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Other features of note, meanwhile, include a set of thematic gamma presets to suit different types of source, huge amounts of colour fine-tuning, and the facility to remove overscanning from the projector's presentation of the picture if you're wanting to watch a full HD source in its purest form.

By the way, if any of this is starting to sound a bit complicated to you, fear not; impressively, for such an affordable projector, the IN81 has all the facilities you need to have it professionally calibrated to suit your specific room conditions by a qualified Imaging Science Foundation engineer.

At this point it's probably worth looking for what exactly sets the IN81 apart from its costlier brother, the IN82. Basically, the key differences lie in two areas: the chipset at the projectors' hearts, and the image's maximum brightness.

Regarding the chipset, while the IN82 had Texas Instruments' top of the class DarkChip3 chipset, the IN81 only has the slightly older, less contrast-friendly DarkChip2 chip. As a result, the IN81 ‘only' claims, as we've seen, a still very respectable 3,000:1 native contrast ratio versus 4,000:1 for the IN82. Or with the projector's iris adjustments called into play, the IN81's claimed contrast ratio rises to 10,000:1 versus 12,000:1 for the IN82.

It's also possible that the difference in chipset will deliver slightly less clean motion handling on the IN81, on account of the DarkChip2 system not responding quite as quickly as the DarkChip3 one.

As for the brightness difference, that finds the IN81's ANSI Lumens rating coming in at 1,400 versus 1,500 on the IN82.

This latter difference, we'll grant you, doesn't sound like an awful lot on paper. But there's no getting round the fact that in practice, the IN81's images do actually appear less bright than the IN82's. This means they definitely lack a little of the sparkle and lustre of the more expensive model, and immediately make the IN82 the machine of choice if your budget can stretch to it.

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