Epson 810 HQV Calibration & Measurements

The PowerLite Pro Cinema 810 HQV projector seemed to lack some of the more saturated greens (according to the CIE chart, however this wasn't apparent in our viewing tests and we were using a DVD source for our measurements which is less reliable than a calibrated video signal generator.

We again utilized datacolor’s ColorFacts Professional 6.0 software to calibrate and measure the grayscale response of the Epson projector. The PowerLite Pro Cinema 810 HQV is an exceptional projector that comes with pretty good performance out of the box, except for some oddities. For example, when setting White levels you must have Epson Super White 'On' in order to get whiter than white output from the projector. On the other hand, I could not initially seem to get the 810 HQV to pass 'blacker-than-black' with HDMI. Take away the TX3 Silicon Optix processor and the pattern showed blacker than black. Taking the next step I quickly realized that I'd need to make adjustments in the TX3 and raise the black level to get to the point where I could see the 'blacker-than-black' bars I was looking for. What I ended up with was Brightness = 55 and Contrast = 49 (defaults are 50 and the Epson 810's settings were at 0):

While calibrating the Epson I noticed two things: One, the remote control could be pointed almost anywhere and still control the projector, and Two, Epson makes you take about a dozen button presses to get back to the RGB Gain/Offset menu. By the time I was done I had engaged hundreds of button pushes - no exaggeration. Remembering the last menu function would be a really great improvement for more casual users.