 Great deal |
| Review Date: October 15, 2005 |
| Reviewer: J. Pawlowski, Allentown, NY United States |
I got mine on sale last year. What a bargain. Great pix, versitile, & super bright! We can watch it in the daytime it's so bright. I use it on the road for my show so it gets used & abused a lot. It's still running perfect on it's original bulb. When it's not on the road it's used as my primary widescreen TV at home.
This unit will not show full the resolution of true quality HDTV, but does an excellent job. Many HDTV signals have been downscaled, upscaled, dowscaled again, recompressed, & reprocessed so many times by the time it reaches your home, most of the channels aren't true HDTV quality anymore anyhow... esp. signals through cable & satellite. I guess the FCC hasn't passed any laws for HDTV quality yet.
The unit has more than enough resolution for ordinary DTV & DVDs.
For some reason, I don't get eye fatigue like I do watching other projectors a few hours. The factory presets aren't that good & seem to be for watching ordinary analog TV & VHS tapes. Fortunatly it comes with 3 user settable presets with a very wide array of settings & tweaks that make it a top quality performer.
I bought the component input adapter for it from Infocus. The quality of the adapter cable was poor & picked up plenty of RFI. Also after carefully unplugging it only a few times, one of the connectors fell right off the adapter. Poorly, cheaply designed adapter concidering most infocus products are specifically designed to be used on the road, set up & torn down easily & quickly all the time. The connecters for my other road equipment doesn't break after years of heavy use.
Fortunately for the road & at home the s-video connectors do an excellent job.
Do not EVER use the ordinary RCA-jack style composite signal jacks on a hi-end TV or projector. The signal won't be good enough. Any good TV will just make the poor signal quality more obvious.
The above reviewer must've got a bad unit or one that was banged around during shipping, or was dropped. These are durable units, but with too much banging around, you'll have problems the reviewer described. The grinding sound comes from the color wheel or blower fans being knocked out of alignment.
I also own their older lp-350 xga model & used a few of their other models. So far I'm very happy with all of them I've used.
Although my very old LP-350 still works like new, I have done some mods on it & the lens to increase the contrast ratio, brightness & bulb life. I'm surprised that if I can do it, that infocus doesn't offer a mod plan for them to do it for a price. They won't even sell specs & technical service data on their old machines. I guess they want you to pay an arm & leg for them to do repairs, or buy a new one.
I've had to fix a few infocus projectors out of warranty after they were banged around or just got well used & old... with no help or sevice data from infocus, even though it was requested.
Fortunately, DLP projectors have been around for a while now, so there are plenty of qualified techs familiar with them in just about every town who know how to fix, mod, & upgrade them at a fraction of the cost infocus will once they're out of warranty.
From what I read in the past, you're better off sending it to a local tech with experience with DLP machines for repairs rather than back to InFocus. They seem to do a better job cheaper, & know what they're doing. Infocus won't even to tell you where to get special tools needed to take them apart. I wonder if they know how to service them at all. It's one thing to build one, but another thing to troubleshoot & fix 'em.
I gave 5 stars for the product, not for the service, because I service all my own equipment so don't need them.
Don't take these things apart yourself people unless you know exactly what you're doing & experienced. You can ruin or destroy them if you're not very careful & knowledgable. |
Wow!
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| Review Date: September 25, 2006 |
| Reviewer: Madrok, |
For $500, you can get a 7 foot wide high quality image onto a DIY blackout screen.
You must darken the room, use the component connections and rout the audio to a separate receiver or stereo. It does take some savvy to get things right. You should also mount this to the ceiling. That cuts down on noticeability of the fan noise and means you can sit right underneath it, which is the best seat in the house. So, you need a 25 ft cable, and a ceiling mount ($150?). Although you can make that yourself.
Did I say wow, yet? The sharpness is very good, although you will see screen door if you sit too close and/or the image is too big. But I don't see screen door with the image 6 feet wide, with me 10 feet back. And you shouldn't be closer than that anyway.
You might be bothered by the rainbow effect, with B&W movies, sometimes. OTOH, I noticed it as soon as I got it, but it's never bothered me. You shouldn't be flickering your eyes back and forth fast when watching a movie anyway.
The best thing is the colors and blacks. The image has a soft quality that is great for movies, less good for sports. The difference between my home theater and the multiplex is that the Plex has an even bigger screen and the colors on it are a bit more saturated. But these front projectors offer the same type of experience as the real movies.
Don't bother connecting a ground cable signal to the projector via a VCR, the image is not good enough for the projector quality. Component connection is FAR better than composite.
I've had it for a year with no problems so far. |
An inexpensive way to get into HD Home Theater Projection
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| Review Date: January 20, 2008 |
| Reviewer: T. Anderson, Little Egg Harbor, NJ USA |
I purchased a used unit off ebay for 350.00 with less than 460 hours on the bulb. The unit is very easy to setup up. Movies are best viewed in dark room. These projectors were not intended to replace your regular TV set! Feeding a signal from an HD DVD player using an HD DVD results in an absolute beautiful viewing experience. Remember most HD DVD player will also upvert the quality of tradional DVD's so they will look better than normal as well. The best image will result from using the VGA to Component adaptor.... S Video and the old yellow, white and red imputs will result in an "OK" picture. Go for the best. Watch your HD DVD's or Blu Ray and/ subscribe to HD televion services and you will immediately noted how inferior traditional/standard cable and satellite images really are!
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bang for the money
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| Review Date: March 9, 2006 |
| Reviewer: Rajesh Rajasekaran, lincoln, NE United States |
| I bought the X1a after much researching during thanks giving weekend (...)and I also bought the 3 year protection plan for $129.99 . I am satisfied with the quality of video i am watching through the projector. I live in an apartment complex and its bright during the day when i have to make the room dark but evenings and night excellent quality. it doesnt start up right away sometimes and i have to turn it off and on few times but that doesnt bother me much. I know its not great projector but for the cost its awesome. also if i get any of the problems the other reviewers have stated then i will be covered by warranty for 1 year by infocus and the following 3 years by officemax. |
good for movie projection
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| Review Date: August 26, 2007 |
| Reviewer: Saintaholic, South |
| This projector is strong enough to use for in house movie projection. Only at night though. We've used it many hours and the first bulb has not burned out. |
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