Sanyo PLV-Z5 LCD Projector- Calibration

Remote Control (CXVT)

The only differences between this remote and the one belonging to the PLV-Z4 is the presence of toggling HDMI and component video buttons. The second Component video button’s space is now occupied by a direct-access VGA button, leaving the final position available for an “Info” button which activates the on-screen menu showing the projector’s status and input source. The downside to this is that you no longer have direct control over each input and programming universal remote controls may take some additional thought or workarounds.

Pros

• Fully backlit
• “Light” button on the remote glows in the dark
• Extensive Image Controls
• “Freeze” control

Cons

• Lost discrete inputs in favor of space-saving toggles for HDMI and component
• No automatic backlight with first button push
  

Projector Calibration

The Sanyo PLV-Z5 did exceptionally well out of the box. I was given an “off-the-shelf” unit, so there’s little chance that anything was pre-tweaked before arrival. When I put this projector up for calibration I found that it was in really great shape without any tweaking. Even black and white levels were almost spot on in my room (a huge improvement over the PLV-Z4). The CIE chart showed that color capability was exceptional with only green coming in just below the REC-709 HDTV target levels.

Here are some of the before and after measurements as shown by the Datacolor ColorFacts Professional 6.0 software:

Calibration Notes

I have to say that calibration is almost not needed on this projector – and that’s refreshing. We experienced one of the quickest calibration sessions ever, taking just a few back and forth adjustments of red and green to dial in the image to acceptable levels. I especially liked how the menu system remembered where we were throughout the process, so had merely to “right-arrow” our way back through the menu to make additional tweaks to the RGB gain and offset levels.

Just for Fun – Color Temperature and Output Levels

We put up our datacolor Spyder2 colorimeter and cycled through all of the PLV-Z5’s modes in order to see how this affected light output and color temperature. Here are the results:

• Brilliant Cinema: 62.5 cd/m2 at 6550K
• Creative Cinema: 48 cd/m2 at 6700K
• Pure Cinema: 30 cd/m2 at 6250K
• Natural: 54 cd/m2 at 7000K
• Living: 63 cd/m2 at 6800K
• Dynamic: 134 cd/m2 at 9050K
• Vivid: 134 cd/m2 at 9050K

What did I learn from this experiment? Well, Dynamic and Vivid not only looked the same on our screen, they measured the same as well. Pure Cinema, while more accurate, can certainly be supplanted by Creative Cinema if you’re looking to eek out more light from the Sanyo. The other modes were not particularly useful to me since I was either looking for the brightest possible image, or one that was accurate to film.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Sanyo PLV-Z5 Benchmark Score: 79 (not bad, and better than many displays and source components)

Source component was the Denon DVD-3930CI DVD Player.

Comments on Benchmark Testing

Set that progressive mode to ‘Film’ if you are sending an interlaced signal to the Sanyo (the default is ‘L1’ which doesn’t do very well on DVDs or 480i [interlaced] sources). I found that for users of older DVD players, this projector does excellent work at deinterlacing and scaling, so send it 480i, unless you have a high-performance DVD player. The Sharpness control seemed best when set at 0.

The Moving Zone plate 2-3 tests passed with flying colors this time around. I’m not sure what Sanyo did with the new model, but it seemed to fare a lot better in terms of handling rapid deinterlacing during horizontal, vertical and diagonal movement.