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Viewsonic Pro9000 Projector Calibration and Settings

Posted on July 24, 2013 By Art Feierman

Virtually every home projector we review gets calibrated. Note we do not calibrate many all-in-one, and gaming projectors. This Viewsonic Pro9000 is typical, though and gets calibrated.

Our calibrations, including this Viewsonic Pro9000, are normally limited to a grayscale calibration, along with brightness, contrast, color saturation, tint (where applicable), etc. Only in very special circumstances will we calibrate the individual colors, in which case we discuss why.  (If you hire a professional calibrator, they will normally calibrate those individual colors in the CMS.)

Here are some pre-calibration numbers for the Viewsonic Pro9000, our calibration settings, and the final results.

Viewsonic Pro9000 Color Temperature

Color Temp over IRE Range (Best Mode, Pre calibration)
30 IRE 7357 7050
50 IRE 7342 7087
80 IRE 7339 7057
100 IRE 7369 7360
Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE (mid zoom)
Reference 1044 @ 7369
TV 1054 @ 7356
Cinema Film 1 1047 @ 7360
Cinema Film 2 773 @ 6112
User 1054 @ 7357
Game 1281 @ 7815
Photo 794 @ 6121
Bright Cinema 1132 @ 8477
Bright TC 1131 @ 8480

Viewsonic Pro9000 Basic Settings

While we have a complete set of Mike’s measurements, I’m going to hold off publishing them, as we wait for a full production Pro 9000 projector to arrive.  I suspect that the next version of the projector will calibrate differently, and therefore, these would not be relevant.

Settings for measurements (default values are in parenthesis):

 

Viewsonic Pro9000 Post Calibration Grayscale: User Mode

Post-Calibration color temps, 20 – 100 IRE

Pro9000 User Mode

Color Temp over IRE Range (Post calibration)
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Mike’s notes (pre-production projector): Preset gamma curves need work.  Gamma is right around 2.2 until you get to 90 IRE and it drops off to 1.5, making the average 2.11 (see grayscale chart).  They’re really all over the place.  Also, only having full range RGB controls makes it difficult to get a good grayscale balance.  Green is in abundance at the higher IREs and absent at lower IREs, so you have to balance it as best you can without making grays look purple or red.  The CIE chart shows pretty good color except for blue and magenta, which are not very accurate.  It’s only really noticeable in test patterns though.

Mike also noted:  The User 2setting don’t seem to retain their starting picture modes, even though they retain the settings.  If you leave User 2 mode, when you go back to it, it’s not the same.

Art’s Notes:  Viewsonic advises that this issue of a flakey User 2, has been addressed and fixed.  We will confirm when the new Pro 9000 projector arrives

Pro9000 RGB Settings

Calibration settings for User:
Color Temp on Custom 3, Iris off, Gamma on Off, Color Space on BT.709, Color on 44, all other settings on default or as previously stated.

Viewsonic Pro9000 Projector – Performance 3
Viewsonic Pro9000 – Projector Screens