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BenQ W1200 Projector Calibration and Settings

Posted on June 3, 2011 By Art Feierman

We calibrate every home theater projector that we review. The BenQ W1200 received the usual treatment. I “played” with the W1200 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 BenQ W1200, 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.

Let’s take a look at the numbers:

BenQ W1200 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 (Various Modes)
Cinema Standard User 3
30 IRE 5964 6859 6312
50 IRE 5999 6908 6350
80 IRE 5961 6903 6273
100 IRE 5972 6928 6334

Conclusion was that User 3 is the best uncalibrated mode to start a 6500K calibration from

W1200 Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE (mid zoom)
Dynamic 1008 @ 8775
Standard 942 @ 6928
Cinema 643 @ 5972
User 1 1152 @ 8163
User 2 1085 @ 7021
User 3 975 @ 6334 with Brilliant Color On, with BC off = 824

W1200 Lumen Output (Eco Lamp On, Dynamic): 746

That represents a drop from 1008 lumens at full lamp power. The math says that’s full power is 35% brighter than Eco-mode, or, looking at it from the other direction: Eco mode is 26% less bright than full power.

BenQ W1200 Home Theater Projectors 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)
Dynamic Standard Cinema User 1 User 2 User 3
Contrast (0) 0 0 0 0 3 3
Brightness (45) -45 -45 -45 46 -45 45
Color 0 0 0 0 0 0
Tint 0 0 0 0 0 0
BenQ W1200 Projector – Performance-3
BenQ W1200 Projector Calibration and Settings-2