Bringing the bigger picture into focus

By PETER GRIFFIN

The advances of DVD and the crystal- clear picture in widescreen and rich Dolby 5.1 sound it delivers have seen everyone suddenly become a home theatre buff.

But no matter how good your DVD player and sound set-up, your cinematic experience is always going to depend to an extent on the size of your screen.

That's what keeps us stumping up $10 to $13 a shot to sit in a movie theatre. We like to see the big picture.

But the steadily dropping price of large-screen TVs - cathode ray, rear projection and plasma, as well as multimedia projectors - is increasingly putting decent home theatre within the grasp of the masses.

This is where Infocus comes in. The specialist projector maker will not be as well known to New Zealanders as fellow projector makers Philips, Panasonic and Sony, but its projectors measure up well.

You can pay up to $14,000 for a specialised home theatre projector.

On the other hand, some basic business projectors can sell for as low as $2000.

The X1 seeks to strike a balance between quality and reasonable pricing and appears to do it well.

An SVGA resolution (800x600) projector (contrast ratio 4:3 standard, 16:9 widescreen), the X1 has a maximum 1100 lumens of brightness and 2000:1 contrast.

Projectors specialising in home theatre will usually have a dedicated 16:9 widescreen LCD panel. The Panasonic PT-AE200 is one such projector selling for $3999.

I hooked the X1 up to a $160 Mizuda DVD player and a TDK sub woofer and speaker set.

This is far from a dream home-theatre set-up but delivered pretty impressive results.

The X1 will deliver a lovely picture at about 1.5m across.

For broadcast TV, good quality video and DVD, the picture is crisp, the colours rich and well defined. Manually adjusting the focus of the projector's lens refines the picture.

Suddenly a world of detail emerges as the confines of the black box are thrown off.

As you move the X1 further back from the projecting wall, the picture gets bigger but colours are less well defined and you start to notice pixelation.

Nevertheless, you can go big - my favourite screen size is 6ft by 8ft. The sheer size of the picture gives objects a 3D quality - as I noticed when a giant, animated spider scurried across screen during a Discovery Channel documentary, nearly giving me a heart attack.

Action movies and aerial shots look spectacular - but don't get too seduced by the dimensions. You will still be relying on the old tube for most viewing.

You need a dark room to use the projector. The 150-watt bulb will last for 3000 hours, a good distance if you're using the projector only for the odd movie, rugby match or bout of CNN war coverage, but a short lifespan for constant use.

The bulb costs a staggering $750 to replace - the norm with projectors - and a sharp bump while the bulb is warmed up is liable to break it.

In the US, where the XI is selling for an impressive US$999 ($1715), it's being hailed as having the "finest video performance yet in the sub-$2000 price class".

Projectors have become a real alternative to the rear projection TV, which hasn't taken off in New Zealand as it has in the US.

With the price of 21 and 24-inch TVs now so reasonable, it's almost worth putting up with an el cheapo TV set during the week so you can wheel out the home theatre projector set-up on the weekend.

The X1's menu system is easy to navigate, as is the remote control, the buttons of which light up red in the dark for easy navigation.

The connectors on the rear of the projector include S-Video, an RCA composite jack, USB, a VGA monitor jack and an audio jack.

Plug in a computer for internet browsing on a massive scale, although text is hard to see over 1.5m across.

With a wireless keyboard set-up you can do all your computing from the couch. Connect your Xbox or PlayStation - car games and flight simulators are the most effective.

In the dark, movies, internet or gaming are a marvellous experience.

Infocus X1 projector

Price: $3699.

Pros: easy to set up and use, portable, high quality for video and data.

Cons: expensive due to immature market here.

Rating: 7.5/10