Sharp XV-Z15000 Projector Calibration and Settings 3

Posted on June 9, 2009 by Art Feierman

Sharp XV-Z15000 Post Calibration Grayscale: Movie 2 mode

Post calibration, we ended up with excellent grayscale balance which was evident, when watching the XV-Z15000.


20 IRE	6615K
30 IRE	6542K
40 IRE	6187K
50 IRE	6460K
60 IRE	6475K
70 IRE	6486K
80 IRE	6462K
90 IRE	6561K
100 IRE	6625K

You'll note that over all, the color temperature stays very close to the ideal 6500K, but with one exception. The Sharp has a dip to 6187K at 40 IRE (just lightly darker than medium gray), where it has a little too much red. Still it's only off by just over 300K, and that's slight. Over all, it's a very good, but not exceptional grayscale balance. I have to say that the actual picture quality, in terms of color accuracy looks even better than these very respectable numbers.

Gamma: The closest gamma to the target 2.2 for movie viewing is the Gamma 1 setting. That said, it seems, from watching, that the 1 setting is a little low - probably closer to 2.1, which brightens up the mid brightness portions of the image somewhat.

RGB Settings

trangely, the XV-Z15000 only offers minimal grayscale balance controls. While almost all home theater projectors offer upper and lower band controls separately, for Red, Green, and Blue, the Sharp has a single control for Red, and a single control for Blue, and no Green adjustments. The lack of two controls for a color makes it near impossible to try to smooth out that 40 IRE dip mentioned above. The lack of Green controls is less of an issue (but still would be good to have), as many calibrators use green settings as the reference, and try to change them the least.

On the other hand, the Sharp does have a CMS - color management system - for managing the hue, saturation, etc. of the individual colors. We normally don't touch those - since this is a basic calibration. A full blown calibration, therefore, will do even better.

Calibration settings: Movie 2 mode:
Color Temp on 0, Gamma on 1
Red	-4
Blue	-2

That's all there is to it!

Brightest Modes:

For "brightest mode" Mike recommends just leaving things as they are in terms of the color settings. The XV-Z15000 has one of the best looking (in terms of color balance) Dynamic modes we've seen, "right out of the box".

Further, you'll get an even better bright picture using the Natural mode, which also needs no color calibration. Natural will cost you 18% of the projectors maximum lumens (Dynamic). Both are very watchable, even for those fairly critical.