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Viewsonic Pro8200 Projector Calibration and Settings 2

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Art Feierman

RGB Settings

Standard, Mid Color Temp
Color (Default for each is 50) R = 58
G = 55
B = 35
Lumens at 100 IRE: 1460 @ 6794

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.

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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