With those 866 lumens you can light up a very large screen, rather nicely. My 128" diagonal Firehawk G3 is effortlessly filled by the W6000 for movie viewing, even with Brilliant Color off.
And it gets better!
Turn on Brilliant Color (and use the settings published on the calibration page of this projector review), and now you get a dazzling 1039 lumens! Remember this is still a "best mode." By comparison, of the 25 1080p projectors considered in our spring '09 comparison report, only eight were brighter in their "brightest modes".
In other words, you've got a really great setup with more than 1000 lumens for best movie viewing! Can anyone say: 150" diagonal screen? It can do it.
As mentioned, the W6000's brightest mode is heavy on green, and not what I'd call very watchable, but it does crank out over 1750 lumens if needed. You can muster up about 1250 lumens with a calibrated Standard, the BenQ 1 gamma, Brilliant Color On, a little more than "ideal" contrast, and, finally, Color Temp on Normal (or a similar calibrated color temp). While 1250 or so, isn't as dazzling as 1750 lumens, it sure worked great for sports. The measured grayscale with this type of combination averages around 7500 (but Mike didn't measure the individual IREs).
In summary, a calibrated Cinema, with/without Brilliant color, make for great movie viewing. To get out an extra 20 - 40% more lumens go to a cooler color temp (Normal), and Standard, and while not as good for movie viewing, it will serve very nicely for sports viewing. Finally, if you need every lumen, and can put up with the fairly heavy greens, and cool overall color, Dynamic (using Native Lamp). Save this one for "brightness emergencies". This is not wholly different from the Epson competition where their Dynamic mode also exhibits far too much green. The Epson though, let's you calibrate it a bit more, or rather, their LivingRoom mode, can deliver almost 1500 lumens with pretty good color (about comparable to the BenQ doing its 1250 lumens).
Switching to low lamp, brightness drops only 16% so 726 lumens or our "best" mode with Brilliant Color off, or 873 lumens with BC on.
The 1.5:1 zoom lens has enough zoom range to impact brightness, though significantly less than those projectors sporting 2:1 zooms. The small amount of change tends to indicate very good optical design.
Note regarding our sharpness images. Many of you are used to "studying" the DTS logo as a sharpness test (as seen in the thumbnails below). I've been using that original DTS test disc for about 3 years now. Unfortunately, it's been abused enough, that it rarely loads on one of my PS3's and never, on the other. This was the first time I wasn't able to coax it to load. So, you won't see that enlarged DTS logo below. I have, instead photographed the dts logo and part of menu, from DTS's newer disc. Over time, that will replace the logo on black. I've been trying at trade shows for more than a year, to find someone at DTS who knows where they might find me another of what was a pre-release test disc, but, with no luck. Unfortunately, without a replacement, you also won't be seeing several other images from that disc, including the "Color Castle", "bazaar" image, and the island/ocean photo. I'll miss those excellent images.
