Epson Home Cinema 700 Projector Calibration

Posted on April 19, 2009 by Art Feierman

We calibrate each home theater that is reviewed. The Epson Home Cinema 700 receives a basic calibration. It has less color controls than we find on most projectors, and that results in less ability to perfect the color balance. None the less, the Epson starts out with pretty good color, and our settings changes, though minor, do further improve color accuracy.

Color Temperature

The Epson Home Cinema 700's out of the box color in Theatre mode is very good, but a little warm (slightly more red strength than blue). Our calibration cooled it off slightly allowing for a slightly more accurate grayscale balance.


Dynamic	1840 lumens@5429K
Game	1580 lumens@5777K
Living Room	1158 lumens@7759K
Theater	1217 lumens@6517K
Sports:	1840 lumens @5430K
sRGB	1298 lumens @6594K
Dark Wall	1316 lumens@5702K

Here is the same data as found in the Brightness section, which shows the white (100 IRE) temperature for each mode (those in bold are the two modes you are most likely to be using, and the only two we calibrated:

The Home Cinema 700 has only a single control for each primary color - Red, Green, Blue. Most projectors, but not all, offer two controls for each, often called Gain and Bias. With two controls you end up being able to tune the projector a bit more tightly. I should note that one more expensive 720p competitor, the InFocus X9, has even less control than the Epson, with just a simple color temperature adjustment but no individual color control at all. Like this Epson, the InFocus manages some pretty impressive color accuracy.

Basic Settings


Brightness (0)	Theater mode (and all others): 2	Except Dynamic mode: 1
Contrast (0)	Theater mode (and all others): 2	Except Dynamic mode: 1
Color Temp (0)	All modes: Medium	Medium
Color (0)	Theater mode: 0	Dynamic mode -8
Tint (0)	0	0