Viewsonic Pro8200 Projector Calibration and Settings

We calibrate every home theater that we review. The Viewsonic Pro8200 received the usual treatment. I "played" with the Pro8200 for a couple of days, passed it off to Mike for calibration and measurements. 24 hours later, I'm back to watching it.

Ours is a pretty standard calibration, there's always more done by some of the "hi-end" calibrators. Our calibrations, including the Viewsonic Pro8200, are normally limited to a grayscale calibration, along with brightness, contrast, color saturation, etc. Only in very special circumstances will we calibrate the individual colors, in which case we discuss why.

1/25/11 - Art Feierman

C o n t e n t s Viewsonic Pro8200 Projector Physical Tour Image Quality Performance Calibration Color Temperature Basic Settings RGB Settings Screen Recommendations Competitors Warranty Summary

Let's take a look at the numbers:

Viewsonic Pro8200 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:

Color Temp over IRE Range (Best Mode, Pre calibration):

Standard                       

30 IRE    8172                                          50 IRE    8142                        
80 IRE    7685                                          100 IRE   7718                             

Standard offered the best looking color, but produced a very cool (bluish) image.

 

Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE (mid zoom):

Brightest= 1653 @ 7232           
Standard= 1529 @ 7718
Theater= 1296 @ 7891
Dark Room= 839 @ 7993 (By default, Dark Room is on Eco lamp.  With Eco off, Dark Room has same lumens as Standard)
User 1= 1108 @ 10280
User 2= 1108 @ 10277

NOTE: There are three other color temps in addition to Mid, but Mid gives the highest lumen output.

 

Lumen Output (Eco Lamp On, Brightest): 1306

That represents a drop from 1653 lumens at full lamp power. The math says that's a drop of an almost perfect 21%. Most projectors drop 20 to 25% when going to their eco - low lamp, power mode.

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Viewsonic Pro8200 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.

Settings for measurements (default values are in parenthesis):

	Brightest	Standard	Theater	Dark Room	User 1	User 2
Contrast =	(52) 50	(48) 50	(48) 50	(48) 50	(48) 50	(48) 50
Brightness =	(45) 52	(49) 53	(49) 53	(49) 55	(49) 55	(49) 54
Color = (50)	50	50	50	50	50	50
Tint = (50)	50	50	50	50	50	50
Color Temp =	(Mid)	(Mid)	(Mid)	(Mid)	(Mid)	(Mid)
Gamma =	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)

Viewsonic Pro8200 Post Calibration Grayscale: Standard Mode

 

Color Temp over IRE Range (Post calibration):

20 IRE            6667
30 IRE            6607
40 IRE            6551
50 IRE            6553
60 IRE            6557
70 IRE            6509
80 IRE            6421
90 IRE            6401
100 IRE          6198

Average gamma= 2.18

 

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RGB Settings

 

 To get the color temp settings above, the following adjustments were made to Contrast and Brightness:

Contrast = 50
Brightness = 53

Pro8200 Post Calibration settings:

Calibration settings for Standard:  Color is on 40, all other settings same as pre-calibration or as stated below.

                                               
Standard, Mid Color Temp                                               
Color (Default for each is 50)                       
R = 58                                               
G = 55
B = 35                                                     

Lumens at 100 IRE:  1460 @ 6794

Mike provided these additional notes, regarding the ability to calibrate different settings, limitations, etc.:

NOTES:

1. While the pre-cal numbers on Standard aren’t great, the RGB balance is by far the best of any of the modes.  Changing to Low color temp shifts the balance further away in the opposite direction and User and High are off the charts, so Mid is the best option.
2. While the CIE chart shows very accurate primary colors (RGB), the intensities of each are low, which usually means you need to raise the Color control.  All measurement data supports this as well.  However, in actual viewing, skin tones are so red, you have to lower the Color control to make them acceptable.  Very odd.
3. The two Users modes and even the User color temp, are so far off in RGB balance that it’s not possible to use them for calibration and achieve decent results.  That’s why I used Standard, with adjustments to the Mid color temp, for calibration.
4. When calibrating, increasing the “Red” control actually decreases the level of Red in the grayscale and vice versa.  The other two controls (Green and Blue) work as they’re supposed to.
5. Changing Gamma to “1” brings the average gamma to 2.28, which might be better in a darker room.
6. I tried to do a “Quick Cal” on the Brightest mode, but if you look at the numbers, it’s not even 10% higher than Standard by default.  Even the smallest adjustments to improve the RGB balance in Brightest mode quickly drop the lumen output so that it’s no higher than Standard in its default settings.  As Standard, by default, has a better RGB balance than even minimally adjusted Brightest mode does, there’s no advantage to doing a “Quick Cal” of Brightest mode.  Also, Brightest mode doesn’t look that bad with regular HDTV programming, so I would either use it, default Standard or calibrated Standard depending on how many lumens you need.’

Art's bottom line: Certainly not the easiest projector to calibrate. Basically only Standard mode calibrates with the best results. There isn't even a brighter mode. What we have here is a projector that at its best produces over 1450 lumens. While it can produce, up to an additional 200 lumens - that's only about 13% more brightness, but the color accuracy and overall picture suffer noticeably. There just isn't enough extra brightness in the Brightest mode, to make it worthwhile to use. As Mike pointed out, any attempt to improve the overall color of Brightest mode, quickly results in the brightness dropping down to the Standard level's brightness, or below. Basically therefore, you have a one setting fits all, situation - for movies, for sports...

As to the calibration itself, note that the measurements are all very good but for one, and that is 100 IRE - white. The color temp is a bit warm there (slightly stronger on reds, weaker on blues), dropping down below 6200K. All other ranges measure within 150K of the target 6500K. With the brighter ranges a little warm some might try tweaking Mike's settings a bit, but most should be pretty happy.

This Viewsonic Pro8200 isn't the best calibrating projector near its price, in fact, one of the more difficult ones, but the end results are pretty impressive for an under $1000 1080p home theater projector. It is, however, the ability to produce over 1450 lumens (in its "best" mode, that stands out as the big benefit.

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NEXT: Recommended projector screens for the Viewsonic Pro8200 Projector