Sony VPL-HW45ES Projector - Calibration & Settings

Sony VLP-HW45ES Calibration Presets notes

For example, Reference is the least processed and closest to our target of D65 color temp with all of the enhancements turned off except Reality Creation which is Sony’s fancy name for its pixel sharpening, edge enhancement. On other Sony products you are able to adjust how much enhancement you want to use, but here is just on or off. With it on I could clearly see haloing around black lines in my resolution test patterns but this artifacting is less apparent in video content, so it’s really the user’s judgment call whether the perceived increase in sharpness is worth it, but a purist may want to turn it off.

Another example in where some presets are set differently, Bright Cinema is set to D75 (bluer color temp), contrast enhancer in the middle position and gamma is set to 8 providing a crazy (very bright) average gamma of 1.6. Photo is oddly set to D55, (warmer color temp than D65) . I did note one difference with reality creation being stronger in Bright Cinema compared to Reference.

Editor's note: re:  Eric's comments about color temp of Photo mode.  I believe Sony's intent with Photo may be proper for watching "black and white movies" where the grayscale is targeted to 5500K, and B&W photos?   -art

So for my dark room calibration, I used the Reference preset with the less aggressive reality creation.

Note: for those of you who will choose to forgo a professional calibration (shame on you) Keeping the bulb on high (default position) yields a better out of the box grayscale as my RGB Balance charts indicate.

Pre-Calibration Color Temp (D65 pre-set) over IRE Range

Sony VPL-HW45ES Pre- and Post-Calibration Settings, By Mode

Reference Mode Pre-Calibration

Sony VPL-HW45ES Reference Mode Pre-Calibration CIE 1976 Saturation Sweeps (target REC 709)

Sony VPL-HW45ES Reference Mode Pre-Calibration RGB Balance / Grayscale Tracking (target D65)

Sony VPL-HW45ES Reference Mode Pre-Calibration DeltaE 2000 (target below error of 3)

Sony VPL-HW45ES Reference Mode Pre-Calibration Gamma Log 2.02 Average Gamma (target 2.20)

Bright Cinema Mode Pre-Calibration

Sony VPL-HW45ES Bright Cinema Mode Pre-Calibration CIE 1976 Saturation Sweeps (target REC 709)

Sony VPL-HW45ES Bright Cinema Pre-Calibration RGB Balance / Grayscale Tracking (target D65)

Sony VPL-HW45ES Bright Cinema Mode Pre-Calibration DeltaE 2000 (target below error of 3)

Sony VPL-HW45ES Bright Cinema Mode Pre-Calibration Gamma Log 1.56 Average Gamma (target 2.10)

Post-Calibration Color Temperature