Panasonic PT-AR100U Projector Calibration and Settings

3/9/2012 - Art Feierman

C o n t e n t s Panasonic PT-AR100U Projector Physical Tour Image Quality Performance Calibration Color Temperature Basic Settings RGB Settings Screen Recommendations Competitors Warranty Summary --------------------------- NEW! "Projector Reviews TV" Video Summary of the Panasonic PT-AR100

For your convenience we repeat the Panasonic PT-AR100U's (click for specs) brightness and color temp measurements from the Performance page

Let's take a look at the numbers:

Panasonic PT-AR100U Color Temperature

Before we provide our settings, let's see what we started out with: Pre calibration, these are the color temperatures over the grayscale range:

Here's a look at the preset modes, showing brightness and color temperature for white (100 IRE).  

Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE (white):

Cinema 1= 798 @ 7545           
Vivid Cinema= 1497 @ 7493
Game= 1472 @ 10001
Normal= 1571 @ 9114
Dynamic= 1914 @ 7586, 1325 with Dynamic Iris Off*
Rec. 709= 822 @ 7171
Sports= 1755 @ 7985

 * Just leave it on!       

There are two additional modes - 3D Dynamic and 3D Cinema We don't have a good way to determine actual brightness to one's eyes when watching 3D, so no numbers are presented.

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Panasonic PT-AR100U 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. In the case of the PT-AR100U projector, most of these default settings were fairly close to ideal, with only contrast altered more than slightly in most modes.

Settings for measurements (default values are in parenthesis):

	Cinema 1	Vivid Cinema	Game	Normal	Dynamic	Rec. 709	Sports
Contrast = (0)	0	-1	-2	-2	3	-2	-2
Brightness = (0)	1	2	4	2	0	4	4
Color = (0)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Tint = (0)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Color Temp is at default (0) on all
Lamp Mode=Normal (unless noted otherwise)
Dynamic Iris On.
All other settings at default (untouched)

Panasonic PT-AR100U Post Calibration Grayscale:                     

Color Temp over IRE Range (Post calibration REC 709 mode):

20 IRE            6626
30 IRE            6465
40 IRE            6393
50 IRE            6360
60 IRE            6326
70 IRE            6420
80 IRE            6570
90 IRE            6607
100 IRE          6471

Average gamma= 2.18

PT-AR100U Greyscale Calibration

Here are MIke's comments and the charts his equipment produce:

Rec. 709 has the best RGB balance by far, despite the somewhat high color temp.  Color gamut is reasonably good with the Rec. 709 mode (as you’d expect from that name).  Gamma is only around 2.11 with default settings and the simple gamma adjustments must be used sparingly to avoid poor results.  As we noted, Dynamic is pretty good by default, so the Quick Cal really only improves it marginally.  Greater improvement would cause a large drop in lumen output.

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PT-AR100U RGB Settings

Below are Mike's adjustments for the REC 709 and Dynamic modes. Again, the goal of "best" is a great looking 6500K grayscale, and the goal of a "brightest" mode is to improve a bright mode in terms of color as it relates to watchability, but without compromising brightness too much..

PT-AR100U Post Calibration settings:

	Cinema (on User 1)	Quick Cal of Dynamic (on User 2)
Contrast	R = 5	R= 10
	G = -4	G= -15
	B = -4	B= -15
Brightness	R = -2	R= 0
	G = 0	G= 0
	B = 1	B= 0

Lumens at 100 IRE: 647 @ 6855    1767 @ 7795                                                               

Ok, that's all we have for you. try our PT-AR100U settings out, if you like, you can save them in the Memory area, and compare against the default settings. Shouldn't take but a few minutes to put them in.

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NEXT: Recommended projector screens for the Panasonic PT-AR100U Projector