Optoma HD8600 Projector Calibration and Settings-2

Optoma HD8600 Post Calibration Grayscale

Calibrated color temps, 20 – 100 IRE

Gamma settings

Optoma offers up four customizable gamma settings - Film, Video Graphics and Standard. Mike chose Standard for our setup of the User memory. Measuring it, he came up with an average gamma of 2.27. Not bad, just a little darker in the mid-ranges than the ideal 2.2.

For almost all of my movie viewing filling my 128" Stewart Firehawk G3, however, I favored the Film setting which has a lower gamma (Mike didn't provide a measurement). I'd put it somewhere between 2.1 and 2.2, and, since Mike preferred Standard, Film is probably closer to 2.1. Sure worked for me, as my screen is of the high contrast gray variety.

For our "quick-calibrate" of the "brightest" mode (Bright mode), Mike recommends Video mode, which from my viewing has an even lower gamma number, almost certainly below 2, and really lights up (lightens) those mid bright and mid-dark areas, as well as the middle of the range.

As I noted above, each gamma is customizable, although the controls are just a little coarse. For example, the Gamma for Standard has two adjustable controls: Curve type and offset. For example, Film gamma is -2,+1, and Video gamma is -3,+2.

Regarding the HD8600 Manual Iris

The HD8600 also has a manual iris. Each of the modes has it set down, to different levels, with only the Graphics mode defaulting to wide open. Stopping down the iris will increase contrast somewhat and with it a small increase in black levels. That said, I spent all my time watching the HD8600 in our User mode, with the iris wide open 9 (90% of the time), or, at most, stopped down to 7. (I like bright!).

Optoma HD8600 RGB Settings

These are the adjustments we made to Red, Green and Blue for the grayscale balance of THX mode. This is accomplished by placing these adjustments into one of the three Custom settings (1, 2, or 3). We placed all of these into User 1 (which starts out as a copy of THX).

Calibration settings for User 1:
Gamma on Normal, Color on -2

Calibration settings