Viewsonic Pro9000 Projector Calibration and Settings

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Art Feierman

Virtually every home projector we review gets calibrated. Note we do not calibrate many all-in-one, and gaming projectors. This Viewsonic Pro9000 is typical, though and gets calibrated. Our calibrations, including this Viewsonic Pro9000, are normally limited to a grayscale calibration, along with brightness, contrast, color saturation, tint (where applicable), etc. Only in very special circumstances will we calibrate the individual colors, in which case we discuss why. (If you hire a professional calibrator, they will normally calibrate those individual colors in the CMS.) Here are some pre-calibration numbers for the Viewsonic Pro9000, our calibration settings, and the final results.

Viewsonic Pro9000 Color Temperature

Color Temp over IRE Range (Best Mode, Pre calibration)
30 IRE	7357	7050
50 IRE	7342	7087
80 IRE	7339	7057
100 IRE	7369	7360

Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE (mid zoom)
Reference	1044 @ 7369
TV	1054 @ 7356
Cinema Film 1	1047 @ 7360
Cinema Film 2	773 @ 6112
User	1054 @ 7357
Game	1281 @ 7815
Photo	794 @ 6121
Bright Cinema	1132 @ 8477
Bright TC	1131 @ 8480

Viewsonic Pro9000 Basic Settings

While we have a complete set of Mike's measurements, I'm going to hold off publishing them, as we wait for a full production Pro 9000 projector to arrive. I suspect that the next version of the projector will calibrate differently, and therefore, these would not be relevant.

Settings for measurements (default values are in parenthesis):

Viewsonic Pro9000 Post Calibration Grayscale: User Mode

Post-Calibration color temps, 20 – 100 IRE

Pro9000 User Mode

Color Temp over IRE Range (Post calibration)

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Mike's notes (pre-production projector): Preset gamma curves need work. Gamma is right around 2.2 until you get to 90 IRE and it drops off to 1.5, making the average 2.11 (see grayscale chart). They’re really all over the place. Also, only having full range RGB controls makes it difficult to get a good grayscale balance. Green is in abundance at the higher IREs and absent at lower IREs, so you have to balance it as best you can without making grays look purple or red. The CIE chart shows pretty good color except for blue and magenta, which are not very accurate. It’s only really noticeable in test patterns though.

Mike also noted: The User 2setting don’t seem to retain their starting picture modes, even though they retain the settings. If you leave User 2 mode, when you go back to it, it’s not the same.

Art's Notes: Viewsonic advises that this issue of a flakey User 2, has been addressed and fixed. We will confirm when the new Pro 9000 projector arrives

Pro9000 RGB Settings

Calibration settings for User:
Color Temp on Custom 3, Iris off, Gamma on Off, Color Space on BT.709, Color on 44, all other settings on default or as previously stated.