Projector Reviews

Epson Home Cinema LS100 Laser Projector Review – Calibration Settings

Epson Home Cinema LS100 Laser Projector Review – Calibration Settings: Calibration Presets Notes, Best Mode Calibration, Brightest Mode Calibration

Epson Home Cinema LS100 Calibration Presets Notes

The LS100 has 4 presets (Dynamic, Bright Cinema, Cinema, & Game. For my dark room calibration, I used Game mode (Quiet mode). I used Game mode rather than Cinema because its color gamut was slightly better (more on that later).

Quick note about the 3 lamp modes (Normal, Quiet & ECO). The fan on Normal seems to be a little louder than my Epson 5030 on Normal. Also, having the LS100 in front of me may add to the perceived loudness. Quite mode is the second brightest mode and is also the quietest. ECO is the dimmest, but oddly louder than quite mode.

Best Mode Calibration for 1080p and REC709 – Game Mode

Cutting to the chase, this LS100 had one of the worst looking gamuts I‘ve seen in a projector. Now, the model I was given for evaluation was a pre-production unit, so it is possible things will improve with retail versions. As I mentioned at the top of my notes, I used Game mode because the gamut measured slightly better than Cinema, but it’s still quite poor.

Some of the issues are common to other projectors like red, blue and magenta being under-saturated at 100%, but over saturated at 20, 40, 60 and 80%. Yellow on the LS100 is in the best shape. It’s green and cyan that are the most troubling. Cyan showed 60, 80 and 100% saturation levels all sitting on the 80% target. As green saturation increases, it moves towards yellow with the 100% green far from its REC.709 target. You could clearly see that green in the SMPTE color bars looked more lime-green in tone, almost dayglow. Calibration did little to improve these issues. I had to be careful because just the smallest adjustment could make things worse.

Epson LS100 Game Mode Pre-Calibration CIE 1976 Saturation Sweeps (target-Rec.709)
Game Mode Pre-Calibration CIE 1976 Saturation Sweeps (target Rec.709)

IRE Pre-Calibration Post-Calibration
10 IRE 7021K 6771K
20 IRE 6422K 6529K
30 IRE 6602K 6411K
40 IRE 6662K 6495K
50 IRE 6730K 6470K
60 IRE 6780K 6531K
70 IRE 6738K 6538K
80 IRE 6742K 6493K
90 IRE 6809K 6552K
100 IRE 6808K 6557K

Measurements taken at Mid-Zoom in Quiet Mode.

Average Gamma Pre-Calibration: 2.03

Average Gamma Post-Calibration: 2.20 @ 3192 Lumens

My target for a Dark Room gamma is 2.4, and with past Epsons, setting the gamma to -1 or -2 did the trick, but with the LS100, -2 only got me to 2.2, so that is what I used for my target. After calibration, it yielded a fairly linear gamma with a slight bump in brightness at 90 IRE and increasing brightness from 10 down to 0. Had I turned on Dynamic Black for these measurements, the low end would show slightly improved black level performance.

Type Pre-Calibration Post-Calibration
Contrast 50 50
Brightness 50 50
Color 50 50
Tint 50 50
Color Temp 4 4
G-M Correction 4 4
Type Pre-Calibration Post-Calibration
Gamma 0 -2
Dynamic Contrast High High
Sharpness 5 5
Noise Reduction 6 0
Detail Enhancement 0 20
RGB Gain Offset
Red 46 51
Green 50 51
Blue 40 53

Greyscale calibration settings for Game mode.

Epson LS100 Game Mode Post-Calibration CIE 1976 Saturation Sweeps (target-Rec.709)
Game Mode Post-Calibration CIE 1976 Saturation Sweeps (target Rec.709)

Brightest Mode Calibration for 1080P and REC709 – Dynamic Mode

For my Bright Room calibration, I used Dynamic Mode (Normal mode). Default color temp was in 7500K range with a plus blue, minus red getting more pronounced the brighter the image got. Sadly, the color gamut was similar, yet worse, than what I saw in Game mode. Blue was extremely over-saturated, magenta at 100% was not only oversaturated, but skewed towards red. Green and cyan showed similar errors to Game mode. Cyan had 60, 80 and 100% saturation levels, all sitting on the 80% target, with green running towards yellow. After using the LS100’s CMS controls, I could improve some aspects, while others, I could not.

Dynamic-Mode-Pre-Calibration-CIE-1976-Saturation-Sweeps-(target-Rec.709)-
Dynamic Mode Pre-Calibration CIE 1976 Saturation Sweeps (target-Rec.709)

IRE Pre-Calibration Post-Calibration
10 IRE 7558K 7340K
20 IRE 7263K 6566K
30 IRE 7374K 6469K
40 IRE 7558K 6445K
50 IRE 7558K 6336K
60 IRE 7621K 6369K
70 IRE 7652K 6406K
80 IRE 7831K 6518K
90 IRE 7935K 6584K
100 IRE 8122K 6808K

Measurements taken at mid-zoom, Normal power.

Average Gamma Pre-Calibration: 1.88

Average Gamma Post-Calibration: 2.02 (target 2.20) @ 5168 Lumens

Type Pre-Calibration Post-Calibration
Color Temp 6 4
G-M Correction 7 6
Gamma 0 0
Dynamic Contrast High High
Sharpness 5 5
Noise Reduction 6 0
Detail Enhancement 20 20
RGB Gain Offset
Red 50 50
Green 49 52
Blue 50 53

Greyscale calibration settings for Dynamic mode.

Dynamic-Mode-Post-Calibration-CIE-1976-Saturation-Sweeps-(target-Rec.709)
Dynamic Mode Post-Calibration CIE 1976 Saturation Sweeps (target-Rec.709)