Flat-panel televisions may look as sexy as Catherine Zeta-Jones in an Oscar-night gown, but you have to be Michael Douglas to afford either one. Are the rest of us doomed to watch NBC’s The Biggest Loser on plump rear-projection televisions that consume massive chunks of living room space? Not if RCA and InFocus have anything to say about it. Through the use of an image-folding technology created by InFocus, RCA has slimmed the cabinet of its latest DLP rear-projection TVs down to plasma-like proportions. But did the TVs lose anything besides their girth in the process?

InFocus’ proprietary implementation of Texas Instruments’ DLP video projection technology reduces the cabinet depth of RCA’s Scenium Profiles HD61THW263 61-inch TV to 7 inches. The TV comes with a sturdy floor stand, and RCA offers a mount to hang it on a wall. The one major aesthetic difference between the HD61THW263 and a plasma TV is that the RCA’s cabinet extends several inches below the screen; the extra cabinet space is needed to house the rear-projection DLP light engine. Sitting on the floor, the TV appears thin and unobtrusive. Mounted to a wall, though, it may look a bit bulky.

RCA did not discard features in order to slim down the cabinet. A CableCard slot and a 1280 by 720 pixel DLP chip make the TV ready for digital cable—install the card, and you can view digital cable programming, including HDTV, without a cable box. You can also feed the TV’s internal digital TV tuner with the signal from an off-air antenna to receive free, over-the-air digital and high-definition TV signals. The tuner in our Scenium pulls in 16 of the 20 Los Angeles digital stations, including most of the major networks. Two FireWire (IEEE 1394) ports can route the digital signal to an external D-VHS deck or a high-definition digital video recorder (like RCA’s DVR2160) for recording. An HDMI input lets you connect a high-end digital TV tuner or a DVD player.There is no RGB or VGA port, so if you want to hook up your computer to this set, it must have a DVI or HDMI output. However, you may not need to bother because the HD61THW263 has an Ethernet port, a built-in web browser, and a wireless keyboard, so you can surf the Internet from the comfort of your living room couch.

Although the HD61THW263 can be attached to a wall using an optional mount, RCA provides a heavy, sturdy floor stand that expands the TV’s slim footprint by only a few inches. (Click image to enlarge)

The extensive on-screen menu makes setting up the TV for all these signals and sources simple. Nearly every control has an on-screen description of its function. Granted, there are probably too many adjustments for the average user, but they will help your installer get a good picture from the display.

The TV looks excellent with any source material. Colors are vibrant and rich, thanks to an accurate color decoder and reasonably accurate primary red, green, and blue filter colors. Satu-rated reds and greens have a natural look compared with most DLP TVs, which otherwise skew green toward lime and red toward orange. The factory-adjusted gray scale, or color balance, is slightly tinted toward blue, but not objectionably so.

Dark scenes have a good, deep black level that does not obscure detail. This is another area where most competing DLP TVs do not perform as well; they tend to obscure the darker parts of shadows. Brighter scenes look equally good. The image has punch and contrast without losing details in white clouds or shirt collars. Gradations from dark to light are as smooth as they should be. The result is a bright picture with excellent depth and dimension, and deep, dark blacks.The TV does a good job of upconverting standard video signals to the screen’s high-definition resolution. The set’s on-screen menu offers two modes, “on” and “advanced,” that adapt it to look best with film-based or video-based material. Use the “on” setting; the advanced mode does not adequately analyze the picture and introduces undesirable artifacts. The set’s internal video processor does add noticeable edge enhancement, which sharpens the picture but creates false edges around objects. A setting in the on-screen menu can turn off the edge enhancement, but it softens the picture in the process.

InFocus’ clever technology does exact a price: There is a slight bowing near the top of the picture. This is sometimes visible at the edge of the black bars used to letterbox widescreen images, but is not noticeable with regular video material. Also, because of the projector’s depth, or lack thereof, you can sometimes see the light path from the internal projection lens to the screen in dark scenes that have a few bright spots. This problem is hardly noticeable most of the time, though. These flaws are a fair trade-off for the space you save because of the TV’s slim cabinet.

I can easily recommend this TV based on the quality of the picture alone. Add in the fact that it offers state-of-the-art features and a wonderfully slim design, and you have an easy purchasing decision.DESCRIPTION
61-inch DLP-based rear-projection TV with digital CableCard compatibility and built-in analog and digital TV tuners. Can sit on the floor or be wall-mounted

DISPLAY CAPABILITIES
Native 16:9 widescreen display. Accepts 720-line progressive and 1080-line interlaced HDTV, and 480-line progressive and interlaced signals

CONNECTIONS
Video: HDMI digital video input, 2 component video inputs, 2 combination S-video/composite video inputs, 2 RF inputs for antennas, 1 composite video output, 2 FireWire (IEEE1394) input/outputs
Audio: 1 coaxial digital audio output, 1 optical digital audio output, 2 stereo analog audio inputs, 1 stereo analog audio output
other: 1 Ethernet connection

DIMENSIONS/RESOLUTION
DIMENSIONS: 46.7 x 62.2 x 6.9 inches
(hwd)
RESOLUTION: 1280 x 720 pixels

PRICE/CONTACT
PRICE: $6,999
CONTACT: 580.634.0151, www.rca.com