Audio Video News

QuickMotion. SmartShutter. Dark Detailer. Plush Imaging. Plush720p. Plush1080p. DeepField Imager. SharpEdge. Buzzwords were flying faster than you could swat them at Mitsubishi's April 2005 line show in Orlando, Florida. Journalists were flown in from all over the US to view the latest Mitsubishi televisions, loaded with these exciting—or at least exciting sounding—features.

The company has staked its future on plasmas, LCDs, and DLPs. There were four plasmas (42 to 61 inches diagonal, with two carried over from last year and none with on-board tuners) and three new flat-panel LCDs (37 to 42 inches), but Mitsubishi played heavily to their traditional strength: big-screen, rear-projection TVs. While three lonely CRTs were tucked away to one side (the flagship model, the 73-inch WS-73517, uses 9-inch tubes), both LCD and DLP microdisplay rear-projection sets dominate the new line. (A microdisplay is any projection set whose image is produced by the light from a projection lamp modulated by one or more small chips; these days, that means DLP, LCD, and LCoS devices.)

There are 13 rear-projection sets (in 52-, 62-, and 73-inch sizes) in the new Mitsubishi line (not including those few remaining CRTs). Four of them are LCD-based and nine are DLPs. The LCD models, which are all 1280x720, range in price from $3199 to $3999. The DLPs start at $3799 and top out at $7999.

The most exciting feature in all these sets is a dynamic iris that changes in response to the program material, opening up on bright scenes and closing down on darker ones. This dramatically lowers the black level and increases the peak contrast ratio. To date, such irises have been commercially available only in a few front projectors. To make things just a bit more confusing than they need to be, Mitsubishi has chosen to call this feature SmartShutter in the LCD sets and Dark Detailer in the DLPs. In both cases, the company claims a four-fold increase in peak contrast ratio.

Mitsubishi is also pushing full steam ahead into the 1080p world with Texas Instruments' new 1920x1080 chip in all nine of the rear-projection DLP models. Company representatives at the press gathering were making a huge deal of the move to 1080p. One rep claimed that the sets would accept 1080p from a high-definition tuner, but there are currently no tuners that will provide a true 1080p output. That's because there are no broadcasts in 1080p; in fact, there is no significant 1080p consumer source material of any kind—and none on the horizon. Furthermore, an HDMI connection, at present, will not carry 1080p/60; the required bandwidth is too great. (Ironically, DVI will carry 1080p/60, but most consumer electronics manufacturers are phasing out DVI in favor of HDMI.)

Since there is no 1080p programming of any significance available to consumers, any set with 1080 vertical pixels simply deinterlaces 1080i sources to 1080p. (All microdisplay panels, by their nature, ultimately require a progressive signal, which the set can create from an interlaced input if necessary). There is no more inherent resolution in the final image than you get from any 1080i source, despite Mitsubishi's claim that 1080p has four times the resolution of 720p. A 1080i input converted to 1080p does not result in four times the resolution of 720p. In terms of temporal resolution (resolution on fast moving images), 1080i actually has a resolution equivalent to 540p. Only on stationary images will deinterlaced 1080i have a so-called spatial resolution equivalent to 1080p. On anything between fast motion and stills, the resolution falls somewhere between these two extremes, depending on the speed of the motion.

Technobabble aside, Mitsubishi's 1080p sets did show a lot of promise, particularly in the larger sizes where the higher pixel count produces a smoother image, arguments about any true resolution advantage notwithstanding. The top-of-the-line, 73-inch diagonal WD-73927 includes all of Mitsubishi's bells and whistles, including two HDTV tuners, CableCARD, and IEEE 1394 with DV Decoder. All four sets in the new Diamond Series have 1080p imaging capability, but only the WD-73927 is equipped with an RGB input that is said to accept a 1080p/60 source. The Diamond sets are also equipped with an onboard, high-definition, hard-disc-based digital video recorder (DVR). The WD-73927's provides 250GB of storage, while the three less expensive models are limited to 160GB.

And just in case you were wondering, Plush Imaging is the name given to the deinterlacer/scaler in all the sets (of which Plush720p and Plush1080i are subsets). DeepField Imager is a brightness/contrast optimizer that continuously adjusts brightness and contrast separately for different areas of the picture, and SharpEdge is said to enhance the borders of objects in the image without ringing. The latter two features can be turned off if desired.

The new Mitsubishi sets are scheduled to start showing up at dealers in June 2005, with the rollout culminating in the Diamond Series in September.