Middle of the road often means mediocre and merely adequate, but the Mitsubishi WD-65734 1080p DLP HDTV is a welcome exception to that rule. The 65-inch WD-65734 model offers an impressive combination of features, price and screen size. This model comes with all the features found on its entry-level counterpart, with a few extra bells and whistles that make the moderate jump in price easy to swallow.

The WD-65734 focuses much of its energy on delivering phenomenal color, and it shows. It employs a very effective 6-Color Light Engine, which produces images in six colors, not the traditional three. Because it directly generates cyan, yellow and magenta (rather than just combining red, green and blue) the resulting colors are particularly bold, brilliant and nearly leap off the screen. In addition to delivering brighter colors (and a wider range of colors), whites on this unit are not nearly as murky or washed out as they are on some DLP TVs that rely on traditional color generation. This DLP TV also uses a nifty feature called Color 4D Noise Reduction, which goes the extra yard and analyzes color horizontally, vertically, within, and even between frames of video to filter video noise.

This model offers a few nice features that the lower-end series doesn't. It uses a DeepField imager, which boosts the contrast ratio and SharpEdge, which adds a razor-crispness to object edges. Both of those result in a precise picture that's a notable step up from the lower-end series. Particularly side-by-side, you can indeed notice the difference in contrast and sharpness.

The WD-65734 offers a feature called PerfectTint, which can define the tint of each of the six colors separately, delivering a truly impressive amount of control. However, if messing with the output at that level of detail is simply too much to deal with, this feature might not pay off.

This DLP HDTV features a good amount of connectivity. The four HDMI 1.3 inputs are SimplayHD-certified, so it's a snap to get all your HD components on the same page. One of those HDMI 1.3 inputs is on the front, which makes it easy to attach an HD gaming console--a great perk for gamers. This unit also comes with a convenient front USB input so you can easily view photos on the super-huge screen. It's definitely thicker than comparable LCD and plasma units, but for a rear-projection TV, this model's 15.4-inch depth is fairly compact. And the sleek, thin frame delivers more picture in the same space older units took up.

The WD-65734 might be in the middle of Mitsubishi's pack as far as price and screen size, but it's far from middling.

Pros: Bold, accurate color; easy connectivity
Cons: Some features, like PerfectTint, might be overkill; larger footprint than LCD or plasma

Warranty
1 year, limited