Although InFocus lists the DLP-based IN8606HD ($899 street) on its website as a home theater projector—and, indeed, you can use it as one—it's better thought of primarily as a home entertainment projector. It's bright enough to use with the lights on, and it offers a built-in speaker with high enough volume and good enough sound quality to make it useful. It also offers HDMI 1.4a support, for 1080p 3D with video sources like Blu-ray players, and a 1.5x zoom lens, all of which helps make it a potentially good fit for a family room or living room.

The line between home theater and home entertainment projectors is more than a little fuzzy. Many projectors, including the IN8606HD, the Editors' Choice Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 2030, and the more expensive Editors' Choice Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 3020e can serve in either role. In general, however, a home-theater installation implies theater-dark lighting, with a projector that isn't too bright for the screen size, and a separate high-quality sound system, so the projector doesn't need one.

Home entertainment implies a projector that can substitute for a TV in a family room. It has to be bright enough to stand up to ambient light and also offer its own built-in sound system. For the IN8606HD, both its 2,500-lumen rating and 10-watt speaker argue for it's being more of a home entertainment projector.

Basics and Setup

The rule of thumb for theater-dark lighting is that you should aim at having a screen brightness of 16 foot-lamberts (fL). With 2,500 lumens and a 1.0 gain screen at 1080p's 16:9 aspect ratio, that works out to a screen size of about 230 inches diagonally (200 inches wide).

You can lower the brightness level for the IN8606HD, and make it appropriate for smaller screen sizes, by switching to the lamp's eco mode, using one of the projector's lower brightness presets, or both. But it makes more sense to take advantage of the high brightness level to use the projector in a room with the lights on. With ambient light, 2500 lumens would be suitable for a more typical size screen for home use. In my tests, the projector worked nicely in a bright family room when I paired it with a Severtson GP169923D, a 92-inch diagonal, high-gain screen.

The IN8606HD measures a compact 4.8 by 11.2 by 10.3 inches (HWD), and it weighs only 6.9 pounds. If you don't have a place to install it permanently, that makes it easy to store away when you're not using it or carry from one spot to another.

Setup is standard, with a 1.5x manual zoom offering better than typical flexibility for how far you can put the projector from the screen to get a given image size. Also highly welcome is the generous supply of connectors for image sources on the back panel. The choices include two HDMI ports, S-video, a set of three RCA connectors for component video, and the usual VGA and composite video ports. Both HDMI ports support all of the 1.4a formats for 1080p 3D with video sources like Blu-ray players, cable and FIOS boxes, and the like. Both the VGA and HDMI ports also support 720p, 120Hz 3D with a PC equipped with an nVidia 3D graphics card.

2D Image Quality and Rainbows

The IN8606HD's 2D image quality is a little short of excellent, but not by much. I saw a slight hint of posterization (shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually) in my tests but only in one clip that tends to cause the problem. Beyond that, the projector did a good job with shadow detail (details based on shading in dark areas), skin tones, and color quality.

More than with most projectors, you may have to try the various preset display modes to find the one you like best. I picked User mode as the best choice, as opposed to, say, Movie mode, which is unusual. With most projectors, User mode starts out as identical to one of the predefined modes until you make changes. With the IN8606HD as I tested it, the User mode's default settings were clearly different from any of the other modes. More important, it offered the best image quality for video.

InFocus says that since sending me the projector for testing, it has updated the firmware to change some of the predefined mode settings. That means your experience may be different. If you get one of the early projectors with the firmware as I tested it, you can get the firmware update from InFocus.

As with virtually all single-chip DLP projectors, rainbow artifacts, with light areas breaking up into little red-green-blue rainbows, can be an issue. I saw them less often with the IN8606HD than with many DLP projectors I've tested, but often enough that anyone who's sees them easily will almost certainly notice them.

Depending on how easily you—or anyone you watch with—sees rainbow artifacts, and how bothersome you find them, you may or may not consider them a problem. I found them tolerable for long sessions for most of the video I tested with, but far too obvious for comfortable viewing with one black and white clip in our tests.

3D and Other Issues

As with most 3D projectors, the IN8606HD doesn't come with 3D glasses. According to InFocus, it supports both 144Hz DLP-Link glasses and IR glasses, with an IR port for an emitter available on the projector. You can buy DLP-link glasses from InFocus or elsewhere. (InFocus sells Xpand glasses for $99 each.) The company doesn't sell an emitter or IR glasses, but says the projector should work with any Vesa-compatible models.

For my tests, I used 144Hz DLP-link glasses. Image quality was generally the same for 3D as for 2D for those aspects of quality that both modes share. Beyond that, I didn't see any crosstalk, but I saw some mild 3D-related motion artifacts in scenes that tend to cause the problem.

As I've already suggested, the 10-watt mono speaker in the IN8606HD delivers good enough sound quality to be useful and enough volume to fill a family room. If you want better audio, however, you can also plug in an external sound system.

One potential annoyance you should be aware of is that there aren't any controls on the projector except a power button. InFocus points out that the projector supports Crestron and AMX control systems. However, if you don't use one of these systems, and you misplace the remote, which is about the size of a credit card, you can't change any settings—not even the volume or image source—until you find it or buy a replacement for $39.99 (direct).

If you see rainbow artifacts easily and find them bothersome, or are concerned that someone you invite over to watch with might have that problem, you're best advised to stay away from this projector, as well as most of its DLP-based competition. LCD-based projectors like the Editors' Choice Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 2030, which are guaranteed not to show rainbow artifacts, will be a much better choice.

If rainbow artifacts aren't an issue for you, however, the InFocus IN8606HD offers a lot to like, including near excellent image quality, support for 3D, and high enough brightness to stand up to ambient light. If you're thinking about getting an 80- or 90-inch TV, the InFocus IN8606HD can give you a similarly large image or larger, without costing anywhere near as much.