Planar 7060 Home Theater Physical Tour

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Art Feierman

Planar 7060 Home Theater Physical Tour

Facing the Planar 7060, the zoom lens which as a minimal 1.16:1 zoom ratio, is found on the right. The outer ring controls focus, and the inner ring, the zoom. To fill a 100" diagonal 16:9 screen, he projector can be placed (measured to the front of the lens), as close as 13 feet, 2 inches or as far back as 15 feet, 3 inches.

In the center, at the bottom is a single drop down, adjustable foot, just below the release button. Also on the front, to the right of the lens is the 7060's infra-red sensor, for the remote control.

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Moving to the top of the Planar 7060, you will find a round control panel. Above (closer to the front) the control panel, is a single backlit power button. The control panel itself is fairly small, not much more than 2 inches in diameter. An Enter button is surrounded by four arrow keys. In addition there is an outer ring, that at the top has a curved bar for Source and at the bottom a similar curved bar for opening the Menus.

Interesting I should note, is that the Power button pressed once turns the projector on (standard). Pressing it whe on, however turns it off, bringing up a message to press again - to cancel power off. The standard protocol out there is press twice for off. Ahh, but who cares!

Overall that provides basic functionality, although I found the recessed bars and buttons to be somewhat difficult to navigate. You almost have to press some on angles. No high marks for the Planar 7060 control panel. Fortunately, most users rarely rely on the control panel, but use a projector's remote. A look at the remote and its capabilities is in the General Performance section.

Venting is handled from the sides, normally a good thing for those wanting to shelf mount in the rear of their room. However, since there is no lens shift, and the zoom lens has a very limited zoom range, shelf mounting would be very unlikely, and if done at all the projector would have to mounted on a low shelf. The back left foot (looking from the rear, has a dial on the side to adjust it. Overall that gives the Planar 7060 a very adjustable, solid 3 point stance.

The back of the Planar 7060 houses all the inputs, as shown directly below.

The 7060 is a bit better equipped than the average home theater projector. In addition to an HDMI digital input, there is a second one with a DVI connector (the two are compatible signal wise - just a connector adapter is needed. Note that DVI does not carry audio like HDMI, but that really isn't an issue for a projector without speakers). There is also a standard analog computer input, that can accept a computer signal or a component video source, and there is a separate component video input (the usual 3 color coded RCA jacks). Of course you'll find the two standard low resolution inputs - composite video and S-video. To round out the connectors, there is a USB, and also an RS-232 for external control of the projector. Lastly there is a 12 volt trigger for controlling suitably equipped motorized projector screen, and the obligatory power cord receptical. Bottom line, for high resolution sources, you can have two digital sources plus either two component video, or a component video and an analog computer. Not bad at all.

Overall, the Planar 7060 is a very compact, and stylish projector in a shiney black piano finish.

Time to see how the Planar 7060 performs in terms of image quality!