HC1080UB Projector Measurements and Calibration
OK, a lot to cover here!
The Epson overall, does a very good job out of the box, but it has a couple of "screwed up" modes. Actually, really only one - Living Room. I'll get to that below.
The default Theatre Black 1 mode, what I'll call the Epson's "best" mode, out of the box, is off, but primarily by virtue o Epson having set the Color Temp default for this mode at 7500K. (What were they thinking - "everyone" knows that 6500K is D65 - the correct color temperature for viewing movies (black and white, excepted). I didn't even bother to measure brightness at the default, as it didn't make any sense to me (I imagine, though, I would have gotten more lumens than after the color temperature adjustment.
With just that simple fix, the colors were far, far better. All measurements were done with lamp on full power. Keep in mind, that there is usually a 200K - 300K temperature difference between projectors in bright and low lamp modes.
Theatre Black 1, default settings except for color temp changed to 6500K:
White (100 IRE): 6448K
Light gray (80 IRE): 6547K
Medium gray (50 IRE): 6261K
Dark gray (30 IRE): 6365K
Getting down to work I wanted to get the color temperatures up (less red) just slightly overall, not that these settings above don't produce a very good image.
The end result proved to be a truly excellent set of numbers, and corresponding color accuracy for movie watching:
Theatre Black 1, 6500K color temp, Offsets: Red - 2, Green 0, Blue 3. Gain: Red 2, Green 3, Blue 0. For viewing I normally had the Skin Tone setting at 3, or occasionally at 4.
The end result of these settings:
White (100 IRE): 6633K
Light gray (80 IRE): 6498K
Medium gray (50 IRE): 6348K
Dark gray (30 IRE): 6475K
Which adds up to: Bingo!
Theatre Black 2, which I expected to be lower than Theatre Black one, had a default color temp of 6500K, but still measured cool. I only measured white (100 IRE), which was 7068. Now, I'm told that for old black and white movies, the ideal is around 5500K, so this setting would need some work, which I didn't do.
Theatre Mode: I didn't tamper with the settings, except to change the color temp from default 7500K, to 6000K. In this mode, that yielded excellent color balance of:
White (100 IRE): 6505K
Light gray (80 IRE): 6678K
Medium gray (50 IRE): 6730K
Dark gray (30 IRE): 6870K
That's just a tad "cool" (bluish), but is considered very close. Adjusting Offset and Gain, can further tweak that.
Natural, which is a mode, that seems to have lower contrast, less "sizzle" provides an overall cooler (more blue) look. Overall this mode appears less dynamic - more muted than the others:
White (100 IRE): 7964K
Light gray (80 IRE): 7940K
Medium gray (50 IRE): 7955K
Dark gray (30 IRE): 8116K
OK, now to the fun stuff. Living Room, and Dyanmic modes.
First, I want to mention that I had an interesting discussion with a ISF certified projector calibrator at CES. I have always found that most HDTV, and especially sports, tends to (in my humble opinion) look better with a color temp around 7500K, or a touch higher, than at 6500K like the movies. This calibrator, however, insisted that 6500K should still be the correct temperature. This is something I plan to investigate further. Meantime, this time, I worked with both Living room mode, and Dynamic mode, with a 7500K to 8000K range in mind.
HC1080UB Living Room mode:
What a mess. I couldn't believe the measurements I got in default living room mode, with its incredibly high color temperature measurements:
White (100 IRE): 8003K
Light gray (80 IRE): 9765K
Medium gray (50 IRE): 11,000K
Dark gray (30 IRE): 11,500K
Yuk!
It took some work to get good measurements, but the final results produced a very watchable picture, even if the range in color temperatures still varied quite a bit from white to dark gray. Further tweaking, of course, can tighten them up, but, it is, to a large extent, trial and error:
Color Temperature: 8000K
Offsets: Red -3, Green 5, Blue -14
Gain: Red -6, Green 14, Blue -15
White (100 IRE): 7029K
Light gray (80 IRE): 7595K
Medium gray (50 IRE): 7968K
Dark gray (30 IRE): 7586K
For those looking for a "living room" setting closer to 6500K, I suggest simply dropping the Color Temp to 7000K.
Dynamic Mode:
The default color temp is 6500K, and the measurements were very dead on, for maintaining a 6500K range:
White (100 IRE): 6551K
Light gray (80 IRE): 6662K
Medium gray (50 IRE): 6553K
Dark gray (30 IRE): 6413K
That's about as good as it gets - except for green, which is pushed way up, to kick out more lumens, and cut through ambient light. Green was WAY up at white (100 IRE), and continuously dropped down to where it should be by 30 IRE (dark gray).
I targeted getting between 7500 and 8000K for my desired Dynamic mode, and getting there required these settings:
I set Color Temp for 8000K (probably should have used 7500K, so you might want to try that). Of the Offsets and Gain controls I left everything at 0, except for Green Offset 2, and Green Gain of 1.
The end result for Dynamic:
White (100 IRE): 7510K
Light gray (80 IRE): 7763K
Medium gray (50 IRE): 8291K
Dark gray (30 IRE): 8120K
This worked out very well. The green component was still a little high at 100 IRE, and just slightly low at 30 IRE.
Although I never remeasured, I ultimately spent most of my Living Room mode time, with the settings mentioned, except dropping Color Temp to 7500K from 8000K. On some content, 7000K looked even better (when comparing in a dark room). Remember, this mode is for cutting through ambient light, and gives up some overall picture quality. With over 1500 lumens, even after adjustments, it's very good at handling some ambient light.
