InFocus ScreenPlay SP8600 Home Theater Projector

October 24, 2011 by

At the price that the InFocus SP8600 Home Theater Projector is being sold for, it is normal to have doubts if this is going to be a good projector. However once you look further, you will find that the InFocus SP8600 is a fully featured DLP projector and that it has a DarkChip 3 (DC3) in the mix. With this in mind, we dig in deeper to see if the projector can be a front runner albeit being the least expensive 1080p projector manufactured by InFocus.

Design
Measuring in a 13.2 x 4 x 10 inches and tipping the scales at just 3.5kg, the InFocus SP8600 can be stored away with relative ease as it is small enough to fit in your shelf. However it does exude a certain plasticky feeling but well built in our opinion. You might also add that isn’t the prettiest projector out there either with its boxy and matt-black appearance. There is also a long list of connectivity options provided with the InFocus Screenplay SP8600 Home Theater Projector. For instance there are input options like VGA and a pair of HDMI ports and you can switch between these modes with the click of a remote button. Meanwhile it also comes with a 12V trigger output and the RS-232C that can be used to control the projector from your laptop or computer. It also comes in with a built-in speaker system which makers it useful in rough and ready environments. The remote control for the InFocus SP8600 could have been better though as it is rather tiny and the buttons on them feel pretty cheap. It also does not come with backlit buttons which means you are going to be prone to making errors while watching a movie in a darkened room, something you really don’t want to be doing.

Features

The InFocus Screenplay SP8600 has a brightness rating of 1800 lumens. This means more than average brightness for projectors in the same price region and this added brightness also allows you to watch your daytime TV without having to turn your room into a dungeon. The onscreen menus also come with an array of option to play around with. One of the features we liked was the one where we could  store up to three of our favorite picture settings other than the preset settings of bright, normal and movie which means you don’t have to adjust the settings every time. When it comes to fine tuning, the InFocus SP8600 Home Theater Projector allows you to change color temperature as well as play with gamma settings. What’s more, the projector also lets you tweak the hue, saturation and gain values for not only the primary colors, but also secondary colors like cyan, magenta and yellow.

There is one nagging issue though, that is the rainbow effect. This caused the level of colored artefacts following moving objects to be high and rather distracting. However, the InFocus ScreenPlay SP8600 Projector has a three-speed, six segment (RYGCMB) color wheel which can help with the rainbow effect. The optical zoom on this projector however is limited at just 1.2x. Nevertheless, it has a low running noise of 26dB and an amazing maximum lamp life of 4000 hours are better than many other projectors in this price range.

Setting up the InFocus ScreenPlay SP8600 Home Theater Projector
Setting up the projector like most other projectors is really an easy task. However, as expected from a projector of this price range, the InFocus SP8600 does not boast optical lens shift or motorized lens adjustments. It has also got a narrow zoom range and what all these means is that positioning of your projector is going to be the most important step in setting up this projector. Otherwise, you have to count on keystone correction to straighten the sides of your picture. Effectively what that would mean is that you will be losing picture quality.

Video Quality
As we had mentioned earlier, the DC3 chipset that came together with the InFocus ScreenPlay SP8600 did a great job. It produced some detailed reproduction of the True Grit film in Blu-ray as you can see the textures in the background wallpapers and even every strand of hair was precisely and excellently rendered. The contrast levels that you get from this projector were amazing too. As we had mentioned, the 1800 lumen brightness rating produced some good brightness and thanks to that the reproduction of white and other bright colors were good. What impressed us even more was the fact that the InFocus SP8600 Home Theater Projector also could handle black levels reasonably well providing believable and natural looking dark scenes which as a matter of fact even some of the more expensive home theater projectors out there can’t do.

The InFocus SP8600 also was capable of dealing with motion as from our inspection there was no serious motion blur or judder issues. Remember that rainbow noise we mentioned previously, we do not come across it unless bright objects appeared against very dark backgrounds.  In most of the situations we are glad to say that we see very little of dot crawl noise or grain noise although we must admit it’s not entirely suppressed.

Pros and Cons
The InFocus ScreenPlay SP8600 Home Theater Projector offers a lot of greatness for an incredibly low price. Of course there are many other budget 1080p projectors in the market but not many can provide life-like moving images and great resolution like this one. It also provides amazing brightness and solid contrast levels. Moreover it is able to give accurate and well saturated color that result in pictures with good depth and clarity. The InFocus SP8600 also gives an amazing degree of calibration flexibility. The long life of the lamp also means you won’t be incurred with additional costs for a long time.

There are some negatives though like some rainbow effect although not very serious. There is also no vertical image shift with the InFocus ScreenPlay SP8600 as is expected of any projector in this price range. There is also a lack in shadow detail.  The tiny remote control with no back lights makes it tough to be used in dark rooms.

Conclusion
Other than the few negatives that we were duty bound to share with you, the InFocus SP8600 Home Theater Projector is a brilliant addition to the InFocus line up with an amazing price tag. If you are out there to get a home theater projector this one is incredible and will be worth you hard earned cash.