IN82 User Memory Settings

Posted on October 4, 2007 by Art Feierman

The IN82 projector offers three Presets. These are user savable settings. On the Presets submenu, you can save your settings to any of the three. There is also a Presets off option. If you have your projector professionably calibrated, then the additional ISF Day, and ISF Night settings also appear. One minor comment. Let's say you setup a preset customized for your movie watching. If you go into other controls, such as brightness, and then look back to the preset menu, you'll see that it is back to "presets off". In other words it will only tell you you are in a particular preset, if you have not made further changes.

IN82 Projector - Remote Control

This is a classic InFocus remote control, and is probably the same exact one as several other InFocus projectors use.

InFocus has always pushed "simplicity" so, while this projector may have as many total menu features as any other, InFocus keeps their remotes fairly simple, with far less buttons. In fact, there are fourteen buttons in all, whereas most projectors' remotes have 20 - 40 buttons. The remote is backlit with blue LED's (very pretty), and the backlight is turned on by a conveniently located trigger on the bottom of the remote.

Click to enlarge. SO close

From the top: The Power button. Once to power on, press once to power off. (Pressing it twice, will cancel power off.) Next comes the Menu navigation area.

Unlike the competition, InFocus sticks with a four button system, compared to six or seven button systems. The left button launches (or cancels the menu system). The Up and Down arrows provide navigation, and the Select button the right, selects items or takes you to the sub-menu you have highlighted. To move back up from sub-menus toward the main menus, you use the Up/Down buttons to select the first item on any menu "Previous", then hit select, and you move back up one level. I personally prefer menu navigation systems with four arrow keys, but, once you get used to the InFocus way, it works just fine. It's just that you have to get to that Previous item each time you change menus, and that can be multiple clicks. You can, though hit the Menu button, which will close all menus and let you start fresh, if that's faster.

Back to the remote. Below the menu navigation is a row of three buttons. Resize lets you toggle between the various aspect ratios, Overscan lets you engage overscan, with the option of either crop or zoom, and there is the Source button which opens the Source select menu.

The next row has the Custom button I mentioned previously, figure out what feature you want to access regularly and program that in to this button. Auto Image is the usual auto setup, in case the projector doesn't do a great job automatically - this relates mostly to computer signals. Then there's the Presets button.

Click Image to Enlarge

Finally, bottom row, 1, 2, 3, the three sources you program in from the menus, for quick access without going through the menu. You might select #1 to be Your Blu-ray player coming in from the HDMI port, and #2 your cable or satellite box, coming in on the M1-DVI, connection, etc.

IN82 Lens Throw, Lens Shift, and Lamp Life

Lens throw: For a 100" 16:9 diagonal screen; measured from the front of the lens, the screen can be as close as 13.5 feet, and as far back as 16.2 feet. As noted earlier, the zoom and focus are manual. That's a 20% difference between closest and furthest placement (a 1.2:1 zoom lens ratio).

The IN82 has no lens shift (sadly), but then, neither do competing DLP projectors from Optoma, and some others. Top end Sharp and BenQ 1080p home theater projectors do. Without lens shift, shelf mounting is rarely practical, so ceiling mounting is the norm for permanent setups. Of course, even with lens shift, such as the BenQ W10000, all these DLP projectors have very limited zoom lens throws, and as such can only be placed far enough back to sit on a shelf in a small number of rooms, unless you have a lot of flexibility in terms of screen size, and your willingness to adjust to larger or smaller screens just so you can shelf mount.

The IN82, some will be glad to know, has the support built in, for an optional anamorphic lens.

The Lamp is rated at 2000 hours at full power, and 2500 in low power mode. To change out the lamp, the ceiling mount has to be removed. Definitely a nusiance, but if your dealer is doing it for you, who cares.

In this price range, most projectors position the lamp door out of the way of the ceiling mount.