Vivitek H9080FD Projector Calibration and Settings-2

The settings (listed below) that we ended up with for the H9080FD provide a truly excellent grayscale result (which is evident in the final projected image, even if other issues resulted in particularly inaccurate photo shoot results that poorly duplicate what was seen on the screen. With a total range of temperatures of less than 140K, that's about as tight, and dead on, as any calibration we've done in a year or more, and far better than most (typical for our level of calibration is 300K - 450K over the range, with few having less than 200K range. The average across the range is just less than 6550K (compared to an idea 6500K), and that's extremely close to ideal!

Note that we used the Standard color temp setting, which, while a bit cool (too high), is still the closest to the ideal 6500K. The Warm setting is way low - (white at 5754K as indicated above), is pretty much on the mark for black and white movies (5800K), although the color temp for lower ranges than 100IRE come in below 5800K, so result in a bit too warm grays. The Cool, and Cooler color temps are too cool, with Cooler, being way, way, over the top (over 11,000K), and basically terrible. Even Cool, is too cool by a good bit, but can be calibrated downward. None the less, Standard (calibrated) is where you want to be!

Note that Film and Cinema measure out with almost identical averages across the full range of dark to light. It seems that the primary difference between Film and Cinema gamma settings primarily affects the dark ranges, with very little measureable change in the brighter ranges. The effect is that Film is a little darker, and punchier than Cinema mode. I often switched between the two with some movies, favoring Film, most of the time. For HDTV and sports I definitely prefer Cinema as it lightens up those midranges a bit. The CRT gamma at 2.4 definitely darkens the entire mid brightness range too much for most people's tastes (and is technically too high, as the target gamma is considered to be 2.2.)

If you have very little ambient light (but some) to deal with, you might definitely prefer Film for movie watching, as it will tend to keep the contrast up a bit in the darker regions instead of washing out as much.

The Bright setting is also viable, especially for HDTV/Sports. It doesn't throw any signficant extra lumens at the screen, but lightens up the whole picture, so while contrast (gamma related) may be down compared to Film or Cinema, it might be better off, in general for fighting more than the minimum ambient light.