Projector Reviews

All measurements were taken with the projector in the Reference preset and Low lamp mode. All calibration measurements were taken with a Colorimetry Research CR-100 profiled to a Jeti Specbos 1211 Spectroradiometer. The gamma correction preset was 2.4, which measured nearly perfect. All calibration was done with the Advanced Iris in Off; contrast ratio measurements were done in a variety of different modes for the iris as noted. The lamp had 120 hours on it during the calibration. All viewing and measurements were done on a 120-inch-diagonal Stewart Filmscreen StudioTek 100 screen (1.0 gain).

Full-on/full-off contrast was measured with a Minolta T-10 meter from 8 inches away from the lens face. I tested various configurations in Low lamp mode with the Advanced Iris in various conditions. I measured contrast in the projector’s longest throw zoom and shortest throw zoom conditions. For the shortest throw, I started with the Advanced Iris disabled and the manual iris fully open. This represents the native contrast of the panels, which measured at 6,100:1. Closing down the manual iris resulted in 7,500:1. I then opened the manual iris completely and turned the Advanced Iris to Dynamic Limited and achieved 69,000:1. Dynamic Full gave the same result. I would recommend using Dynamic Limited, as Dynamic Full was too aggressive and resulted in very visible image pumping.

With zoom set for the longest throw, the iris open, and advanced iris disabled, I achieved 7,300:1. Closing the iris resulted in 8,500:1. With the advanced iris in Dynamic Limited, I measured 108,000:1, and with Dynamic Full it was 107,000:1.

The RGB tables were captured from a calibration workflow in SpectraCal’s CalMAN Version RGB 5.6.1., and grayscale tracking out of the box was poor, with an average Delta E of 6.86 (anything under 3 is considered reference and imperceptible to the human eye). Post-calibration, the average was 2.34. After calibration, gamma averaged 2.44 with my reference set to BT.1886 (2.4).

The color gamut in the Reference preset with the color mode set to Rec. 709 was good, with only minor issues with blue and red. The other colors tracked at a Delta E of about 2 or lower, and even the inner values lined up well. Using only the onboard color management system got me Delta E values all under 3, with most coming in below 1. An external video processor would do little to improve this projector’s calibration.—KRD