Viewsonic Pro8530HDL Projector Review – Performance

Brightness

The measurements in the above table were made with the projector’s zoom set at its mid-point.   Changing this to maximum zoom increased the lumens output in brightest mode to 5285 (white) lumens, thus meeting the manufacturer’s 5200 lumen rating for this projector.  Changing the lens to minimum zoom setting decreased the brightness to 4192 (white) lumens.

Brightness uniformity was less than ideal with approximately a 50% falloff in brightness from the center of the image to the dimmest corner measured in Brightest Color mode.

Color Accuracy

The following diagrams show the performance in terms of color gamut accuracy with the PRO8530HDL operating in ‘Movie Color Mode’ with the factory default setting.

As can be seen in the above diagram the measured green primary color point (the green circle) shows the greatest error from the standard green color point (the green square) for HD video (ITU Rec. 709).

The above luminance diagram shows the all of the primary and secondary colors (with 100% saturation) were displayed 20% up to 35% too dark, as compared to white.  This is probably due to the use of a clear segment in the color wheel as part of the ‘Brilliant Color’ function, which pumps up the white level.  This characteristic is not unusual for single chip DLP projectors that use a clear segment in the color wheel along with the ‘Brilliant Color’ feature.  I must note that in ‘Movie Color Mode’ the Brilliant Color level has been reduced in the factory default settings as compared to the brighter picture modes offered by this projector.  Further reducing the ‘Brilliant Color’ setting on the projector’s menu to a setting of 1, corrects much of this issue, but at the cost of reduced white lumens.

I adjusted the color temperature controls offered by the projector to improve the color temperature and grey scale.  The two diagrams below show the before and after grey scale measurements.  As seen in the 2nd diagram the grey scale was adjusted to track near the ideal 6500K color temperature.

The following adjustments were made.

Color Temp. = Neutral

Red Drive = 32

Green Drive = 43

Blue Drive = 48

Red Offset = -3

Green Offset = 0

Blue Offset = 0

Noise