JVC DLA-RS15 Projector Calibration and Settings

Posted on October 10, 2013 By Art Feierman

The JVC DLA-RS15 home theater projector lacks the full CMS – color management system – found on the more expensive JVC’s. This means that you can only calibrate it “so far”. That happens to be plenty far, however, as we obtained a rather great looking image with fine skin tones, with a standard grayscale calibration.

The JVC RS15 lacks the rather excellently pre-calibrated THX mode found on the more expensive JVC’s. A good calibration will be needed to get the most out of an RS15. It looks pretty good out of the box, but it does get better.

JVC DLA-RS15 Color Temperature

All of the JVC presets offer a bit cool white, with white (100 IRE) at 7142K or higher, instead of our “optimal” 6500K.

That said, the JVC RS15’s color temperature gets warmer, as we go down the grayscale, until it’s actually very warm by 30 IRE.

These are the measurements, taken “right out of the box.”

Color Temp over IRE Range, Best mode (Pre calibration):
30 IRE	5865K
50 IRE	6486K
80 IRE	6832K
100 IRE	7165K

For your convenience, these were the starting measurements. You can see that Cinema 1, 2, Natural, and the User modes start out the same, with the differences here, simply relating to the level of accuracy of the gear.

Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE (mid zoom):
Cinema 1	711 @ 7142
Cinema 2	722 @ 7165
Cinema 3	751 @ 8504
Natural	721 @ 7183
Stage= 751	751 @ 8297
Dynamic= 763	763 @ 9125
User 1 or 2	721 @ 7180

JVC DLA-RS15 Post Calibration Grayscale

Here’s a look at the results of Mike’s calibration (saved to User 1):

Color Temp over IRE Range (Post calibration):
20 IRE	7141
30 IRE	6517
40 IRE	6567
50 IRE	6648
60 IRE	6623
70 IRE	6526
80 IRE	6548
90 IRE	6574
100 IRE	6737

After calibration Mike’s got this small color temp spike over 7100K in the darkest ranges that’s mostly a blue tinted green. It’s just there, a little off, but rarely of any consequence. White is still technically a touch cool, but that’s real close to right on. The RS15 does not calibrate as well as the more expensive JVC’s, but we are still talking about some pretty good numbers, and a great picture, to match. While the end result looks extremely good, including skin tones, this JVC is not as dead on as the other JVC’s or some of its competitors.

JVC DLA-RS15 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.

Our final settings (the default settings for Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Tint are all 0, in all modes). Mike made adjustments to these, and the Color Temp settings for each of the seven modes:

Header Content
	Cinema 1	Cinema 2	Cinema 3	Natural	Stage	Dynamic
Contrast = (0)	-1	-1	-1	-1	-1	-2
Brightness = (0)	1	1	1	1	1	1
Color Sat.	(-25)	(-3)	(-3)	(0)	(0)	(10)
Tint	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)
Color Temp	(5800)	(6500)	(7500)	(6500)	(7500)	(High Bright)
Gamma	(C)	(A)	(B)	(Normal)	(D)	(D)

Both User modes have same default settings as Natural mode
Lamp Mode=High (unless noted otherwise)
Lens aperture fully open (3) for all
All other settings at default (untouched)

Zoom set at mid-point for all measurements

Note, the JVC does not have User savable settings (you can customize all modes). The RS15 has those two User modes. When we say “not savable”, understand: If you make changes, the next time you go to that mode, those changes will still be there. But, if you make more changes, the older ones are lost. With a true User Savable memory, once you hit save, you will always get those settings back, unless you make changes and resave the User mode.

To get the very most out of the DLA-RS15, a calibration is necessary. You can try our settings, but, we feel projectors in this price range should be individually calibrated.