck horribly, have no fear. Mitsubishi does an awesome job of cleaning up analog feeds. For one thing, it up-converts 480i to 480p, meaning no interlacing, or horizontal lines across the screen. This makes a tremendous difference. If you're watching a scene that shows a clear blue sky, that sky is going to look like one consistent blend of color. You can't see any lines or graininess in it at all, and that's all Mitsubishi right there. Same thing with a close-up on somebody's face, it almost looks digital as to how smooth the colors are.

As I mentioned above, it gets rid of scan lines, but it also has a feature that smooths the image to eliminate noise. You can toggle this on and off to see how much better it makes the picture, it's amazing the difference.

The result of these two features is really smooth colors and images. Again, I'll throw in my disclaimer about how a far-away image is still going to look crummy, because no amount of video correction can add more detail or pixels to an image, but for normal situations, this set blows away what ever concept you probably have about projection TV's.

One last thing about cable: I recently switched to digital cable, and it seemed to me like it made regular analog signals better too. It might just be me, but my explorer 2100 digital box seemed to clean up analog signals itself quite a bit. If you buy this TV and you have cable, you might want to look into getting digital cable (also ask your cable company for the 2100 box by name, it's way better than the older 2000 digital box). The digital feeds come in with no degredation to the picture whatsoever, and look only a step below DVD quality. And again, the non-digital seemed better to me as well.

DVD's play AWESOME on this set, especially at night time when it's pitch black, it really is a home movie theater. A couple disclaimers though: don't try to fool yourself for a second that you can accept anything but a progressive scan DVD player outputting to this TV. It's night-and-day difference. I picked up a NICE JVC progressive scan DVD player for $240 bucks. Don't spend more than that, I saw other normal scan DVD players for as much as 700: it's a joke! Those don't have better quality, they just might have more useless zooming features. I even saw one that was pricey only because it matched the "Wega" TV's. That's insane.

Also, I'll touch on this one real quick: Don't even kid yourself about trying to use the Playstation 2 DVD player. That might cut the mustard on a crummy tube TV, but it's a joke on a real TV like this. I tried that DVD player first, only to see that it looked mildly better than analog TV. Trust me, you're not buying this set to get a kind-of-ok picture, especially when it comes to DVD, which is what you probably have in mind if not the only reason you're getting this set. Get yourself a progressive scan and have it ready when this TV is delivered.

One side note about DVD use on this TV: DVD's are still output in 'square' format, whether you're using them on a widescreen TV like this or not. So, you'll need to have the TV in "expand" mode for DVD's. This mode crops the top and the bottom of a 'square' video feed. However, you'll still notice about an inch or so of black bar on the top and bottom when watching DVD's on this set. This is normal. See, HDTV isn't exactly the same size as a movie theater screen, movie size is a tad bit wider than HDTV. Why aren't they the same is beyond me. However, it's not a neusance at all, you won't notice it after a while, and you're still getting a TREMENDOUSLY larger DVD image than somebody with a crummy tube TV seeing it on half of it's already meager size.

My JVC progressive scan actually has an option built in to it that "adjusts" the picture specifically for wide screen TV's. A sleazy salesman might also try to sell you on this. Don't be fooled, use your head. All it does it stretch the DVD a bit to make up for the gap, so everyone looks skinny. You're not going to want that believe me, it's perfectly fine just having an inch or so of black letterboxing it.

Speaking of letterboxing, I'll touch very quickly about picture output modes. There are 5. One puts a 'square' image between two gray bars with no distortion. One blows a 'square' image up side to side, and cuts off the top and bottom. One mode evenly stretches the image, while another mode does a fish-eye like stretch where it stretches the image more from the sides than the center. The last mode is zoom which is completely useless, although Mitsubishi says it works well for some DVD's (it doesn't). I myself prefer the first two modes where no stretching occurs. I actually find myself using the cropped mode quite a bit. Even though I thought I would never like it, most of the time it's hard to tell you're missing stuff except when logos or sports tickers come up, then I switch to regular mode. The stretch modes look good, don't get me wrong, but I personally get a headache looking at a distorted image like that.

I could go on forever about picture, but I'll stop myself here. I believe I've covered all of the points that I was wondering before I purchased this set. Now I'll just quickly touch on a couple other non-picture related tid-bits.

Don't take this TV for more than $1800. It's already outdated, the newer model 46809 is already out (with not much more features than this), and this current 46807 model has heavy competition in the 46 inch widescreen market (specifically with Toshiba, I believe). Anyway, heavy competition between these guys means prices are going to keep going down, especially since Mitsubishi already has a new model ready to go and sellers are going to want to get rid of the 807's. $1800, or less if you can.

Also, I haven't mentioned HDTV feeds on this TV because I haven't purchased a receiver yet. Most likely you've seen the HDTV feeds for this TV in the stores already. It will look the same at your home I'm sure. I'll update this after I get it though just to tell you my experience.

As far as HDTV receivers go, I've settled on getting a Samsung SIR-T150. It has component high-definition output, which will work perfectly on this set, and it only receives over-the-air signals, which is also fine for me since I do not own and do not plan on getting satellite.

The most popular HDTV receiver is the RCA DTC100, because of it's low $500 price tag (low compared to most other receivers). It accepts over the air and satellite, but watch out! It outputs many formats, but it only outputs a high definition feed through a 15-pin cable (like computer monitors use). That means all of it's other outputs dumb-down the image, in case you're using the box on a non-HD ready TV. So, if you bought the RCA DTC100 you would also have to buy a $100 dollar cable to convert the 15-pin output to component output, so that you could get a true High Definition feed and not a dumbed-down 'square' output.

So anyway, the Samsung receiver goes for $700 at some places, but I priced it on yahoo shopping for $588 at one place. So that's what I would go with as of now, for an HDTV receiver.

I also want to make a note about satellite. Don't let a sleazy salesman fool you into thinking that "you have to get satellite to REALLY enjoy this TV". After doing some homework on the issue, I discovered that Satellite has a whopping 2 or 3 HDTV channels. HBO, a demo channel, and possibly a Showtime. Yep, that's it. Want all those CBS feeds? Forget it, all of your local stations are regular analog feeds, if you're even lucky enough to be in an area where you can GET your local stations over satellite. And don't kid yourself into thinking you'll get 'lesser' stations like UPN or WB over satellite ANYWHERE. In my opinion, I'd go with digital cable over satellite any day, with FREE over-the-air HDTV feeds through a Samsung receiver.

And what's more, my cable provider (Time Warner) is rolling out HDTV feeds THROUGH their cable in select markets, and here in Tampa Florida they have promised me that they will have HDTV feeds available by the end of the year! And with cable I'll get my local channels in regular AND high definition, as well as HBO/Showtime, etc in high definition. On my digital cable guide I can already see 2 HDTV demo channels, although none of them are available to the public yet unfortunately. Still, it's good to see that they're working on it.

Lastly, I'll throw in a disclaimer that this TV is a 'table top' set. Yeah, it's a pretty large TV, but you still need to have it up on a stand for optimal viewing angle. I thought my existing entertainment center would work but it was way too small. Make sure you have a proper stand ready when you receive the set. Mitsubishi has a matching base for this TV which I believe you can see in the picture on this site, but that is extra and costs about $300 to $500 dollars some places. I picked up a Bush HDTV Stand at Circuit City for $200 and it fits the TV perfectly, even though the specs on it said it was a hair too small length-wise.

Another reason you'll need this set on a stand of some sort, is that the viewing angle it not very good from top to bottom, meaning for best picture you need to be level to it. When I stand up the picture dims quite a bit looking down on the set, but sitting on the couch it's perfect. It's also a great view from side to side. I can sit at a very extreme angle to the set and still see it from the side very nicely. The picture is also very good in day time hours or when other light is present, but of course the best conditions for projection TV's are dark, no surprise there. Get heavy curtains! :-)

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UPDATE (8-17-01)
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Well, shortly after this review I put in a request for a professional tune up. I've read other people's opinions on how the pro tune up makes a big difference and I know why now. The guy actually takes apart the TV and fine-tunes the projectors by hand. Then he goes to a special setup menu and tweaks out the convergence points (even the green ones), and finally tweaks out the color settings as well. These settings are then saved out as your new 'default' settings for the set. It really makes a difference and I would definitely recomend getting it done (it's free with all sets).

Also, one small correction about my notes on DVD playback: not all DVD's play at a wider ratio than the screen. Actually, most all of the newer movies being made are shot at the same aspect ratio that HDTV's use, so most all of your modern DVD's will fill up the entire screen! I was very happy to find that out.

Games play awesome on the set! I think I mentioned in the original review how I don't use the stretch modes much, but that's pretty much all I use now. I got used to them very fast. I use the Mitsubishi smart stretch that stretches it more at the sides. Games look really nice in that mode. Some games are even being made with special wide screen modes for HDTV's (Gran Turismo 3, Madden 2002, etc). Haven't tried those out yet though.

Still haven't scraped up that extra cash to get a HDTV reciever. I'm probably just going to wait until my cable company starts HDTV service sometime this year. I believe Time Warner provides HDTV receivers with the service, for the small monthly fee you pay for all their other set top boxes. I'm not sure though, I'll update this again when I get that all up and running. Either way, I'll definitely have it by the super bowl :-)