ScreenPlay® 7205 High-Definition HD2+ DLP™ Projector
The
playing field is starting to get crowded with the latest round of high-performance
Digital Light Processing™ (DLP) home theater projectors. InFocus Corporation
introduced the highly regarded ScreenPlay® 7200 (SP7200) last year and the
performance was truly outstanding. This year, InFocus has raised the bar with
the introduction of their new ScreenPlay® 7205 (SP7205) that uses the latest
HD2+ Mustang Digital Micromirror Device™ (DMD™) from Texas Instruments.
This new DLP removes the dimple that can be seen in the center of each pixel on
the HD2 chip. The new HD2+ DLP chip also provides a brighter, higher contrast
picture with less noticeable pixel structure. The newly designed auto-calibrating
7-segment, 5x-speed color wheel provides greater bit depth, which results in much
smoother looking images. Like its predecessor, the SP7205 uses a Faroudja deinterlacing
technology and benefits from the new FLI2310 DCDi™ with 3-2 pulldown processing
that virtually eliminates artifacts from interlaced sources. The SP7205 also has
the same user replaceable lamp with an average lifetime of 3000 hours (2000 in
high power mode).
Setup
The ScreenPlay® 7205 supports a wide range for screen size options. A 55.1"
diagonal picture requires the projector to be 6.7' to 8.3' from the screen. A
133.1" projected image requires the projector to be 16.1' to 20.1' from the
screen. We projected a 100" diagonal onto our Stewart FireHawk filmscreen
with a Luxus Deluxe ScreenWall. The Stewart FireHawk has worked out well for us
and has performed well on many of the DLP projectors we've reviewed. What we like
most about the FireHawk is its ability to maintain good contrast even when some
ambient light enters the viewing room. Since our viewing room does leak some ambient
light, the SP7205 worked well with our screen. The SP7205 does not have a lens
shift option so the projector must be mounted at the proper level to avoid using
the keystone adjustments which allows up to ±20° vertical and ±9°
horizontal. In our experience, the
keystone adjustments tend to degrade the image quality, so we prefer not to use
them when possible. Zoom and focus on the SP7205 are fully manual, so setup time
may require some tweaking to get a well focused picture. The zoom lens easily
projected a 100" diagonal image onto our 16:9 FireHawk screen at a distance
of about 13 feet. Geometry looked good, allowing us to slightly overscan on the
screen. The VeLux material on the Luxus frame absorbed the slight overscan, resulting
in a perfect looking 16:9 image from our seating position. The ScreenPlay®
7205 is medium sized projector (measuring about 13" wide by 9" deep)
and weighs less that 10 pounds. The fan noise on this projector is noticeable
and definitely increases when switching to the high power mode. We would not recommend
mounting this right above the viewing position as it may bother some viewers.
Most of our time was spent with the DVI interface being driven by our Samsung SIR-T165 set-top box. We like the Samsung simply because this unit provides a DVI output signal for terrestrial high-definition broadcasts as well as a FireWire™ (iLink™) connection to our D-Theater capable VCRs. This setup allows us to play our D-VHS tapes and digitally linking them to the ScreenPlay® 7205. Our DVI tests were run with a 10-meter M1-DA-to-DVI cable. The analog cable (HQVGA) used with our HTPC (Home Theater PC) came from DirectConnect. Their video cable performed well and we used it for high-definition as well as DVD video.
The
ScreenPlay® 7205 continues to use an all glass Carl Zeiss lens and now includes
72mm threads which is designed to accept filters. The light output from the ScreenPlay®
7205 is specified to be 1100 ANSI Lumens in high power mode, which is very bright
and actually works well on larger screens and in situations where there may be
some ambient light in the room. However, this does sacrifice black level in some
cases, so to bring the output down to SMPTE recommendations, a neutral density
lens filter should be used. InFocus recommends using a Hoya 72mm 2x (0.3) neutral
density ultra-thin multicoated glass filter. This reduces light one F-stop and
the ultra-thin design helps prevent vignetting. If a smaller screen is being used
and the image appears overly bright or washed-out, the filter will certainly help
enhance the picture quality. This single DLP projector has a new 7-segment color
wheel that improves picture quality and appears to have better colors than the
predecessor.
Connectivity
The rear panel of the ScreenPlay® 7205 has eight selectable video interfaces
including both analog and digital. The unique looking M1-DA connector (Input 1)
greatly resembles a wide version of the standard DVI connector. The DVI interface
is fully HDCP compliant for encrypted content. This input can also be used with
analog video when connected with the appropriate cable. The VESA (Input 2) connector
can also run in either component or RGB/HV, based on the Color Space setting
in the setup menu. There are two component (Video 3 & 6) video inputs via
two sets of 3 RCA jacks. The component video inputs will accept 1080i, 720p, or
480p signals. There are also two S-video (Video 4 & 5) connectors and one
composite (Input 7) connector, all of which are fully compatible with NTSC, NTSC
4.43, PAL, SECAM standards. The D5 Component (Input 8) interface supports SDTV,
EDTV and HDTV. However, we did not use this input during our review.
An RS232 serial interface (19.2k baud) is available for controlling the projector settings remotely. The User's Manual covers all of the available commands and parameters necessary to operate this interface. The 3.5mm IR In jack is an IR Repeater input that is compatible with Niles and Xantech products. The pair of 3.5mm Trigger 1 & 2 jacks provides outputs to control the screen. The Trigger 1 output is constantly on as long as the projector is on. The Trigger 2 output activates after 5-seconds when the 4:3 aspect ratio is selected by either the Aspect Ratio menu or the Resize button.
Remote
The infrared remote supplied with the ScreenPlay® 7205 is identical to the
one used on the 7200. The small and lightweight remote has a well designed backlight
that is easy to see in the dimly lit home theater environment. Pointing the remote
at the screen to command the projector worked well. The remote is simple with
the menu navigation buttons (Menu, Select, Up and Down)
located at the top. The screen Resize button along with the dedicated Contrast
and Brightness controls are located near the middle of the keypad. Just
below this are four video input buttons, each of which can be assigned to a specific
input on the rear panel. The fifth source button cycles through all of the video
inputs enabled in the menu settings. Using the aspect ratio menu, the user can
select Native, 16:9 (1.78:1), 4:3 (1.33:1), Letterbox,
and Natural Wide modes. The Native mode looked the best since full 1:1
mapping of the video input is maintained. However, having different screen modes
increases the flexibility of the display with the many different video sources
available. Finally, the Preset button recalls one of three predefined user
settings.
Several more advanced controls are provided for the user. Image processing parameters that are adjustable include Film Mode (2:2/3:2 Enable, NTSC 2:2 Pulldown, and 48 Hz), Noise Reduction (Off, Auto, or Manual), Cross Color Suppression, 2:2 pulldown, Color Space (YUV or RGB), Gamma (CRT, Film, Video, Bright Room 1, Bright Room 2, or PC), Color Temperature (6500K, 8200K or 9300K) and Video Standard (Auto, NTSC, PAL or SECAM). Phase and position controls are also included in these menu items. Under the Service menu, the user can select Factory Reset that restores all setting except the lamp hours to their default state. Using the Test Pattern the user can display a selected test pattern using the Blank button. The Blue Only mode turns off the red and green inputs to allow color balance adjustments. ADC Calibration sets the ADC levels to improve color accuracy.
Aspect
Ratios
The 7205 has five aspect ratio control modes. The Native
mode completely bypasses the internal scaler for true 1:1 pixel mapping. This
mode is ideal when an outboard scaler is used and set to output 720p to match
the display's native resolution. The 16:9 mode is intended for source material
that is "16:9 enhanced" or "enhanced for widescreen TVs" such
as most of today's DVDs. The 4:3 mode places the video content in the center
of the 16:9 screen resulting in black bars on the sides of the display. This will
preserve the proper aspect ratio of 4:3 content on this 16:9 native display. Since
this is a DLP product there is no need to worry about uneven screen wear. The
Letterbox mode is intended for those DVDs that come in a letterbox format.
Unfortunately some of the early DVDs assumed users had a 4:3 display and conveniently
displayed the image with the proper aspect ratio (top and bottom bars). This created
a problem when the same material was now displayed on a 16:9 screen such as the
ScreenPlay® 7205. The Letterbox mode expands the image to fill the
screen, but the downside to this format is the vertical resolution is decreased
from the source due to the letterbox DVD format. This is why all respectable DVDs
are now "16:9 enhanced" or "Enhanced for Widescreen TVs",
which is the same.
The Natural Wide mode is a great format for watching 4:3 source material on a 16:9 screen. Instead of side black bars the image is only stretched on the sides preserving the center two-thirds of the picture. This results in a much more natural looking picture. At least until the camera pans and you see things stretch on the sides.
Color
Tracking
We calibrated the DVI input using a Sencore VP403 HDTV video
generator running in the native 720p mode. One of the nice enhancements made to
the new SP7205 is the improved black level and enormous amount of light. We set
the black level using the PLUGE pattern and checked the stair step levels to ensure
we had properly adjusted the display. Using the menu settings we selected the
6500°K color temperature and measured the out-of-the-box color accuracy. Our
review unit had a good 500 hours on the bulb, so it was well broken-in. Using
our Sencore CP5000 All-Display Color Analyzer, we measured the color temperature
in 10 IRE increments starting with 20% IRE. The pre-calibrated color temperature
was very good and tracked 6500°K pretty well across all measured IRE levels
except at the lower levels where it moved close to 7000°K. Using the advanced
menu controls we adjusted the Gain and Bias to fine tune the color
tracking and the low levels. The result was slightly better than what we started
with.
Display
Primaries
We
also measured the primary colors produced by the SP7205 on our 100" Stewart
FireHawk using the GretagMacbeth Eye-One Pro Spectrophotometer along with the
Milori ColorFacts software. The CIE chart shows where the ideal primaries are
located with the smaller three points with the darker lines joining them. The
measured primary colors are marked by the red, green and blue markers connected
together with the white triangle. Only colors inside this triangle can be created
by the display. Note that the red and blue primaries are almost dead-nuts perfect
and green is slightly shifted towards yellow. The results here were actually very
good compared with some other projectors we have seen. If green was a little more
accurate it would be close to perfect. Regardless, colors were well saturated
and flesh tones looked very natural on the screen.
The light output of the SP7205 can be overly bright in the high power mode, so unless this is completely necessary (large screen or ambient light) we would recommend running it in the low-power mode. This also increases the lamp life by 50% to 3000 hours as compared to the 2000 hour life in the high power mode. Even in the low power mode, blacks were not completely black (not uncommon with DLP technology in general) in our dark theater room.
Faroudja
Processing
The SP7205 continues to use Faroudja DCDi™ deinterlacing
technology using the latest FLI2310™ chip. Recognized as a leader in advanced
video processing, Faroudja continues to be the "processor of choice"
in today's high-end home theater projector market. The per-pixel motion adaptive
deinterlacing used on 3:2 and 2:2 material results in smooth images without jaggies
and other objectionable processing artifacts. In addition, the SP7205 has a 48Hz
film mode that displays content originating from 24 frames/second film at exactly
twice the rate, eliminating image "stutter" that is commonly seen when
film is displayed at 60 Hz.
Performance
We started out with high definition content from our D-VHS tape collection. We
watched the HD-Net recordings of War in Afganistan, Over Ireland,
and Bikini Destinations in 1080i from our JVC HM-DH30000U D-VHS VCR. The
picture was stunning and truly reference quality material on the ScreenPlay®
7205. Skin tones were accurate and looked very natural on the screen. We also
watched a variety of D-VHS D-Theater movies on the JVC including The Fast and
the Furious, Evolution and The Mummy. The high bandwidth capability
of these movies are excellent with none of the macro-blocking seen on over-the
air systems. Some movies had a bit of low level video noise which seems to be
inherent in the telecine process when going to digital tape. This wasn't as noticeable
on the HD-Net tapes. Next we moved to over-the-air high definition content and
watched several episodes of The Tonight Show, Las Vegas, and a few
of KCET's HD shows. They all displayed excellent resolution with occasional compression
artifacts (macro-blocking) showing up during fast motion due to over-the-air limitations.
All of these test were done with the DVI interface. The advantage of using the
DVI interface is that there is no need to convert the signal to the analog domain.
The result is not only a decrease in low level video noise, but signal bandwidth
can be maintained as long as the data link is solid. The ScreenPlay® 7205
converted all of our 1080i source material to the native 720p with no objectionable
artifacts.
We also tested the analog video interface using an HTPC packed with a MIT MDP-100 ATSC tuner card for PVR functions. The quality was actually very good with a slight softening of the image due to a long cable run to the projector. Even so, the picture quality was impressive and didn't seem to cause any degradation when we moved to DVD content. Our material came from two different sources. Interlaced video was played from our Sony DVP-NS900V DVD/SACD player. This required the projector to perform the deinterlacing as well as scaling on the video. Film-based content benefited from the 48 Hz frame rate conversion and resulted in virtually no stutter as cameras panned. The introduction scene in Star Trek's Insurrection resulted in excellent deinterlacing performance with minimal jaggies. The house tops and the bridge rail are particularly difficult to handle, but the ScreenPlay® 7205 did an excellent job here.
Progressive DVD video came from our Kenwood DV-5900M Sovereign changer that uses an older generation of Faroudja DCDi™ (FLI2200 and FLI 2220) chips. The scaling was still performed by the ScreenPlay® 7205 and the picture looked wonderful. The hair on Sulley's fur in Monster's Inc. revealed subtle detail and beautifully saturated colors on the screen. Dark scenes had good shadow detail while still maintaining good black levels. Without a neutral density filter on the ScreenPlay® 7205, you may have difficulty in obtaining a deep black level as we did. Scaling of both 480i and 480p material looked excellent on this projector.
Conclusion
The new InFocus ScreenPlay® 7205 is a nice improvement on an already impressive
ScreenPlay® 7200 design with better contrast, higher light output, smoother
images and more accurate colors. The projector is capable of producing a beautiful
high definition picture with an enormous amount of light output. The threaded
Carl Zeiss lens assembly makes it easy to attach a neutral density lens to tame
the light output for smaller screens. This will also help deepen the black levels.
This HD2+ projector has some of the best video processing available with the inclusion
of Faroudja's latest DCDi™ deinterlacing (FLI2310™) chip. Fan noise
could be an issue for some who sit close to the projector, so room layout will
be important. The user interface is full-featured and simple to follow. The overall
design and implementation of this HD2+ projector is excellent and when mated with
a quality screen the picture will leave a smile on your face.
- Kevin Nakano