Epson Home Cinema 6500UB Projector Calibration and Settings
We calibrate each home theater that is reviewed. It is a pretty standard calibration, there's always more that can be done by some of the "hi-end" calibrators.
12/28/2008 - Art Feierman
|
|
Epson Home Cinema 6500UB Color Temperature
First, here are the color temperature measurements for the TheaterBlack1 mode, right out of the box
30 IRE (dark gray): 6330K
50 IRE (medium gray): 6524K
80 IRE (light gray): 6350K
100 IRE (white): 6225K
That's pretty consistent, but a little on the warm (red) side. Changing the Color Temperature setting from 6500K to 7000K shifts it a little more, towards blue.
Immediately below are the color temperature readings for all of the preset modes, for white (100 IRE):
Theater Black 1= 6225K
Theater Black 2= 5174K
Theater= 7693K
Dynamic= 6503K
Living Room= 7671K
Natural= 6478K
x.v.Color= 6144K
Epson Home Cinema 6500UB Basic Settings
In addition to calibrating Red Green and Blue for a correct grayscale balance (6500K), there are a number of other settings that come into play. Typically Contrast and Brightness (white balance and black balance), need to be done first. Color saturation and gamma also need adjustment.
Our final settings (the default settings for Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Tint are all 0, in all modes). Mike made adjustments to these, and the Color Temp settings for each of the seven modes:
Contrast:
TheaterBlack 1: -3, TheaterBlack 2: -4, Theater: 0, Dynamic: -2, LivingRoom: -3, Natural: -1
Brightness:
TheaterBlack 1: 2, TheaterBlack 2: 2, Theater: 2, Dynamic: -2, LivingRoom: -3, Natural: -1
Color Saturation:
TheaterBlack 1: -3, TheaterBlack 2: -4, Theater: 0, Dynamic: 10, LivingRoom: 10, Natural: 0
Note: The high saturation for Dynamic and Livingroom are for dealing with significant ambient light.) Back off these numbers, as needed. For most of my viewing, in LivingRoom, for sports, for example, I set saturation to 2 for modest ambient light.
Lamp Mode: High Brightness (full power)
Dynamic Iris: Off for measurements, on for movie watching, off for sports...
Zoom set at mid-point for all measurements
All other settings at default
We recommend you save all changes to the User memory modes There are plenty of them, and you can rename them to suit.
Epson Home Cinema 6500UB Post Calibration Grayscale
The Home Cinema 6500UB produced good post calibration results, with a resulting good picture, but this Sanyo does not calibrate particularly well, and most other projectors can produce output consistently closer to the ideal 6500K. That said, the picture color is very good, and very watchable. Here are the measurements after calibration, for Pure Cinema Mode:
White (100 IRE): 6440K
Light gray (80 IRE): 6591K
Medium gray (50 IRE): 6556K
Dark gray (30 IRE): 6420K
That's very nice, consistent performance very close to the ideal 6500K.
To get the most out of the Home Cinema 6500UB a calibration is necessary. You have three calibration options: Calibrate it yourself, with calibration discs like the DVE-HD, or Avia, have a professional calibrate it, or you could drop in our settings. Ours may not be perfect for your Home Cinema 6500UB (as each projector is a little different, mostly due to lamp variation), but using ours is likely still a far sight better than sticking with the out of the box settings.
The 6500 UB also has separate color management controls for each primary and secondary colors.
Gamma settings: According to Mike's calibration, the setting that is closest to the ideal 2.2 for movie watching is labeled 2.4 in the Epson menus. From a individual standpoint, I preferred using 2.3, as I found the 2.4 setting a little dark overall. You can fine tune with the custom gamma settings as well.
RGB Settings
These are the adjustments we made to Red, Green and Blue for the grayscale balance of the Theater Black 1, and Dynamic modes:
TheaterBlack1 settings:
Offset:
Red: 0
Green: 0
Blue: -4
Gain:
Red: -29
Green: 0
Blue: -22
Color Saturation: -8
Tint: -12
Gamma: 2.4
Dynamic settings (a "quick calibration"):
Offset:
Red: 0
Green: 0
Blue: 0
Gain:
Red: -12
Green: 0
Blue: 0
Color Saturation: 2
Tint: 0
Gamma: 2.4
Here are two different "quick calibration" settings for LivingRoom mode. Keep in mind, that when we say quick calibration, these are not designed to rival our best mode calibration, rather to provide a bright image that looks very good dealing with some ambient light.
The more ambient light, the more color saturation you need, as colors will wash out. We've kept the color saturation pretty "normal" so be prepared to increase saturation if you have a lot of ambient light.
The first of these two LivingRoom setups was done by me. strictly by "eye" - without taking any measurements. I started by dropping the Color Temp setting to 7000K, and adjusted the individual R,G,B settings using the TheaterBlack 1 R,G,B calibration settings as a starting point, modifying them from there, to get a pleasing, bright image.
The second set is more "scientific". Mike did those, using his equipment. Note, while I based mine on the 7000K Color Temp setting, he started using a Color Temp of 6500K, which is why the RGB numbers are so different. Try them both, see which you prefer under different circumstances, although they are fairly close to each other.
Here you go. If you have some feedback relating to these LivingRoom (or other settings), please consider mentioning them in the comment section on the most recent (the one announcing that these have been posted, 6500UB blog.
LivingRoom (Art's settings)
Color Temp: 7000K
Skin Tone: 3
Contrast Enhancement: 1
Gamma: 2.3
Tint: 0
Offset:
Red: 0
Green: -4
Blue: -4
Gain:
Red: -29
Green: -2
Blue: -22
LivingRoom (Mike's settings)
Color Temp: 6500K
Skin Tone: 3
Contrast Enhancement: 1
Gamma 2.4
Tint: 0
Offset:
Red: -12
Green: 0
Blue: 10
Gain:
Red: 5
Green: 0
Blue: -12
You can use our various settings. Remember, though, there is variation from lamp to lamp, in terms of both brightness, and color balance. The differences are not great, but enough that having your projector calibrated might give you slightly better color results than using our settings.
NEXT: Recommended projector screens for the Epson Home Cinema 6500UB