InFocus ScreenPlay 777 Home Theater Projector-Menus

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Art Feierman

The InFocus 777 offers up some no frills looking menus, however the organization is very good, and with a couple of exceptions I will dwell upon later, the menus seem to be pretty comprehensive.

We'll start with the small Main Menu, and review the multiple layers in the most important menus.

The Picture Menu provides you with most of the menu controls that affect the overall picture quality, while settings primarily deals with more physical attributes.

I should note here, that the Contrast of 53 and Brightness of 44 settings you see here are the result of the calibration. (Defaults are 50 and 50.)

This InFocus supports 3 User settings.

The Gamma submenu gives a choice of 6 preset gamma curves optimized for the type of source and content you are viewing.

InFocus ScreenPlay 777 - Menus

Main Menu

Picture

Presets

Gamma

Advanced

Color Control

Color Temperature

Settings

Service

If you don't find enough controls to play with, there's always the Advanced Menu, which is where you will find the color controls (among others) that one adjusts while calibrating.

The actual color menu with RGB gain and offsets is the color control submenu, shown above, and selecting it shows the individual color gain and offsets (below).

There is also the color temperature menu that offers four presets. Note, when I first set the projector for 6500K, that's when I was getting measurements with noticeably higher temperatures:

20 IRE produced 6589K
30 IRE produced 6722K
80 IRE produced 6831K
100 IRE produced 6881K

Other menus, include the Settings Menu:

and it's submenu - Service: On the image of the Service menu, you can see the small box on the right where you would put the necessary code to access the service menu.

Enough of menus, there are a number of additional submenus I could have provided images for, but these cover the bulk of the ones you might use, unless you are a professional calibrator, in which case you don't need my screen shots, regardless.

User Memory Settings

There are three User Memory settings. I did not work with them but the manual explains that they are device dependent. So, you effectively have one for at least each different input, and beyond that, for each device being fed though that input, that the projector can tell apart. That is important because many of us only have one cable, coming from an AV receiver, or perhaps an HTPC. You could for example, for each device have one memory setting for your fully darkened room, another for some ambient light, and a thired for whatever you come up with.

Remote Control

The InFocus ScreenPlay 777 remote control is a perfectly reasonable remote control. It is backlit, and has the basic functionality needed. I found the navigating controls (at the top) to be unusual, with menu on the left, an up and down in the center and enter, on the right. This forces InFocus to rely on a menu item (on all menus) called previous - to move back up one menu level.

As I said, it took some getting used to, but, that comment from someone working with several different remote controls every month. For an owner, I'm sure that the remote will become second nature, rather quickly.

The real point, is that I believe that the typical purchaser of a $15,000 projector is not going to settle for having 4-7 remotes in operation to control their system (projector, DVD, cable/satellite, receiver as a minimum), rather you would buy some form of programmable or learning remote system that allows you to control the whole system and probably the room from a single remote. If you are non-technical, your dealer would most likely recommend such a remote system and program it for you as part of your system price, and if you like to play with the gear yourself, almost certainly you'll want a fancy remote.

So, if I'm right, if you get yourself a 777 (a truly great idea), you probably won't be using the provided remote for long.

For those that do use the InFocus remote control: The Power button also works differently than most projectors. Most require you hit the power button twice to shut off, to prevent accidently turning the projector off. The 777, instead is a single press, but if you don't intend to power down you can hit another key to abort. Moving beyond the top buttons, you'll find a resize for adjusting aspect ratio, direct up/down buttons for brightness and contrast, and separate buttons for each source.

There is also a direct access to the overscan feature, an auto image for grabbing the image, a blank screen, and finally direct access to the Preset user settings.

The backlite button is on the right hand side of the remote.