Optoma H31 Calibration & Bench Testing

Calibration - Get Those Black Levels Right!

It is very important to set the black and white levels (Brightness and Contrast) in order to get the most out of this DLP projector. Forsake this and you might as well keep the lights on in the room. Utilizing the Datacolor ColorFacts CF6500 I tweaked the brightness (black level), contrast (white level), saturation (color/chroma), sharpness, and hue (tint) to accurate levels in the user menu. Before I performed the ISF calibration I reset the projector and took some measurements. The biggest adjustment we made was in the black level setting which was set much too high in the default settings. Once we adjusted black level, all of our ramps looked much better and viewing images on the H31 started to really produce impressive results.

The Datacolor ColorFacts CIE Chart is used to display the colors for the Optoma H31's HDTV color reference, as well as the gamut of colors that it is capable of creating. Here you can see the projector reproduces excellent greens, but has some issues getting into deep blues and reds. Bringing up images on the display showed only pleasing results with no lack of saturation apparent in real world film content.

Here are some of the before and after measurements as shown by the Milori ColorFacts Professional 5.5 software:

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Optoma H31 Benchmark Score: 49 (room for improvement, but this is still an excellent performer)

*Testing was done via component video inputs with a reference source set to 480i.

Comments on HQV Testing

Running the HQV tests on the Optoma H31 allowed us to see how well the projector's video processing did in a variety of tests. Overall, we were pleased with the results, though the internal deinterlacer could benefit from some better processing for dealing with multiple 3:2 events that are layered with either video effects or highly detailed scenes. Noise reduction on this unit was minimal with lots of noticeable noise making its way past the processing and into the picture. Of note, the rather difficult Film Detail test was passed with no trouble at all - this test tripped up more than a few players we have encountered. Overall, we would probably recommend using a high quality progressive scan DVD player with the Optoma projector to achieve the best results. If you have a mediocre player, then you may want to experiment with the Optoma's deinterlacing versus the player's to see which is better. New budget DVD players on the market with HDMI or DVI should be used with this digital connection for best results.