Projector Reviews

An Image Shift control moves the image up or down, but it does not perform the same function as a lens shift control. Instead, as you adjust it, it merely blanks the portion of the image that scrolls off the top or bottom of the screen. According to InFocus, this control may be used to raise the top of the picture to eliminate the horizontal black bar at the top of a 2.35:1 film (on a 1.78:1 screen). Of course, that will leave a larger black bar at the bottom.

But that can be done just as well by the Overscan control. In its Off position it provides zero overscan. Zoom produces 3% overscan (actually 1.5% per side), but like the overscan in all the sets we've tested it then rescales the image back up to fit the screen. This can and usually does degrade the resolution. The Crop setting of the Overscan control, on the other hand, removes the outer 1.5% of the image on all sides but does not rescale the image to fit the screen. It does not degrade resolution. If you want to use it all the time (if, for example, your cable company makes a habit of regularly adding noise at one or more outer edges of the picture) you need only turn on the Crop setting and manually zoom the image slightly to refit it to the screen.

The Sharpness control offers just four fixed settings, from Sharpest to Softest. The Gamma control offers five settings: CRT, Film, Video, PC, and Bright Room.

The Aspect Ratio control offers the usual selections, including Natural Wide, which isn't natural at all but stretches a 4:3 image to fit the screen in the uneven way used by similar features in other displays (stretched mostly at the sides, less in the middle).

InFocus claims that one of the Aspect Ratio settings may be used to stretch a 2.35:1 image vertically for use with an anamorphic lens (for equal height images on a 2.35:1 screen), with no additional processing required. I found no specific option for this, or any reference to it in the manual. The Letterbox setting does perform a vertical stretch, but I did not have an anamorphic lens on hand to determine if it will provide the proper 2.35:1 image. (The math tells me that it will, however).

Three User Presets are provided for you to save different video setups. The projector also has two ISF (Imaging Science Foundation) modes: ISF Day and ISF Night. When settings are saved in these modes by a certified ISF calibrator, they are locked down. Only the calibrator has the code. The modes are then non-volatile, and neither you nor your family or friends can tamper with them. But the User presets remain available for you to play with to your heart's content, even when the ISF modes are locked.

A High Power setting maximizes the light output of the lamp. I left it Off except to check what it does (more on that in the Measurements section), but it does increase the fan noise substantially.

There are several test patterns, accessible from the menu, plus a blue only setting that turns off red and green and when used with an appropriate test pattern can help determine the proper setting of the Color (and, where available, the Tint) control. But all it did for me was reveal that the projector's color decoder isn't perfect. In this respect the IN82 is not alone; color decoder errors (often deliberate) are not at all unusual in consumer video displays. But this is not always easy to determine. The color filters that were used in the past for this test don't always provide accurate results on modern digital displays, so shutting off red and green and viewing blue alone is the next best way.

There are a number of controls that affect the projector's color. A Color Space control has five settings: Auto, RGB, RGB Video, REC709, and REC601. A Color Gamut control also has five positions: Auto, SMPTE C, REC709, EBU, and Maximum.

There's also BrilliantColor, a trademarked Texas Instruments technology said to produce "an expanded on-screen color spectrum that delivers enhanced color saturation for bright, true-to-life images." I did find that it made a difference, but the most visible change it produced was in the projector's light output. BrilliantColor increased it by roughly 15% at the iris setting I used.

The Color Temperature control provides four settings: 6500K, 7500K, 9300K, and Native. All but 6500K should be ignored. The Color Control in the Advanced menu (not to be confused with the normal, overall Color control in the Picture menu) offers RGB adjustments at both the top and bottom of the brightness range to fine tune the Color Temperature. These adjustments should be used only by an experienced calibrator with the right test tools.

The manual also describes a feature in the Settings menu called Fast Color Refresh. It is said to speed up the color wheel and reduce the visibility of the single-chip DLP "rainbow effect." But no such control appeared anywhere on the menus. It appears to have been dropped after the manual I received was written. [According to InFocus, this feature was indeed removed, and manuals printed from here forward may reflect that change. –Ed.]

The multi-position Flesh Tone Correction control is best left Off. But in my sample that was easy. Four of the video controls—Flesh Tone, Black Level Calibration, Film Mode, and Noise Reduction—are grayed out with any progressive HDMI input: 480p, 720p, or 1080p. All but Black Level Calibration are available with an interlaced HDMI input. It's odd that Flesh Tone and Noise reduction, at least, are not always available.

The Black Level Calibration control is available from a component input, but not HDMI. This feature is designed to set the black level (brightness control) automatically, but it requires that there be black bars on the image, either at the sides or the top and bottom. I used a mid-brightness window pattern to check it out. When it's engaged, the image flickers momentarily, then settles down to what is (you hope) the correct setting. Unfortunately, the setting that the projector chooses is not the same as that determined by the setup DVDs I normally use. The Black Level Calibration leaves the image about 10% too dark. Even if it provided a usable result, the fact that it does not function with HDMI makes it less than fully useful. I didn't use it to set the black level, and don't recommend that you do, either.

Several additional controls are usable only with a computer input. They were not tested for this review.

Performance
Unless you choose the High Power setting, the projector's fan was relatively quiet (though not virtually silent in the manner of, say, the Sony VPL-VW50 and a few other nearly silent designs). And unlike earlier InFoci, there is virtually no light leakage from the case, apart from a small sliver on the side, near the lens.

The first page of my review notes reads: "using HDMI, it does not show below black, but does show above white." This was true of all the sources I tested, including disc players (which output Y-Cb-Cr digital component video over HDMI) and both the digital RGB and digital component options on my test pattern generator.

No PLUGE bars were visible at all from the generator's PLUGE patterns. But I most often use a disc player to set the black level (brightness) control, together with the PLUGE test pattern on chapter 12-2 of the standard definition version of Digital Video Essentials. This pattern has three PLUGE bars, and when you raise the brightness control too high you should he able to see all of them.

I was only able to see the two brightest bars on the InFocus with any of the five players I tried. All three bars were visible on the JVC DLA-RS1 projector from all the players: standard DVD, Blu-ray, and HD DVD.

This is clearly a design error. But I was able to work around it by using those two brighter PLUGE bars. And once I arrived at the right settings things fell quickly into place.

Apart from the below black issue, the InFocus proved to be a superior performer in nearly every respect. Its DNX video processing from Pixelworks was, for the most part, superb. The projector sailed cleanly through virtually all of the tests I normally use for evaluating a display's deinterlacing and scaling, converting both standard definition 480i to 1080p, and 1080i high-definition to 1080p.

In the standard def tests the video processing was as close to flawless as I have yet seen. In the high-definition tests, the IN82 not only correctly deinterlaced 1080i sources to 1080p, it also recognized and compensated for the presence of 3/2 pulldown—which many 1080p displays still cannot do.

According to InFocus, when the IN82 receibves a 24fps input it frame doubles to 48fps (Hz). While it produced a good image when fed 1080p/24, it did show significant artifacts in 24fps mode in the beginning scene of chapter 8 of MI III, as the camera pans down the Vatican staircase.