For about two years I’ve been steadily following Mitsubishi’s progress toward a laser TV—a DLP rear projection TV that uses lasers rather than lamps to produce light and color.
So it was a bit of a surprise at a recent electronics industry trade show to see an innovation even more interesting that that. The TV in question is the 52-inch (also available in 46-inch model ) LT-52149 integrated sound projector model. While it’s a mostly-conventional LCD TV, what makes it stand out is the built-in sound bar that really works.
The LT-52149 is a full 1080p LCD TV with standard backlighting (CCFL not LED), a 6ms response time, 120Hz anti-judder feature, 4 HDMI inputs and a fairly wide 178-degree viewing angle. All that alone would make it a TV worth paying attention to. What really gets attention is the feature found under the screen—the speakers.
Most flat panel TVs these days go out of their way to hide the speakers. In fact a lot of manufacturers assume buyers won’t be using the built-in speakers anyway, opting instead for a full home theater system. While I agree that’s the best audio option, If my friends and relatives are a representative sample, there are a lot of people who just don’t want the hassle of placing 6 speakers around a room. Several speaker companies offer single-cabinet speaker bars as alternatives to separate surround systems. The Mitsubishi iSP TVs include just such a speaker bar built-into the TV.
The “sound projector” on the Mits TV is made up of 16 individual 3-inch drives with crossovers separating them into five discrete channels (front R/L, center, rear R/L). Each channel is designed to use timing and reflection to create an accurate surround experience while sound technically comes from the front. There’s also a subwoofer output to add the .1 of a 5.1 system (which I found necessary to the setup). A virtual surround option is not unheard-of in a flat panel TV, but the control and performance if this one makes it unique.
Cosmetically, this is an attractive TV, with a glossy black finish and minimally thin bezel surrounding the screen. The speakers are not hidden the way some recent Samsung and Hitachi TVs hide their speakers. When you’ve got 16 drives, it’s difficult to hide them. However, they’re not objectionably large. The TV is also a bit deeper than others we’ve had in here recently, measuring close to 5-inches deep.
From a picture standpoint, this may be the best-looking Mitsubishi LCD to date. Using the Blu-ray Digital Video Essentials disc to set up the TV and the Blu-ray version of Casino Royale I found the TV to deliver excellent color and contrast, better than most LCD TVs I’ve used. Subtle details in dark areas rivaled what you can get from better plasma TVs. The 120Hz scan rate feature, which takes incoming 60Hz video signals and converts them to 120Hz, effectively removed the motion judder sometimes seen on LCD TVs.
This can be a big deal for sports fans as judder can be very distracting when watching players race across a field. Other people in the office noted that the picture exhibited a lot of depth, owing to the good contrast.
Of course, the audio feature is what makes this TV stand out from others. To get the most out of the iSP, you need to customize it through the setup menu. Within the audio menu, you can tell the system where the TV is in relation to your seating area (front, center, angled) as well as the distance.
Further, you can go into a deeper menu to control each individual channel to more accurately direct how that channel reaches your ears. Built-in white noise test patterns and a visual representation of the sound projection let you steer each channel. I was shocked by how well it all worked. While you don’t get quite the directionality of a true 5.1 system, the TV delivered a convincing surround experience that filled the room and placed surround effects on the left, right and rear as needed. I did find that the addition of a subwoofer helped to fill out the effect.
All told, this TV performs excellently on both video and audio fronts and would be a smart consideration for people who don’t plan to hook up separate speakers.
-egear
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