We've always been impressed with the picture quality of the Mitsubishi DLPs and the
62627
is no exception. It really shines with High Definition content
and delivers vivid detail. The minimal cabinet is perfect for
highlighting the content you're watching, instead of the set you're
watching it on. While it does a great job delivering deep blacks,
the contrast issues we've seen in the past with DLP based displays are
still present - you tend to lose a lot of detail in dark scenes.
It's packed with features and connectivity options including 2 HDMI
inputs and 2 FireWire inputs.
The 62627 is the least expensive of Mitsubishi's 62" 1080p DLP
TVs. The next step up, the 62628 adds two technologies for
picture enhancement: SharpEdge and DeepField Imager. The 62827
adds a 150 watt light engine and a 160 GB DVR. The ultimate 62",
model 62927 gets all the picture enhancement technologies, adds an
anti-glare shield and steps the DVR up to 250 GB.
The 62627 weighs 133 lbs and is about 20 inches deep.
What we liked:
- Picture quality
- Cabinet design
- Colors
- Connectivity options
- Black levels
- Performance with bad content
What we disliked:
- Contrast
- NetCommand is somewhat clunky
Price: $3400-$4000 USD online
Mac Mini for your Home Theater
We talked about the new Mac Mini before so we are not going to delve
into the specs on Today's podcast. If you want to know more go to the
Apple website.
Today we are focusing on our experience with the Mini over the past 10
days. But for the record our Mini was the Core Duo 1.66GHz with 1 GB of
RAM. It came in at a total cost of $968. But that also included a
wireless keyboard and mouse.
Integration into Home Theater
The mini is connected to our Samsung DLP via a HDMI to DVI cable. The
DLP only has one DVI input so we used the previously mentioned HDMI
switcher from
Monoprice.com. For audio a
Belkin PureAV Digital Optical Cable with Mini-TOSLINK adapter
was used to connect to the receiver. Once the connections were made the
TV and mini were turned on and we were off. There was one issue with
this setup and that was that overscan on the TV clipped the desktop.
The TV has a PC scaling mode that put the entire desktop on the screen
but it sacrificed some TVs real estate. We tried to change resolutions
that fixed the overscan issue but it made the image fuzzy. In the end
we left everything alone and lived with the overscan. The bottom half
of the menus were visible and since most of the workable area of the
image was on screen it didn't matter in the end. The video played
flawlessly and the audio sounded incredible. This device can easily
replace your DVD player. Albeit an expensive replacement.
Front Row
Front Row is a good application but it is just a bit short of a full
fledged media center functionality. It does a great job of finding
media on your network. All the music and video on all the Macs in the
house were immediately available to the mini. However, for music and
videos on other Macs to be available on the mini it had to be in iTunes
on the remote Macs. Video files in Movie folder on a remote Mac will
not show up in the shared movie list. Movies in the movie folder of the
mini does show up in the movie list. There is absolutely no easier way
of sharing content between your Macs.
There is a feature in Front Row that may shed some light as to where
Apple is going with this technology. You can watch movie trailers right
in front row. There is a great user interface with movie art that lets
you scroll through a list of movies, select the title and watch the
trailer. The trailers were original aspect ration and they played
without a hitch. The sound was only two channel but we are sure they
are able to do multichannel sound. Where this is going, in our opinion,
is movies on demand or a movie store. The next incarnation would be
allow you to view the trailer and then hit a buy now or watch now
button. This would be an alternative to your cable company's Video on
Demand or the Movie Beam service we talked about on a previous podcast.
The one place the Mini falls short of a full fledged media center Mac
is video input. There is no tuner, cable card slot or RCA/S-Video in.
There is a firewire port so theoretically if your set top box has a
1394 port you should be able to capture video. We were not able to test
this functionality. We contacted El Gato Software to try and obtain an
EyeTV 500 which has an ATSC tuner and will record OTA HD to the hard
drive. They are working on a Mac Mini compatible version of their
software and asked that we hold off our review until then. The EyeTV
500 goes for $399. You can find a refurbished units for $199 direct
from El Gato. We had hoped that Apple would build this into the Mini
like so many Media Center PCs. Maybe the next version.
DVD Server
The last thing we did with the mini was to try and make it a DVD
Jukebox. We had ripped a bunch of DVD's to networked drive. The Apple
DVD player could play them but you had to go to file menu and open a
DVD image. Not hard to do but hard for the in-laws. So to solve this
problem we found a great application called
Matinee.
Matinee is a program that lets your organize, browse and watch your DVD
collection, on demand. You tell Matinee where your Video_TS folders are
(you can have up to five locations) and in return it will give you one
click access to your ripped DVD library. You can add DVD cover art to
the folders which gives the experience a more polished look. Matinee is
probably the best $10 we have spent on Mac software.
Audio/Video Performance and HD content
DVD played back via Apple's DVD player looked good. We would say they
are not as good has a high quality DVD player but still good. Apple is
probably one update away from turning this around. There is an open
source player for both Mac and PCs called VLC that is quite good and
provides video quality as good as high quality DVD players. The people
at Matinee say they will allow you to select which player to launch in
the future. Our Mini had no problems playing HD material from Apple's
Quicktime HD site. The core solo should have no problem either as long
as you have enough RAM. The content looked very good! Apple's HD
content is mpeg4 so it uses a lower bit rate than mpeg2. This should
mean that DirecTV and Dish Network subscribers can see a picture
quality improvement when they go to mpeg4 for HD.
We were able to get Dolby Digital out of the mini usung the Belkin
PureAV Digital Optical Cable with Mini-TOSLINK adapter . That added $30
to the cost of our Mini.
What we want to see in the 3rd generation Mini:
- Bigger hard drive standard - with more content coming we definatley need more storage 500GB minimum
- Tuner - ATSC would be great for OTA HD and perhaps a Cable Card slot
- DVD Application - Apple's DVD application can use some improvements. The deinterlacing can stand some improvement
- Blu Ray Drive - This would make it an absolute no brainer
- TV Recording Software - It would be nice if they can
incorporate a TV Guide into Front Row and you could watch a program
currently playing or set it to record for later. El Gato's Eye TV can
do this now. Maybe Apple should buy El Gato software.
Over all the Mini can easily replace your DVD player and provide a
great way download TV programs and music. It may be a bit expensive but
you get quite a bit more than an ordinary DVD player.
