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Measurements Calibration HQV

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PLV-Z60-CIE.jpgThis is the part I love. Seeing if my eyes told me the truth about how this projector looks. Measuring a projector and then calibrating it is the best way to see what you get out of the box and what you can get when the product is tweaked. Before testing we ensured that any "auto" modes were disabled. This included Auto Black Stretch, Transient Improvement, Contrast Enhancement and Dynamic Gamma, all of which are located in the Advanced menu. The lamp Iris was also set to Close so that it didn't ramp up and down as we made adjustments to the RGB levels. Color was excellent, and better than many projectors I've tested at more than twice the price of the Sanyo PLV-Z60.

Overscan is +10 by default, you'll want to defeat that unless the input is receiving output from a cable box. Those tend to require at least a line or two of overscan to get rid of the garbage at the very top of the visible picture signal. Another strange default was with regards to HDMI. The HDMI setting defaults to L1 (Level 1). I found that I needed to change it to L2 in order to get below black information. Once we set that we were able to get correct levels and better determine the correct Brightness and Contrast settings.

With HDMI, I had options to use Full, Zoom, Caption in, and Natural Wide scaling. This is actually unusual and very welcome since mostly you only get Full or Normal (for 4:3 discs). Zoom will likely be the most helpful as many so-called "HD" channels tend to broadcast double-letterboxed content and you can benefit from filling up the whole screen.

When setting Black Levels (Brightness) realize that your perceived black level is susceptible to total screen luminance values. For example, setting the black level while the log steps pattern gradually gained luminance caused me to actually drop the black level one more step when the luminance levels were at their lowest. If you calibrate this set with too much white on the screen, you're likely to set the Brightness a tad higher than you should. Since many dark scenes are total, and like really bright point source lighting, it's a good idea to sacrifice some detail in highly contrasting scenes in order to regain some more depth out of the truly dark areas of films.

White levels were a tad finicky, and I found that I could still barely see the third white bar in my test patterns - the "whiter than white" bar which ideally I'd make go away. The additional click needed to do so, however, also nuked my second to last bar - something I didn't want to occur as it would entail a loss of bandwidth.

After the projector truly settled in, I read some average color temperatures in the upper range of 6550K while the average color temp for my selected mode, Pure Cinema, hovered around 7000K. The color temp and light output range at 100IRE looked like this:

  • Brilliant Cinema - 61 cd/m^2 @ 7200K
  • Creative Cinema - 46 cd/m^2 @ 7400K
  • Pure Cinema - 32 cd/m^2 @ 7000K
  • Natural - 50 cd/m^2 @ 7700K
  • Living - 62 cd/m^2 @ 7500K
  • Dynamic - 119 cd/m^2 @ 9800K
  • Vivid - 119 cd/m^2 @ 9900K

Taking some measurements I came very close to saying that this projector really doesn't require calibration. The truth is that it doesn't - not to look good, but it can look better with some adjustments to the RGB gain and offset levels. Here are some of the before and after measurements as measured by our reference Datacolor ColorFacts Professional software:

PLV-Z60-RGB-B4.jpg
RGB levels before calibration (not bad at all)

PLV-Z60-RGB.jpg
RGB levels after calibration (tighter)

If RGB levels were barely brought in line, looking at the color temperature measurements yields a similar picture:

PLV-Z60-temperature-B4.jpg
Color temp drifts above 6500K as light output levels increase

PLV-Z60-temperature.jpg
Calibration brought us nearly perfect to 6500K from 30 - 100 IRE

The gamma curve looked smooth and stayed almost unchanged (at ~2.3) before and after our calibrations:

PLV-Z60-luminance-B4.jpg

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Sanyo PLV-Z60 Benchmark Score: 47 (score increases to 62 once Film mode is engaged)

Test

Max
Points

Film

Pass/Fail

Color Bar

10

10

Pass

Jaggies #1

5

1*

Pass

Jaggies #2

5

1

Pass

Flag

10

0*

Fail

Detail

10

10

Pass

Noise

10

0

Fail

Motion adaptive Noise Reduction

10

0

Fail

Film Detail

10

0*

Fail*

Cadence 2:2 Video

5

0

Fail

Cadence 2:2:2:4 DV Cam

5

0

Fail

Cadence 2:3:3:2 DV Cam

5

0

Fail

Cadence 3:2:3:2:2 Vari-speed

5

0

Fail

Cadence 5:5 Animation

5

0

Fail

Cadence 6:4 Animation

5

0

Fail

Cadence 8:7 animation

5

0

Fail

Cadence 3:2 24fps film

5

5

Pass

Scrolling Horizontal

10

10

Pass

Scrolling Rolling

10

10

Pass

Total Points

130

47

Source was the Denon DVD-3930CI DVD Player.

*by default, the system sets Progressive deinterlacing mode to L1. Both L1 and L2 fail unflagged deinterlacing tests. The third mode, Film, passes this mode. Users will want to engage Film mode when feeding this projector any interlaced video from DVDs. Sanyo really needs an Auto mode that can pick up and detect unflagged 3-2 pull down sources. Engaging Film mode also further aids the system slightly in its ability to handle jaggie reduction.

Comments on Benchmark Testing

Enabling the Film mode raises the HQV benchmark score to 62 since the Jaggies 1, Flag, and Film Detail tests all get higher scores.

Moving Zone plate tests looked pretty rough once they got up to speed. The pattern tended to break up quickly in all directions, though we did see some flashing in particular diagonal and circular movements. This is actually not unusual for a basic video processing.

Users should note that there is actually a loss of resolution if you decrease the Sharpness control below 0, so you'll want to leave them at their defaults. Above 0 nets edge artifacts that are unpleasant and unnecessary for a clear, sharp picture.

The PLV-Z60 has a panel alignment setting where you can adjust the RGB panels individually for both the dark and light ranges. Transient Improvement was correctly Off by default and is basically a Sharpness enhancer which we recommend users stay away from. Color Management is another toy that allows you to tweak individual colors, similar to Sony's color software. Users who want more light output may want to experiment with the Automatic lamp Control modes (there are two). In our room we found Eco to yield the best overall results, but we weren't lacking for light output. The Lens Iris is another place to tweak. Leaving the iris Closed yielded the best black levels for us, but for greater light output you can open it up. You can also combine this with the Lamp Iris which has two Automatic modes (one of faster than the other). We actually liked the faster of the two modes (Auto2) which seemed almost instantaneous to us. The noise the iris makes when it switches is subtle, but there aren't a lot of steps either, so movement will be minimal and mostly aid in dramatic changes from light scenes to dark.

 

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picture_shooter posts on March 31, 2009 23:36
I saw this projector in action couple weeks or so back. I really like it, this is coming from a fan that used to own Optima
lsiberian posts on March 19, 2009 16:26
crashkup, post: 540103
I read a review that cautioned that at the brightness level this projector works at the screen should not be too big. However it did not say how big is too big. so I am wondering, as i consider buying a PLV-60, is my 10 ft. wide screen too big?

If anyone can illuminate me, that would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

Danny

You would probably okay if you had a Carada Brilliant White screen
jostenmeat posts on March 19, 2009 16:15
crashkup, post: 540103
I read a review that cautioned that at the brightness level this projector works at the screen should not be too big. However it did not say how big is too big. so I am wondering, as i consider buying a PLV-60, is my 10 ft. wide screen too big?

If anyone can illuminate me, that would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

Danny

If you want to test the waters of going big as you can, you might look into high gain screens, retroreflective, particularly the one I use, DaLite High Power. It takes more thought and/or compromises in taking advantage of the properties:

- you will want the PJ as close to the viewers' head as possible
- you will want to keep all viewers within a 20 degree viewing cone

When directly on-axis, the gain will actually be over 300%. It's rated as 2.8x, but I think or guess that in most scenarios something like 2x will be had. However, I also guess that a 10 ft wide screen is more than twice the viewing surface of a 100" screen.

Ok, nm, slightly less than double:

https://tvcalculator.com/index.html?45a7092fbf774c799862cf4bf623be1e
BMXTRIX posts on March 19, 2009 16:06
100" is about the recommended max size under dark home theater conditions.
crashkup posts on March 19, 2009 15:37
Sanyo PLV-Z60 and Screen size

I read a review that cautioned that at the brightness level this projector works at the screen should not be too big. However it did not say how big is too big. so I am wondering, as i consider buying a PLV-60, is my 10 ft. wide screen too big?

If anyone can illuminate me, that would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

Danny
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