Mitsubishi WS-73905 Rear Projection

Mitsubishi WS-73905 Rear Projection 

USER REVIEWS

Showing 1-8 of 8  
[Feb 11, 2002]
Whirr
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Sheer viewing size for a larger room. Very good HDTV and good progressive DVD performance.

Weakness:

Mediocre to poor line doubling of non-HD DSS or VHS sources. May be able to overcome with better external doubler. Highly reflective screen (which can be removed).

I purchased this set as a ''last years'' clearance item as the WS-73907''s were being brought in. This was a bear for the technician to get the convergence corrected and required a new line-doubler from the start. Anderson''s & Mits tech''s stayed with it to get it working. HDTV looks great. Progressive DVD''s look very good. Non-HD DSS station quality varies greatly with the Mits HD DirecTV tuner/box. The quality of the internal line doubler is mediocre at best. I''ve heard using an external doubler such as iScan Pro or others may improve standard resolution input and I plan to give this a try (any inputs?). At $3k, this was still a pretty good deal. At anywhere close to list price, this would be a disappointment.

Similar Products Used:

Mitsubishi 60" Gold series big screen ProScan 36" direct view

OVERALL
RATING
3
VALUE
RATING
4
[Aug 06, 2000]
Mike
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Very nice picture when combined with progressive DVD player.
Good sound, nice base and clear treble.

Weakness:

No video functions in progressive mode. No enhanced 4:3, and no PIP.
Requires 480p source to deliver a good picture.
Sub-adaquate line doubler.

Combine this TV with a Panasonic H1000 DVD ($1730) and a good line doubler ($700 + ) and you will have a decent quality set.
All other input sources, 480i DVD, VHS, SVHS, Cable, are embarrassing to show to family and friends.
"You paid how much for this?"

When playing progressive scan DVDs this "state of the art" "no compromise" TV turns off all major video features. PIP is disabled, and the screen formatting, as limited as it is anyway, is disabled. What a shame.

I have 90 DVDs and only 30 of these will fill the screen without placing black bars on the top and bottom of the picture. This is a formatting issue that the TV should have adjustments for, but it does not.

The internal line doubler is below par. This is supposed to double the number of lines introduced by the VCR and Cable inputs in order to fill this rather large screen with enough lines to display a good picture. I had to use an after-market line doubler to accomplish this.

Buy this set if you don't mind spending extra money adding peripherals to make it do what it should be doing out of the box.

Ratings:
Performance: (4) needs lots of outside help but it will perform well when presented with source material that is already excellent. The sound is better than most.

Value: (1) "you got what you paid for?"
Let's see, I paid $7500 for a TV that needs a $1700 DVD player and a $700 line doubler before I can watch it.

Overall: (2) Disappointed. You will see these major flaws get fixed in future sets.

If anyone is still interested in buying one of these sets I will sell mine for $5500 and I will pay the shipping anywhere in the continental US. Just drop me a line at mte1@bigger.net. That's a $2500 loss for me. Perhaps you can overlook these shortcomings of this 73 inch HDTV.
Mike

OVERALL
RATING
2
VALUE
RATING
1
[Jul 11, 2000]
Cy Thomson
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Beautiful Set, Great Picture in HDTV, 9" CRT's

Weakness:

No scaling in HD, Protective screen is very reflective but is removable and suggested if no kids or pets

I must disagree with the last reviewer. I have had this set for 6 weeks now and it is everything I hoped for. I have Directv feeding the set through a DTC100 into the DTV input and the picture is great. The Digital OTA channels (3 that I get) look great even with regular broadcasts and the OTA HDTV broadcasts are outstanding.

My DVD player is fed thru S-VHS into Input 1 and the DVD picture is great. If the previous reviewer thinks it looks no better than VHS tape he is not set up right and needs someone to come look at his set.

My over the air antenna gives me a better picture than my cable and when I view cable all the interference on the cable is just amplified to a 73" size. My OTA antenna looks OK and the TV has a very good tuner.

I did alot of research before purchasing this set. I looked at Toshiba, Phillips, Pioneer, and others and all have their trade-offs in their individual capabilities. Overall I felt the Mitsubishi was the best value over time and with proper set up capable of producing the best picture.

In total I am very satified.

One last suggestion would be that a set such as this be purchased locally from a reputable dealer who knows his Home Theater stuff and can provide the nessary support for a purchase such as this.

Similar Products Used:

1984 52" MITS, 1995 52" Proscan

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[Mar 20, 2001]
R0ckets03
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Awesome Picture

Weakness:

Picture quality when using cable.

The picture is just awesome on this thing. For movies I am using a progressive scan Toshiba and its just freakin bad ass! I am also using Direct TV and picture quality of that is amazing as well. You wont belive how clear the Demo HDTV channel looks on this baby! I have no complaints whatsoever.

Similar Products Used:

Sony

OVERALL
RATING
5
VALUE
RATING
5
[May 03, 2001]
vick

Strength:

Nice tv when works

Weakness:

unable to get repair parts or anyone who will service.

I WOULD NEVER PURCHASE ANOTHER MITSUBISHI TV. AFTER 2 YEARS MY CONVERGENCE WENT OUT AND I HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO GET THE PARTS FOR REPAIR. ALL REPAIR MEN HAVE SAID THE PARTS ARE VERY DIFFICULT TO OBTAIN AND INSTEAD OF PURCHASING ONE COMPOENT YOU MUST PURCHASE THE COMPLETE BOARD,2000 FOR 2 YRS SERVICE AND NOW I MUST BUY NEW TV. SUCKS!

OVERALL
RATING
1
VALUE
RATING
1
[Apr 17, 2000]
Ray
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

IMMENSE size, 9" guns, HD picture, number of inputs, beautiful cabinet

Weakness:

No scaling in HD input, fixes required, highly-reflective protective screen.

For sheer WOW factor, there is nothing else like this TV. Sure, you can get a bigger picture size with a front-projector TV, but for 99% of consumers who (a) use their TV for both broadcasts and movies, (b) don't have the ability to block out ambient light in their HT room and (c) can't afford $15k for a projector, this is the TV for you. As far as the rest of the RPTV market, for some reason all the other manufacturers max out at 60" - 65". What's more, for less than the price of most of these other sets you can get this 73" behemoth.

As with most Mitsubishi TV's, the 73905 is set to torch mode out of the box. You will need some quality time with VE or Avia to get this set just right. Once set, though, the picture will astound you. It's hard to imagine a picture this big looking this clear and sharp, especially with the right source material.

The internal line doubler is adequate, so DVD's and regular NTSC looks ok. The key here is to get a progressive DVD player such as the Toshiba 5109 (or the Mits 6000, which is actually the exact same machine as the 5109 but for about $300 more). Also, stick with anamorphic DVD's only, as this Mits will lock into progressive mode when using progressive players. Still, you will be amazed at the picture quality this produces.

With it's 9" CRT's the 73905 is one of the few sets that can fully resolve all 2 million pixels of an HD picture (there are others with 9" guns but they only have a 65" or less screen). Add an HD decoder like the RCA DTC100 (which will require a VGA-5BNC cable and some minor raster adjustments) or Dish's 6000 (available this year). Watching HBO-HD and the 8 local HD stations in Los Angeles is nothing short of spectacular. This year's NCAA championship was breathtaking. CBS prime time is all HD. The Tonight Show is one of the best HD programs around. Monday Night Football in HD is coming back soon. PBS has already started. Fox is already showing some of its programming in HD. In other words, forget what the naysayers are saying; HD is here and it's amazing.

The only weaknesses this set has has more to do with NTSC sources. Cable is downright unwatchable; make plans to switch to DSS if you get this set. Non-anamorphic DVD's are not great. Above all, there is no scaling for non-HD broadcasts fed through the HD input, so you have to do so via the HD set-top box. On the plus side, it's real easy to get used to expand mode for these shows. The other weakness is the overly-reflective protective screen (a common problem among RPTV's) and the fact that I had to get a Mitsubishi technician to come over and apply some fixes to the circuitry.

Overall this is the most impressive, best-value HD-ready set on the market today. Future models will also offer DLP technology that will make convergence and viewing angle issues a thing of the past. However, for today the king of the HD hill is the WS-73905

Similar Products Used:

No other 73" HD-ready sets exist.

OVERALL
RATING
4
VALUE
RATING
5
[Jul 09, 2000]
Michael Eames
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Great sound. Really good sound!

Weakness:

$8000.00
Giant Black monolith in the living room.
Lousy picture from all but the very best sources.
30 degree verticle viewing angle means you must be 18 feet from the set to see the entire screen.
$600 to ship, $600 to return, and who knows how much of a restocking charge they will ding me for.

What a mistake I made this time!
If I return the set I will consider myself lucky if it only costs me $2000 to have tried it out. I'm getting resistance returning it because a)It was expensive, b)I didn't keep the box it came in.

I bought a 52 inch Mitsubishi projection TV in 1983 (that's right, 17 years ago) that still has a better picture than this set when displaying cable and VHS.

With the Mitsubishi 73905, forget trying to watch cable or even a VCR tape in standard play, the picture is awful.

Play a DVD at 480i and from 6 feet it looks like a VCR tape. Stand 18 feet away and the DVD looks OK. Oh yeah, if you stand closer than 18 feet you cannot see the entire screen at the same brightness because the TV only has a 30 degree vertical viewing angle.

I will be receiving a progressive DVD player soon. Progressive DVD players (480p) output the lines twice as fast as interlaced DVD players (480i). Keep this in mind when selecting your DVD player. If your TV can handle 480p you will get a sharper picture using a progressive DVD player. You don't have to buy special DVDs.

This TV was set up to accept cable(A & B), VHS(3), SVHS(3)inputs but that's all for show. It cannot display these adequately.
It was obviously meant to play only hi definition inputs, 480p through the DVD input and 1080 HDTV.

The cabinet is pretty. Is appears to be black until you look at it from 6 inches, then you can see some very nice dark red figuring.

This TV has great sound though. CDs and sound tracks sound wonderful. I didn't bother re-connecting the AV receiver, the sound was that good.

Buy this set if you have $8000 and another $2000 for a progressive DVD player and you can view it from 18 feet and you do not intend on watching cable or VHS tapes, or if you just want a great sounding stereo in a huge 450 pound box. It has very good casters and rolls very easily on a carpet.

The dimensions of the screen are 36 inches tall by 63 inches wide, just an FYI. Viewing a movie in the 4:3 ratio will give you a 60 inch set. In 16:9 it is of coarse a 73 inch "widescreen".

Wide screen, that's a joke.
Now get this, DVDs have several formats, most of which still put black bars at the top and bottom of your "widescreen" TV! Wide screen TV has nothing to do with theatrical aspect ratios.

Avoid "letterbox", you will definitely get black bars unless it says "enhanced for widescreen TVs", in which case you might not get black bars.
There's no standard for filling the screen on a widescreen TV.
DVDs will be recorded mostly in 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 ratios.
What you want is "Anamorphic wide screen". In most cases the anamorphic wide screen recordings will fill your wide screen TV, but not in all cases.

I do not like seeing black bars at the top and bottom of my screen and there are several warnings in the user guide of this TV that state,

"THIS IS A WIDE SCREEN TV (16:9) AND IS DESIGNED PRIMARILY FOR VIEWING WIDE SCREEN IMAGES. THE MAJORITY OF IMAGES DISPLAYED SHOULD BE WIDE SCREEN FORMAT OR ZOOMED TO FILL THE SCREEN AND CONSTANTLY MOVING. The majority of the pictures should fill the screen with moving images, not stationary patterns or black bars."

"These types of stationary images displayed on any projection tube system can cause uneven aging of the tubes and leave a subtle but permanent ghost image in the picture."

So why are DVDs recorded this way? Beats me. They're not played in the theaters so why aren’t they recorded for our TVs?

What bugs me about this TV is for $8000 I should be able to reformat the screen to my taste, re-size the screen and eliminate the black bars if I want to. So I lose a bit of the picture in doing so. I want the choice and Mitsubishi didn't build it in to this set. This TV gives the user screen formatting choices none of which are very useful.

Similar Products Used:

None.

OVERALL
RATING
2
VALUE
RATING
2
[Aug 01, 2000]
Steve
Audio Enthusiast

Strength:

Great picture in HDTV

Weakness:

Aspect ratio, internal line doubler.

Had this set for only one month and the convergence went bonkers. I hope it gets back from the shop soon and that this will be the last of my problems with it!
Buy this set only if you are going to use it with HDTV and other high definition sources. 1080i looks beautiful on this big screen--as good and as big as it gets in a rear projection. Progressive scan DVD also looks very good. Do not buy this set for regular cable TV unless you buy an external doubler or scaler like the Crystal Image from AV Source. The internal line doubler on this set is very poor in my opinion. There are too many visible digital artifacts (moire). That's why an external doubler / scaler is a must for this TV. It will greatly improve the picture from VCR, DVD, and cable. One last problem I've found with this product is the aspect ratio control. The manufacturer wants the viewer to watch everything in wide screen to prevent CRT burn-in. But with the poor choices of aspect ratio control built-in, (none in anamorphic and three sub-par for the rest), a good scaler with aspect ratio control is a must.

Similar Products Used:

Toshiba 65"

OVERALL
RATING
3
VALUE
RATING
3
Showing 1-8 of 8  

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