Optoma HD8600 Projector Calibration and Settings

Posted on December 6, 2009 by Art Feierman

We calibrate each home theater that is reviewed. We perform contrast, brightness, saturation and other image adjustments, as well as a grayscale balance. A complete professional calibration can go even further, but the settings we provide, generally offer a anywhere from a slight to dramatic improvement, compared to the out of the box settings.

Optoma HD8600 Color Temperature

These are the measurements, taken "right out of the box." Mike chose Cinema 2 as our starting point for a "best" mode. To start, the HD8600 looked pretty good, though not exceptional. For example, it doesn't look as good as, say the THX modes on the JVC or Epson projectors. (Apparently Epson and JVC are getting their money's worth with the THX deal, in terms of out of the box color, if nothing else).

Color Temp over IRE Range, Best Mode (Pre calibration)


30 IRE	6282K (dark gray)
50 IRE	6344K (medium gray)
80 IRE	6369K (light gray)
100 IRE	6529 (white)

For those interested, here are the color temperature measurements (and lumens) for white (100 IRE), for each of the preset modes

Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE


Cinema 1	579 @ 6451K
Cinema 2	787 @ 6529K
Reference	785 @ 6513K
Photo	801 @ 7548K
Bright	1132 @ 9021K
Graphics	1127 @ 8987K
User	785 @ 6499K

As you can see, the Cinema modes, Reference and User all have starting color temperatures near the 6500K ideal.

The other three modes, are cooler, with Bright and Graphics "way cool" around 9000K. (If green is in balance even 9K can be watchable, but reds are way down, and therefore still not good color.

Mike also came up with another way of looking at the data. Here he measured the Bright mode, but for each of the different available color temps including what they call D93 (9300K). You can see that the native lamp temp is very cool, and as you lower the color temp, to achieve colors in the proper 6500K range, lumens drop off.

Optoma HD8600 Basic Settings

Settings for measurements (default values are in parenthesis)
	Cinema1	Cinema2	Reference	Photo	Bright	Graphics	User
Contrast (-9)	-1	-1	-2	-1	-1	-2	-2
Brightness	(1)2	(1)2	(1)4	(2)3	(-1)1	(1)4	(1)3
Color	(0)	(0)	(0)	(2)	(5)	(0)	(0)
Tint	(1)	(1)	0	0	0	0	0
Color Temp	(D65)	(D65)	(D65)	(D75)	(D93)	(D93)	(D65)
Dynamic Black	(Cinema2)	(Cinema2)	(Off)	(C1)	(C1)	(C1)	(Off)
Iris	3	6	5	5	9	9	5
Gamma	(Film)	(Film)	(Std.)	(Std.)	(Video)	(Graphics)	(Std.)
Color Gamut	(Native)	(Native)	(HDTV)	(HDTV)	(Native)	(Native)	(HDTV)