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BenQ W1000 Projector Calibration and Settings

Posted on March 14, 2010 By Art Feierman

BenQ W1000 Calibration notes: We calibrate each home theater that is reviewed. Our calibration is pretty standard. A professional calibrator will do a good deal more, although we cover the items that cause the greatest improvements.

BenQ W1000 Color Temperature

We consider Cinema mode to be the best “out of the box” mode, and ultimately use Cinema as the reference for User 2, which became our calibrated “best mode”

Pre-calibration, the color temperature measurements came out like this

Color Temp over IRE Range
Cinema Standard
30 IRE 6431 6392
50 IRE 6451 6419
80 IRE 6279 6228
100 IRE 6344 6376

While the numbers across the range are exceptionally close, the W1000 (like the Vivitek) doesn’t have the usual R,G,B controls for doing a grayscale balance to 6500K. Mike tried some work arounds, including the CMS (individual color tuning controls), but to no avail.

As a result, our final measurements are not as finely tuned as we had hoped, but I will say that the final output of the BenQ had just slightly better color, though the two often looked very similar.

I like the “best mode” color, and while not as good, the BenQ W1000 has a great looking “brightest mode”.

Mike notes:

As there are no grayscale adjustments available, all that can be done to get the best grayscale is to select User 2 (default Cinema mode) and adjust Brightness and Contrast.  Unlike the W600, turning Brilliant Color off does not help grayscale, causing a sharp rise in color temp.

When Mike looked at gamma, gamma was preset to 2.4. Gamma measured 2.38. That will make your first choice of gamma settings to be 2.2, which should be close to dead on.

BenQ W1000 Basic Settings

While the BenQ has some, but not all controls, there are some basic settings that can be adjusted as well. Below in the chart, are the default settings in () along with any recommended changes.

Settings for measurements (default values are in parenthesis)
Dynamic User 1 User 2 User 3
Contrast (0) (-6) (-12) (0)-1
Brightness (50) (52) (53) (50)51
Color Temp (Lamp Native) (Normal) (Normal) (Lamp Native)
Gamma (2.2) (2.4)2.2 (2.6)2.2 (2.2)

NOTE:  Only User modes allow for any adjustment.  User 1 = Standard, User  2 = Cinema and User 3 = Dynamic, are the defaults. We show Dynamic above, with no changes, but user 3 is the same, except here we could make changes.

In other words, User 2 is based on Cinema, etc. Color and Tint are at 0 for all modes except Standard and User 1, which start at Color = 2.  Contrast and Brightness were good at the default settings for User 1 and 2.

BenQ W1000 Projector – Performance4
BenQ W1000 Projector Calibration and Settings2