New InFocus Play Big projectors (1 Viewer)

[Rex.G]

I was poking around http://www.projectorcentral.com looking at the new line of InFocus projectors. The new Play Big series are going to be 1080p capable. The lowest model (Play Big IN72) has a suggested price of $1299.

At this price it is by far the cheapest 1080p projector or large screen television I have seen. Does anyone know of anything else that comes close to this price?

I am planning for a new theater room w/ front projection and with the new HD formats coming out this seems like an ideal choice. The only differences I can see between the 4805 and IN72 are that the IN72 is brighter (900 vs. 750 ANSI lumens), 1080P capable and it does not have a built in speaker).

Does anyone have an idea of what effect displaying 1080p with "Native: 854x480 Pixels" will have?

According to the InFocus website:
"The InFocus Play Big IN72 is scheduled to start shipping in mid-late Q1". Anybody have more details?

 

[Joseph Bolus]

Actually, its my understanding that the "Play Big" series native resolutions will be as follows:

IN72 - 480p (The replacement for the IF 4805)
IN74EX - 576p
IN76 - 720p

As you can see, none of these will be native 1080p. It'll probably be at least 18 months before you'll see a DLP-based 1080p native projector for less than four grand.

Of course, all three of these projectors will be able to handle 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i/p. They'll just scale those video sources to their respective native resolutions. (And, based on the way my current IF 4805 scales High-Def cable, they'll provide terrific images from High-Def sources.)

Here's some more information on these projectors from the Infocus web site (You'll have to first choose "United States" from the Infocus main page in order to get these links to work):

http://www.infocus.com/Products/Projectors/IN72.aspx

http://www.infocus.com/Products/Projectors/IN74.aspx

http://www.infocus.com/Products/Projectors/IN76.aspx

BTW, if I were going to purchase one of these in the very near future, I would go for the IN74EX. In spite of its 576p native resolution, I would expect it to compete favorably with the new crop of high contrast 720p LCD projectors and at about the same price point. We won't know for sure until they actually start shipping (March?) but it will probably provide a higher calibrated contrast ratio than those LCD projectors.

 

[Rex.G]

That makes sense. I overlooked that detail when I was looking over the specs.

There are too many ifs ands or buts anymore. That's why this forum is so helpfull.

I used to understand how home theater equipment worked...