Measurements Calibration HQV

This 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:

RGB levels before calibration (not bad at all)

RGB levels after calibration (tighter)

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

Color temp drifts above 6500K as light output levels increase

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:

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)

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.