Customer Reviews

InFocus ScreenPlay SP5000 Home Projector

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

SUMMARY: This projector is a joke in terms of color accuracy and black levels/details. I played with it for a few days, finally gave up, and sent it back.

If you like Infocus then you would be way better by looking at their entry level DLP model (4805). I personally can swear by Optoma though - I have owned two Optomas (H55 and H31) and I have loved them both since more than 3 years ago. Take a look at H31 or their higher resolution models (HD72 or higher if money is not a big issue and you watch HD programming and want every detail to stay there).

DETAILS.
After owning Optoma H55 projector (1024x768, DLP) for three years I bought this SP5000 when Optoma's lamp went over its 2000 hours. My main reasoning was DVI/HDCP input (H55 is not HDCP compliant) and I was hoping that the LCD technology could be at least not too far behind. Man, how wrong I was.

First I was trying to get Infocus's DVI connection work. No luck. Infocus's proprietary DVI-M1 connector requires Infocus-supplied $XXX adapter (yet another joke, $XXX?). I tried to get by and got a third party adapter for 1/3 of the price but it did not work (even though it was specified as completely M1 and HDCP compliant). I gave up, sent the adapter back, and used a component connection.

Now, bad things come in a package. My second issue was that SP5000 had simply terrible colors out of the box (white balance was not there at all). I tried to calibrate it with AVIA calibration DVD for 4 (!) hours and then I gave up yet another time as whatever I did could improve white balance a bit but resulting image still looked bad.

I tried to watch Star Wars Episode I. Dark underwater scenes looked horrible with weird colors (with even visible brightness modulation all over my then 84" DaLite gray (1.0) screen). Shadows... well, there was NO shadows actually, but whatever was supposed to be shadows had NO details in them and looked light gray instead of black. Highlights looked overblown, and the whole picture was a bit blurry (yes, the image was focused just fine, it was video itself that looked this way after 480p to 720p upconversion).

And let me tell you the same DVD looked very, very good on Optoma H55 connected to Denon DVD-2910 player using component input (I used exactly the same setup but Optoma H55 was replaced with Infocus SP5000).

I ended up sending SP5000 back and bought another Optoma (H31). Let me tell you this is what I call excellent colors... After 10 min of calibration and further refinements during watching many DVDs I got it not just simply right but every time I see skin tones from a good DVD I silently say wow to myself.

Shadow details were simply outstanding on Optoma H31. If I watch a DVD on 16:9 screen and there are aspect ratio black bars (right and left of the image in 4:3 format or top/bottom for 2.35:1 movies) then when a scene goes dark I simply cannot tell where my image border is. And this all is in a completely dark room... There were so many fine gradations of black in H31 where SP5000 displayed a plain dull gray image...

Not to mention DVI worked out of the box on H31.

My the only dislike with H31 was initially its screen door effect (I could see pixel borders at 12 feet with 92" screen, which - to be honest - is overkill and is not recommended). It was easily solved by slight defocusing though (did not decrease image sharpness or lowered video quality, just removed visible pixel barriers).

Of course, if this is your first projector and you simply did not have a chance to see anything else you might even like SP5000. It's bright at least.

And yes, I paid for my H31 less than SP5000 costs (and would even pay much more for the quality it provides).

Good luck in your projector hunting.

Well let me say that I spent many hours searching for the perfect projector, and I feel pretty confident that I found it in the InFocus Screenplay 5000.
I have a 100" screen (Elite Screens - ez Cinema Series F100NWH) and am shooting the projector from about 12 feet. I have mostly watched football games in High Def using monster component cables. The picture is unbelievable. All of my friends were blown away at how clear a projector could be. The picture is so real you'd think you could jump right in. The S5000's 1100 lumens are plenty for me. My family room has 6 big windows which can cause a little problem when watching a sitcom or video with a darker picture. With alot of ambient light it causes the darker colors to be difficult to distinguish. In the dark sitcoms or anything look perfect. I can easily watch a bright football game with the lights on or some day light coming through the windows. In the dark, you can't tell the difference from a rear-projection HDTV!
I have played Playstation 2 on this projector as well and it looks great!
I can see some "screendoor effect" when I get within a foot or so of the screen, but it is not noticeable at all from usual viewing distances. I am not planning on sitting 2 feet from the projector.
The cooling fan on this projector is very quiet I never even notice the noise. It is a little loud when it first starts up but during normal use it is unnoticeable to me.
The controls of the projector are very easy to use and hookup is a breeze. I was out of the box and up and running in about 5 minutes.
Sure there are better projectors out there with more lumens and better contrast or a HDMI input, but I don't need any of those things enough to warrant the extra $2,000. This is the way to go.
I highly recommend this projector. I am so happy with my purchase. High Definition twice the size of a regular TV at a third of the price! Now I just have to figure out how to keep my friends from coming over everytime they want to watch TV!

This was the first projector I ever bought. It has the 1280x720 native resolution (16:9 aspect ratio 720p pixel count)that I was looking for. Most of this review is about what the Sp5000 gets wrong, but mostly the SP5000 gets things right.

I did have to buy the optional M1 <-> DVI cable from SP5000, and wound up also buying an 3rd party HDMI<->DVI adapter.

I wanted the InFocus ScreenPlay SP5000 to be the center of a home theater setup. I just stuck it on a high shelf so people walking around in the room would cast minimal shadows.

Unfortunately, the InFocus hardware wants to align with the bottom edge of the image, so it cast a distorted image on my ceiling. There is no throw-angle adjustment on the SP5000, just Zoo, Focus, and, on the bottom, a leveling foot, and a foot to raise and lower the picture. All of those adjustments are mechanical: you can not sit in your watching position and adjust them using the remote, but you must physically move mechanical controls on the SP5000.

Fortunately, when I flipped the projector upside down, it automatically detected that, and flipped the image, so now I had a right-side-up image on the screen. This makes the height adjustment foot useless, but a single popsicle stick wedged under the inverted front of the SP5000 fixed that.

Unfortunately, all the control buttons are on the top of the SP5000.

Fortunately, using the remote, I never need to touch those buttons.

The DVI input worked just fine with a laptop or a HDMI DVD player. With the laptop through the SP5000, it was nice to blow up Google Video and YouTube movies to the point where I could actually see them.

I was able to Logitech/Harmony Universal remote so it could automatically switch between sending audio to the small speaker on the SP5000 when playing VHS tapes using the S-Video input, and playing DVDs using the M1 input, with audio going to a box entirely separate from the SP5000.

Switching from one video source to the other was a little tricky, since the SP5000 wants to search for sources and lock on to the highest resolution one it finds, and the DVD/VCR I'm using sends a static logo image out the HDMI when you are watch a VHS tape on its VCR side using S-Video. The secret: define presets in the SP5000, and make the remote go to a specific preset when it tells the SP5000 to change modes.

Unfortunately , presets don't include the mute/unmute state. The remote has no mute button, and the menus come up with the last choice selected, so you can't reliably program a universal remote to send a sequence of {Menu}{Left}{Left}{Down}{Enter} commands to navigate the menu hierarchy. To mute the SP5000 for DVI but unmute it for S-Video, I set the Logitech/Harmony remote to send 10 {Volume down}s on power off, and when I wanted it muted, and 5 {Volume up}s when switching to S-Video mode.

VHS is 4:3 aspect ratio, as are Fullscreen DVDs. Some Widescreen DVDs are anamorphic, and some are not, so it helps to have a single button on the remote that cycles through all the aspect ratios. The SP5000 has such a button on its remote. I vastly prefer the SP5000's single button control.

I worked with a Toshiba, where you enter {Aspect Ratio Mode}, then press a number key. If you wait too long, to enter the number, {Aspect Ratio Mode} will time out, and the number will be interpreted as {InputSource=Tuner}{channel=number}. Since the Universal remote usually has the number buttons mapped to a DVD player or a cable box, getting the Universal remote to flip modes in time is a pain. But this is a Toshiba problem I am thankful that the SP5000 gets right.

The SP5000's picture is sharp and clear, all the way to the furthest edges of the screen. The pixels are clearly defined, when you stand close to the screen, but the "screen door" effect is invisible at 2 feet from the 100" screen, and you'd never sit anywhere near that close: you don't have the peripheral vision to see the whole image that close.

The SP5000 does have a fan. You can hear it during quiet passages in movies, but I really don't notice it. It is LCD based, so you don't get the rainbow fringes I've seen in DLP. Similarly, its blacks aren't quite black: You can clearly see the difference between the part of the screen illuminated by black letterbox bars, and the part that isn't illuminated at all. As with the fan noise, the light spill on the screen is not noticeable while using the unit.

Cons:

[revised] I had a section in here complaining about dark grays: colors near black. None of that section was the fault of the SP5000. As soon as I started watching movies on it using a laptop as a DVD player, the problem vanished. My problem with dark grays was entirely with my DVD player, not this projector. Let that be a lesson to me: dvd players are not alike. Test, test, test!

While the black levels of this unit aren't stellar, I have not found it to be a problem in practice (200+ hrs) due to the high brightness.

Considering the resolution and detail offered by this model it is great value. Compared to rear projection or flat panel simply outstanding value. The only downside experienced is the moderately high black levels - but nothing to the point I'd spend much more on to rectify.

This projector is insanely bright allowing viewing with room lights on. I only wish they were able to offer a lower lamp setting to both increase the lamp life and darken the blacks a notch. I received a 76 inch screen with the unit, but I get better contrast using a off-white textured wall. Very cool as this makes the setup quite discrete.

By using a wall bracket to mount at ceiling level I simplified the mounting installation while giving equivalent results. Sitting directly below the projector about 10 feet from the screen/wall the picture is great at widest zoom, the screen door effect is barely perceptible and even then only in washed-out bright scenes, and the fan noise is noticeable but by no means intrusive. I have this connected to a laptop through VESA. I wouldn't recommend using the projector to do upconversion or deinterlacing - treat this as a simple monitor and you will get amazing results.

Coupled with a logitech 5500 surround speaker system this unit gives a true movie theatre experience at a small fraction of what could be spent to achieve similar results. Don't forget the $300 power and video cables :-P

Cons:
Proprietary M1 connector is someones idea of a bad joke. A decent cable should be included.

I initially had the unit overheat a couple of times but this was probably due to sligthy constricted air circulation - let this puppy breath.

I bought this projector back in February of this year and so far it has given great performance. With little ambient light it looks good and with no light it looks awesome!!! I have been using it for my high def xbox 360 and hd tv broadcast. Both look great on it. I also watch some dvds on it and they dont look as good but its the dvd's fault not the projector, they are all low resolution. I have put over 200 hours on the lamp already and it is almost as bright as the day I got. The only problem I have had with it at all is the fact that it has a 2:35:1 aspect ratio setting that zooms in on a 2:35:1 ratio and makes it 1:85:1 to fit the screen. This will not work with an 1080i source so you are stuck watching it with the black bars. Other than that this machine is awesome and should provide you with a lot of watching enjoyment. I gave it a 4 star for the little ratio problem. People are so picky today and I am one of them but I think this one has been getting a bad rap from people that expect too much. Expecially from DVD, this projector is capable of giving you a great picture that anyone could watch and love even if you watch it at close ranges.You just need an HD source The only thing else I can say is get you one, you will be very happy with the huge picture, better than any big screen tv I have ever seen.

Oh yeah, almost forgot, get a screen too, it makes all the difference, white walls dont make the best projecting surface!!!

SUMMARY: This projector is a joke in terms of color accuracy and black levels/details. I played with it for a few days, finally gave up, and sent it back.

If you like Infocus then you would be way better by looking at their entry level DLP model (4805). I personally can swear by Optoma though - I have owned two Optomas (H55 and H31) and I have loved them both since more than 3 years ago. Take a look at H31 or their higher resolution models (HD72 or higher if money is not a big issue and you watch HD programming and want every detail to stay there).

DETAILS.
After owning Optoma H55 projector (1024x768, DLP) for three years I bought this SP5000 when Optoma's lamp went over its 2000 hours. My main reasoning was DVI/HDCP input (H55 is not HDCP compliant) and I was hoping that the LCD technology could be at least not too far behind. Man, how wrong I was.

First I was trying to get Infocus's DVI connection work. No luck. Infocus's proprietary DVI-M1 connector requires Infocus-supplied $XXX adapter (yet another joke, $XXX?). I tried to get by and got a third party adapter for 1/3 of the price but it did not work (even though it was specified as completely M1 and HDCP compliant). I gave up, sent the adapter back, and used a component connection.

Now, bad things come in a package. My second issue was that SP5000 had simply terrible colors out of the box (white balance was not there at all). I tried to calibrate it with AVIA calibration DVD for 4 (!) hours and then I gave up yet another time as whatever I did could improve white balance a bit but resulting image still looked bad.

I tried to watch Star Wars Episode I. Dark underwater scenes looked horrible with weird colors (with even visible brightness modulation all over my then 84" DaLite gray (1.0) screen). Shadows... well, there was NO shadows actually, but whatever was supposed to be shadows had NO details in them and looked light gray instead of black. Highlights looked overblown, and the whole picture was a bit blurry (yes, the image was focused just fine, it was video itself that looked this way after 480p to 720p upconversion).

And let me tell you the same DVD looked very, very good on Optoma H55 connected to Denon DVD-2910 player using component input (I used exactly the same setup but Optoma H55 was replaced with Infocus SP5000).

I ended up sending SP5000 back and bought another Optoma (H31). Let me tell you this is what I call excellent colors... After 10 min of calibration and further refinements during watching many DVDs I got it not just simply right but every time I see skin tones from a good DVD I silently say wow to myself.

Shadow details were simply outstanding on Optoma H31. If I watch a DVD on 16:9 screen and there are aspect ratio black bars (right and left of the image in 4:3 format or top/bottom for 2.35:1 movies) then when a scene goes dark I simply cannot tell where my image border is. And this all is in a completely dark room... There were so many fine gradations of black in H31 where SP5000 displayed a plain dull gray image...

Not to mention DVI worked out of the box on H31.

My the only dislike with H31 was initially its screen door effect (I could see pixel borders at 12 feet with 92" screen, which - to be honest - is overkill and is not recommended). It was easily solved by slight defocusing though (did not decrease image sharpness or lowered video quality, just removed visible pixel barriers).

Of course, if this is your first projector and you simply did not have a chance to see anything else you might even like SP5000. It's bright at least.

And yes, I paid for my H31 less than SP5000 costs (and would even pay much more for the quality it provides).

Good luck in your projector hunting.