Review: InFocus IN76

John Archer — 2006-09-18T00:00:00.000Z

John Archer, Active Home, Monday 18 September 2006 at 00:00:00

After a surprisingly long absence, InFocus returns to the projector fray with a vengeance

Once upon a time, InFocus ruled the home projection market with its extensive and oft-updated Screenplay range. But then it all went a bit quiet. Until now.

InFocus’ return to the UK scene makes an impact on a number of fronts. For starters, the Screenplay sub-brand has gone, leaving the new model simply called the InFocus IN76.

Next, the slightly drab aesthetics of InFocus projectors of past is replaced by a striking, almost circular, design finished in glossy black and silver, and handily mounted on a rotating, tilting foot.

Connections, meanwhile, prove outstanding for a sub-£2K projector, including as they do two separate digital video inputs, plus options for PC, component video, S-video and USB.

The IN76’s claimed specifications read well too – especially the HD-Ready native DLP resolution of 1280x720, a strong contrast ratio of 3000:1, and an unusually high brightness of 1000 ANSI Lumens.

The video-processing engine looks the business, too. It’s a 10-bit affair from acclaimed third-party outfit Pixelworks, and as such can take in and work with the 1080p HD format being promised for Blu-ray discs.

Getting the IN76 ready for action is straightforward considering what a sophisticated projector it is. The remote control, for instance, is backlit and well laid out.

That jointed foot, meanwhile, makes it easy to get a picture on your screen, no matter how weirdly shaped your living room. And the on-screen menus never blind you with science or overburden you with scrappy sub-menus.

That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of features to play with, though. For instance, you can adjust the gamma levels, the white peaking settings, fleshtones, a noise-reduction system, the colour temperature and the red, green and blue components of the image individually. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

So, has InFocus been idly twiddling its thumbs in the protracted period since its last new projector? Most certainly not.

The most immediate impact of its classy pictures comes from their sheer clarity. There is practically no sign of any sort of video noise anywhere.

DLP technology’s common troubles with fizzing noise over horizontal motion and green dotting in dark areas seem a thing of the past: fine details look devoid of colour moiré; sharp edges are free of shiny echoes or jaggedness; and general unpleasantness like grain or dot crawl has all gone.

There are sporadic flashes of DLP’s tell-tale colour striping in your peripheral vision, but this occurs far less commonly than is usual for a sub-£2K projector.

All this image cleanliness leaves you more free to enjoy, and get lost in, the other strengths of the IN76’s pictures – strengths which include some outstanding black levels able to render dark parts of a film with total confidence and a superb degree of subtle shading.

Colours are also more natural in tone and well saturated than we’re used to seeing in the affordable end of DLP/LCD projections. And the Pixelworks scaling engine works its magic to deliver both a superbly sharp picture with HD sources and an outstandingly clean standard-definition image.

Such a talented scaling system frankly has no business being on a projector as cheap as £1,700.

If you’re looking for a top-class movie projector that punches absolutely miles above its price weight, your bucks should stop here.

NEC HT410

Active home staff — 2005-06-07T00:00:00.000Z

Active home staff, Active Home, Tuesday 7 June 2005 at 00:00:00

It's nice to look at and will cost you less than a grand, but does NEC's DLP projector shine in a home cinema setup?

With its shiny white casing and attractive curved design, the HT410 from NEC is a projector that's clearly built for living room use.

It's also one of the cheaper DLP projectors. The HT410 features a native widescreen (16:9) resolution of 854 x 480 pixels and is able to project an image from 30in right up to 200in.

A vast array of connection opportunities are offered on the right side of the projector. Along with the standard VGA-in, you also get S-Video, component and composite video inputs, although DVI input isn’t supported. Thanks to the included composite-to-Scart converter cable, which is accompanied by a plethora of other cables, hooking up a DVD player is no problem at all.

Quick-access buttons, such as volume and video source, are placed on the top of the projector. A rather crude but effective stand can be pulled out at the front of the unit to alter the vertical projection angle, while a rear tilt stand allows you to quickly adjust horizontal positioning.

If you find that the vertical stand can't quite provide a steep enough angle, the lens shift function comes to the rescue. Using a manual dial, it's possible to alter the vertical angle of the lens without having to place a couple of dictionaries underneath the projector. Horizontal lens shift, however, isn't offered.

In terms of image quality, the HT410 performed just about as we expected. It can't match up to more expensive models when it comes to reproducing colours faithfully, and it also struggled to produce a bright display in well-lit conditions. But as a budget projector we were fairly impressed overall.

NEC has included an interesting function that aims to let you project the image at just about any wall, regardless of its colour. The HT410's colour correction then attempts to compensate for the wall's particular hue. Sadly, during testing this actually had little effect on anything but very faintly coloured walls.

However, we were impressed by the quietness of the fan. Despite producing a bright 1,000 lumen display, it still remained impressively quiet, operating at between 26dB and 28dB.

The remote control is small yet well designed. Usual functions such as aspect ratio, picture freeze and keystone correction are all available, while a red backlight can be activated for use in the dark.

If you're a first-time projector buyer but want to keep costs down, the NEC HT410 is definitely a model worth considering. It's attractively designed, produces a decent image and it's incredibly quiet.

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