One of the most famous screen kisses in movie history takes place in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious. Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant lock lips while the camera encircles them. Watch this rarefied romantic moment on a small screen and you might admire the ingenuity behind the camera move. But watch it on a big screen — say, about nine and a half feet wide — and this passage of cinematic virtuosity takes on a shattering, dizzying, heart-stopping emotional impact.

Beautiful cinema moments are as breathakingly big as their directors intended.

That in a nutshell is what makes a DLP front-projector like the InFocus ScreenPlay 5700 worth owning. With a picture that can be up to 65 inches high by 116 inches wide, in 16:9 widescreen proportions, it is powerful enough to suspend disbelief and take you into another world.

OK, the 5700 does not support the full resolution of high-definition television. The DLP chip that drives it, Texas Instruments' Matterhorn, has resolution of 1024 by 576 dotted pixels, which is more than a match for DVD's 720 by 480, but not quite high enough for HDTV's minimum of 1280 by 720. Still, many hardcore movie lovers on a budget are happy to trade off some resolution for more emotional punch. The Matterhorn does downconvert HDTV to its own native resolution, and delivers as good a picture with DVD as any of the several DLP projectors I've reviewed.

Thanks to DLP technology, getting a big picture doesn't mean acquiring a doghouse-sized projector along with it. The 5700 weighs just nine pounds, allowing easy ceiling or wall mounting, and is smaller than a briefcase — there's even a handle on the front panel! Enabling this miracle of miniaturization is an imaging chip covered with tiny micro-mirrors that act as light valves to produce each pixel, or picture element.

With a multitude of jacks, the 5700 can accommodate plenty of video sources.

The 5700 is a one-chip projector and its underlying DLP chip handles all three of video's colors (red, green, blue) simultaneously. To separate the colors, a color wheel flashes each one sequentially at a speed greater than most eyes can detect. Some color wheels produce a much-complained-of "rainbow effect," but the 5700 is less subject to this effect thanks to its six-segment wheel, which rapidly flashes each color twice.

On the back panel are enough jacks to accommodate a whole bunch of video sources. The digital interfaces include DVI (with HDCP copyright protection), D5 for use with high end DVD players from Japan, VESA (for computer input), and various analog video ins. The latter include component video (two), S-video (two), and composite video (one). To integrate the projector into a custom home theater interface, other jacks support an infrared remote control and two 12-volt triggers to drop a retractable screen and adjust curtains that alter screen shape.

Setting up the 5700 is relatively easy. If you opt for a space-saving ceiling mount, you might want to have a custom installer do the job, to ensure perfect screen geometry. But if you're not too fussy, you might just plop the projector on a table and go. I used a low wall mount to aim the projector at my 40- by 72-inch reference screen, the Stewart FireHawk, which is grey-tinted to enhance reproduction of dark colors with DLP- or LCD-based projectors.

The small, easily portable 5700 can be placed on a table as well as wall- or ceiling-mounted.

Speaking of which, first-generation DLP projectors had a problem reproducing true black, defined as the absence of light. Metallic spaces between the micro-mirrors would reflect stray light, forcing the projector to render black as a charcoal grey. The Matterhorn chip improves black-level performance by coating the spaces between mirrors with a dark light-absorbing material.

An almost blinding light-output capability — a strength of most DLP projectors including this one — also subjectively enhances contrast by providing a wide ratio between the brightest and darkest areas of the picture. The 5700's contrast ratio is an eye-popping 1400:1. You'll need only a fraction of that potential for movie viewing in a properly darkened room, but the extra brightness helps keep the screen from washing out during casual daytime viewing, when lighting can't be fully controlled.

All that shading and shining would be in vain if the projector's color palette were not wide and correctly adjusted. Here, arguably, is the 5700's second strongest suit after overwhelming image size: its ability to reproduce accurate color.

That became an asset in a movie like Heaven, where the pale complexions of Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi formed an isolating counterpoint to the dark tanned complexions of the Italian actors in other roles. Besides getting the flesh tones right, the 5700 also showed off its ability to deliver a succession of richly saturated colors in a breathtaking scene that silhouetted the two outlaws atop a hill, as they took shelter under a tree. A time-lapse effect swiftly changed the hue of the sky from daylight to sunset. The shifting colors felt like an apocalypse.

These are the two questions to ask about color in video display: Can it display an accurate grey scale, with a color temperature of 6500 degrees Kelvin, which corresponds to daylight, and conforms with television standards? Check. That enabled the 5700 to complement the Scottish drama Sixteen with a backdrop of perfect Glasgow grey. And is the color decoder accurate enough to avoid emphasizing any of the three primary video colors — red, green, and blue? Check, as I confirmed using a test pattern and color filters.

Another major advantage is Faroudja® video processing. Applied to analog and standard-definition source material, Faroudja's DCDi circuit uses sophisticated and proprietary algorithms to smooth out jagged diagonals and remove artifacts produced by film-to-video transfers. Faroudja's TrueLife processing uses still more mathematical wizardry to enhance sharpness and detail in subtle ways that go beyond standard television controls. When you're watching a really big picture, Faroudja processing makes a big difference, and it cost InFocus some money to provide it.

That's how the InFocus ScreenPlay 5700 earns its pricetag. And you'll feel the difference whenever your screen heroes have a hot date.