HD7100 Calibration & Benchmark Tests

We confirmed that the color temperature tracked pretty close and measured 8641k @ 80 IRE:

The factory default setting runs way too cool and blue for proper home theater calibration, with this in mind we selected the factory default 6500k to approximate the preferred ISF settings:

Selecting the factory default 6500k setting, the HD7100 still measured pretty far off our targeted calibration mark of D65, We measured 7133k @ 80 IRE.

Next we decided to calibrate the HD7100 in Standard mode. We calibrated the projector with the user controls in the setup menu and we were able to achieve pretty consistent color temperature settings at ~6500k from 30 IRE to 80 IRE

30 IRE

We found that a Gamma setting of 2.2 or 2.0 and low lamp mode gave us the best results with our calibration. Each projector's calibration will likely be slightly different from the factory per allowable tolerances. In addition, we typically find that taking into consideration room, screen, and ambient light variances what settings work for us may be much different for our readers.

Calibration Observations

We give Optoma high marks for their very in-depth, intuitive user calibration menu system. We found that we were able to achieve very respectable calibration results in a very short time using our color analyzer. On the other hand that may be a problem because we found the factory default ISF settings to be far off from the specified D65 target and not every user has a color analyzer on hand to calibrate their projector. We only hope that this is a result of our pre-production unit, and projectors that are shipping to end users are calibrated to a more precise level.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Optoma HD7100 Score: 70

480i Component Video Connection was utilized for testing.

Comments on HQV Testing

At first, we were a little disappointed in the 7100's internal scaling and de-interlacing. The Scrolling horizontal, and Scrolling vertical all failed the test. We then remembered the small de-interlacing user adjustment menu. We began running the HQV tests while making adjustments. This opened up several intriguing developments.

We noted that selecting Video on Film to the On position, (default is Off) The HD7100 passed the *Scrolling horizontal and *Scrolling vertical tests with flying colors. We began revaluating the 7100 with the Video on Film set to On. We found all of the tests to be the same except for Film detail. Oddly, when the Video on Film is set to On, the 7100's internal processor fails the test.

Turning off the Video on Film the 7100 passed the Film detail test but failed the Scrolling Vertical and Horizontal tests. Scaling and de-interlacing performance of the HD7100 is decent, but the quirky adjustments force the user to compromise. The Jaggies tests were darn near perfect, but we did note loss of detail on the flag test and a little noise in the image. Both of these issues contributed to the lower overall score.