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By Philip Wong, CNET Asia
May 12, 2008

For home theater buffs following InFocus' offerings, the Play Big IN83 is a logical progression for its recently released full-HD lineup. It all started with the IN81 and IN82, powered by Texas Instruments' DarkChip2 and 3 engines. These share identical design and features and are only slightly differentiated in performance. Now that the DarkChip4 is finally gaining momentum, there's no better time to roll out the latest IN83.

Design

E.T. phone home! For Steven Spielberg fans, the attention-grabbing design of this Play Big beamer brings back nostalgic memories of his classic sci-fi flick. Parts of the similarities are attributed to its unique styling, from the eye-like lenses to its smooth frontal and curvy silhouette. The detachable swivel stand is another simple yet clever touch and is brilliant for coffee tabletop setup. It also doubles as a platform to create enough clearance for the bottom intakes. These draw cool air for ventilation which is exhausted from the left grilles--not exactly an ideal spot but it does works well as a personal heater.

While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we were not particularly impressed by two omissions as a result of the facelift. To start off, going without a lens cover is a serious no-no in our books when it comes to dust accumulation. In the same light, "vaporizing" the almost standard onboard controls for a S$9,999 (US$7,352.21) flagship model just doesn’t make it anymore enticing, either. What you do get for your money is a status indicator panel for one-glance operational updates, as well as dual covers to camouflage the focus/zoom dials and input jacks, both mounted within recessed compartments.

Thanks to InFocus’ ingenuity, you will also get a handy touchlight integrated right into its remote controller, fired up by simply holding the backlighting button. The combination of soothing blue key illumination and matching black piano finish gives the infrared wane a polished look, though it could have been better if there were dedicated input buttons. To be fair, it does have automatic source detection and programming capability to ignore untapped inputs. That's besides a Custom key assignable to a variety of functions, such as toggling test patterns or freezing onscreen images.

The IN83’s intuitive software menu should poise little challenge for the layman or the experienced users. In fact, many settings have companion descriptive icons, while tech jargon is kept to the minimum. Selections-wise, there’re quite a handful to fiddle with for personalized visuals, from basic color saturation to manual iris for regulating light output and advanced grayscale cuts and gains. These can be permanently stored in three user presets and called up for any inputs. Missing, are standard picture modes factory-tuned to offset varying ambient lighting conditions.

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