When I look back at my life, I see that I have spent a good part of it in movie theaters, staring spell bounded, at the silver screen. I honestly did not like watching movies on TV, I hated it. I could not bear watching spectacular desert scenes in the Lawrence of Arabia or colorful sequences of Clockwork Orange on a grainy, lousy TV screen.
Before cable television was introduced, commercials were interrupting the movie every few minutes adding to the pain of watching films on TV. That is the reason why I only watched news on TV and viewed my movies in a theater. That was why I was surprised when CWB’s editor in chief asked me to go to a few hi-tech media related expos to check out the new large screen, high definition, and 3D ready TVs. It did not sound like my piece of the pie.
I have to admit at first look, I was impressed by the picture quality of these new TVs made by Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Vizio, Toshiba and Mitsubishi. To narrow it down and find the best ones among these new TVs, I decided to check only those models that were supporting 1080 P HD resolution and were 3D ready. The HD quality on most of the models from different manufacturers seemed identically good. But if I want to give you a list of my top picks among large screen HD TVs, here they are: 60” 3D Sony Bravia NX10, 65’ 3D Samsung 8000 (Plasma), 65” 3D VIZIO LCD TV and 82” 3D Mitsubishi WD-82838.
But when I started to check the 3D playback quality on these TVs, I noticed that DLP technology offers the best 3D quality on a television as this is also the technology used in a lot of movie theaters playing 3D movies. The faster the speed in switching between the left eye and right eye image, the better 3D quality and at this time, DLP offers the fastest image exchange in 3D. The only issue is that most of the DLP TVs are thicker than new LCD televisions and other new technologies, but I am not too bothered by this as my first preference is image quality and then the screen size.
After coming back from the various expos I was sent too, I wrote a report to my editor and mentioned that considering that Mitsubishi is the only TV manufacturer offering screen sizes above 70” and is also using DLP technology, my choice for my review is an 82” 3D Mitsubishi DLP system. Mitsubishi did not have an 82” review unit available so we received a 73” TV. I was not disappointed as this huge 73” screen fills a room and gave me the feeling of being in a movie theater. I can only imagine how watching the new 90” Mitsubishi will feel. That’s what gives a great edge to Mitsubishi, as its competition has yet to introduce a screen larger than 65”.
The room we have set up for our Mitsubishi 73” has a good Dolby digital surround sound system attached to the ATT U-Verse receiver. We have also a Panasonic 3D Blue-ray player for playing 3D movies.
I started my tests by playing the HD Blue-ray movie of Avatar and Goya’s Ghosts after dimming the room lights. The experience was amazing and very movie theater like. I may miss the actual film look as pictures on HD are too clean for my taste, but without a doubt, this is the second best to actually watching the same films in a large theater with high quality picture and sound. I totally forgot about my past bitter experience with TVs. I also noticed that DLP gives you more natural colors and does not give the candy color look seen in the newer systems. If you are in Mitsubishi Brilliant Video mode, you will have vibrant colors, maybe even a little bit of extra red in some areas of the picture but by using advanced controls you can change the color temperature or tint to get more natural results. I prefer to set up my own video setting.
But my amazing experience started by playing 3D Blue-ray movies on WD-73838. I used a pair of active glasses from Xpand and turned on the 3D TV menu. I picked one of the best movies ever made in 3D, Open Season for this test. Noticing a problem wtaching 3D, I selected Reverse mode for my Xpand 3D glasses on 3D menu of Mitsubishi. The 3D playback was perfect and matched exactly the same experience I had in an IMAX theater with the same movie.
Mitsubishi WD-73838 has 4 HDMI inputs, two Components inputs, 3 composite inputs and it also supports Bluetooth. I will leave the more technical video and audio descriptions of the WD-73838 to Mark Blush to deal with them in his review of this system that will be posted soon.
My overall experience with Mitsubishi WD-73838 only proves to me that this the ideal system for the film buffs. If you dim lights, lean back and watch a 3D movie on WD-73838, with a surround sound system (of course with a bag of popcorn in your hand) you find yourself in your own IMAX Theater.