You can power up, from the remote, or the control panel. Once you have a video source on the screen, I suggest you go into the Image and Feature menu's and play with the Cinema, Color Matrix, and Color Temperture controls to get a feel of the range of adjustments. You've got dynamic settings as well as video and theater, the dynamic will really help out if you are fighting a lot of ambient light, and unlike many projectors dynamic settings, this one doesn't seem to particularly sacrifice color accuracy.