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InFocus recently released its ScreenPlay SP5000 LCD projector ($1900 street), a small and lightweight projector aimed at the home theater market. After putting it through its paces at DMN's Midwest Test Facility theater, our conclusion is decidedly positive. Its HDTV compatibility and high performance showed us how far LCD projection technology has come in the past two years, where the SP5000 showed very few of the weaknesses attributed to LCD projectors while exploiting the technology's inherent strengths. Here's our hands-on review. You get a lot for your projector dollar these days, where $2000 will buy you a home theater light cannon that will put all but the largest LCD flat panels to shame. It's hard to duplicate that huge-screen, darkened theater experience using a flat panel LCD. But then you need a nice dark room, preferably a dedicated space for home theater when using a projector, and not everybody has that available. But for those who do, that's where the InFocus SP5000 can literally shine. Even though it's not as bright as any of the DLP-based models we've tested here, it still fits the home-theater bill nicely.
When I set up the SP5000, I immediately noticed InFocus didn't scrimp on connectivity, with every input you could imagine including DVI, S-video, component, VGA and composite (see graphic above). Missing was the new HDMI interface, which hasn't really caught on yet, but if you want to use that you can use an optional adapter for the DVI input. The projector is quite small, especially for an LCD model, weighing in at 7.5 pounds. It comes with a remote that I immediately liked for one specific reason: On its side it had a little thumb switch that illuminated the buttons -- I think that should be a requirement for every projector, since all look much better in a darkened room.
After plugging our high-quality HDTV source into the SP5000, its strongest point became immediately apparent -- its native resolution is 1280x720p, the perfect size for wide-screen (16x9) HDTV. At 1280x720, also known by the numerically challenged as WXGA, the projector feels right at home, not needing to interpolate anything to show you a clean, progressive-scan HDTV image. This is full-boat HDTV, and it looks it. If you want to use a computer with the unit, that looks great, too, although it need to run at 1280 x 1024 resolution using a technique InFocus calls "intelligent resizing" -- and smart it is. Our Mac and PC images didn't take up the whole width of the screen as they do with the 1024x768 models we've tested, but they looked crisp and true in the 4x3 segment of the raster that they occupied.
Taking out the light meter, the measurements were decidedly lower than all of the DLP units we've tested. Although InFocus quotes the SP5000 as being capable of 1100 "video optimized" lumens, our precision metering equipment didn't measure any screen segment brighter than 650 lumens using our standard 60" diagonal frame size with the zoom all the way out. But even though the lumens measured low, the screen was surprising evenly lit, with the lowest measurement being 556 lumens in the upper left segment of nine squares in which we divide a screen for testing. Those measurements by InFocus, called "video optimized", are certainly using a different measurement technique than we do, and whenever I see that word "optimized" I have to get out my BS detector, but don't let these numbers scare you. The screen onto which SP5000 video is projected looks dazzlingly bright and even.
My subjective judgment of the video emitted by this projector is highly favorable. First of all, the resolution is razor-sharp. A slight downside of that is the visible "screen door" effects in some areas, a characteristic of LCD projectors that is much-improved over previous models, but still there nonetheless. But this can only be noticed in some scenes, and then only if you're really looking for it. I noticed whenever there was a bright scene with camera movement, I could see this "screen door" lattice effect even from a viewing distance of 12 feet. But I don't think it's bad enough to be a showstopper. If that's the only tradeoff for this magnificent resolution at this price, then it's worth it.
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