Epson Home Cinema 700 Projector Calibration

4/19/2009 -Art Feierman

We calibrate each home theater that is reviewed. The Epson Home Cinema 700 receives a basic calibration. It has less color controls than we find on most projectors, and that results in less ability to perfect the color balance. None the less, the Epson starts out with pretty good color, and our settings changes, though minor, do further improve color accuracy.

C o n t e n t s Epson Home Cinema 700 Projector Physical Tour Image Quality Performance Calibration Color Temperature Basic Settings RGB Settings Screen Recommendations Competitors Warranty Summary

Color Temperature

The Epson Home Cinema 700's out of the box color in Theatre mode is very good, but a little warm (slightly more red strength than blue). Our calibration cooled it off slightly allowing for a slightly more accurate grayscale balance.

Here is the same data as found in the Brightness section, which shows the white (100 IRE) temperature for each mode (those in bold are the two modes you are most likely to be using, and the only two we calibrated:

Dynamic: 1840 lumens@5429K
Game: 1580 lumens@5777K
Living Room: 1158 lumens@7759K
Theatre: 1217 lumens@6517K
Sports: 1840 lumens @5430K
sRGB: 1298 lumens @6594K
Dark Wall: 1316 lumens@5702K

The Home Cinema 700 has only a single control for each primary color - Red, Green, Blue. Most projectors, but not all, offer two controls for each, often called Gain and Bias. With two controls you end up being able to tune the projector a bit more tightly. I should note that one more expensive 720p competitor, the InFocus X9, has even less control than the Epson, with just a simple color temperature adjustment but no individual color control at all. Like this Epson, the InFocus manages some pretty impressive color accuracy.

 

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Basic Settings

Below are all our image settings for the Home Cinema 700 projector.

The numbers in parens are the default settings.

Brightness (0): Theatre mode (and all others): 2, except Dynamic mode: 1
Contrast (0): Theatre mode (and all others): 2, except Dynamic mode: 1
Color Temp (0) All modes: Medium
Color (0) Theatre mode: 0, Dynamic mode -8
Tint (0) 0

Lamp Mode: Full power for all measurements, and settings.

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RGB Settings

Theatre Mode: Red = -2 (0), Green = 0 (0), Blue = 0 (0)

This results in the following grayscale balance:

20 (IRE) - 6752K
30 - 6599K
40 - 6568K
50 - 6404K
60 - 6419K
70 - 6415K
80 - 6551K
90 - 6663K
100 – 6852K

For Dynamic Mode: 3 (0), Green = 0 (0), Blue = 2 (0)
Other settings for Dynamic: Auto Iris: Off, Color Saturation -8

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NEXT: Recommended projector screens for the Epson Home Cinema 700