Sharp XV-Z30000 Projector - Performance 2

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Art Feierman

Sharp XV-Z30000 Pre-Calibration Color temp, Movie 1 Mode

Color Temp over IRE Range, Best mode, (Movie 1)
30 IRE	7464
50 IRE	7458
80 IRE	7147
100 IRE	7198

Mike looked to find the best mode to start with, it was down to the User Memory defaults, or Video.

Definitely just a bit cool (a touch thin on reds).

Mike calibrated the Movie 1 mode, and came up with the results below.

XV-Z30000 Color Temp over IRE Range (Post calibration)
20 IRE =	6710
30 IRE =	6818
40 IRE =	6456
50 IRE =	6501
60 IRE =	6509
70 IRE =	6448
80 IRE =	6455
90 IRE =	6438
100 IRE =	6688
Average gamma = 2.27

(Using gamma=0 yields a 2.15 average gamma)

Art's comment: Mike set gamma to -1 (2.27) which I found to be a little dark (2.2 is technically ideal) in the mid-range. Of the two, I prefer the 0 setting yielding the 2.15 gamma. There is a custom gamma control to further tune, however it is not active in normal modes. To use the custom gamma, you must use User 1 or User 2 modes. There's nothing to stop you from putting all the Movie 1 settings in User 1, if you want to work with the custom gamma. If I owned this projector I would no doubt do that, and come up with a gamma somewhere between these two. It should be easy enough based on the preliminary manual provided with this Sample projector

The Z30000 projector remains just a tiny bit cool in the brightest and darkest ranges, but overall, it's a good color temp calibration.

We still do not do a CMS calibration of the individual colors. As Mike points out here, there is some error there, but the Sharp has the controls to compensate.

Mike's Notes: Good looking picture overall. Blacks could be better (even with Iris 2 on). Odd that there’s only RGB gain controls, but they do affect the full range pretty evenly and the calibrated grayscale was very good. Don’t understand why there are so many picture modes that are similar (Standard, Anime, Game, Sports and both User modes). Movie 2 mode, in its default Eco mode, is too dim for anything but a smaller screen in a totally light-controlled room. Colors are a little off, particularly green and magenta (see CIE chart), but there are two CMS modes that could be used to improve the situation.

Remember, the settings we do recommend, including basic controls like Color, Contrast, Brightness, can be found on our Calibration page. One nice thing about Mike's settings. This time they were taken with roughly 300 hours on the lamp. That really is a slightly better place to calibrate than with a brand new bulb.