Picture Quality - For Business Use
Yes there are multiple color modes on this Viewsonic. The Movie mode is the best overall, for when you need especially good color. A couple are pumped up a bit more, - a compromise between "just right" and dealing with ambient light, etc. Like many business projectors you can find just the right balance of picture quality and brightness for your needs.
The thing that makes this Viewsonic special is that it has an awful lot of lumens available in conjunction with some very acceptable color, as these images of the different color modes indicate. Notice that in most modes, reds and yellows, which are often pretty poor on single chip DLP projectors in their brighter modes are at least respectable in all but the brightest mode. Then consider that based on Mike's brightness measurements (which tend to be a little more optimistic than some other reviewers'), that some of those respectable modes are delivering over 3000 lumens. Nice!
In other words, plenty of brightness, with good color picture quality. To think that a decade ago, a projector with 3000 lumens that looked good typically weighed over 20 pounds and over $5000, and was significantly lower resolution...perhaps progress isn't such a bad thing!
All considered, a very bright, yet sub-5 pound portable, with 1080p resolution, has to earn this Viewsonic some serious grades, especially considering the sub-$700 price point. Wow!
Out of the Box Picture Quality
Since this is a cross-over projector, I did have Mike calibrate it for best possible color. For home entertainment / home theater use, we consider how it performs right "out of the box" without any calibration type adjustments, and then also consider how much better it may do after calibration.
Out of the box performance was very dependent on which modes. None of the modes provided, was really close to an accurate post calibration type of picture, but several were very good. The images shown in this gallery are a mix including Viewmatch, PC, Movie and Dynamic PC. For a better understanding of the differences in these modes, though, look at our test image in the first gallery on this page.
Some of the modes are more contrasty than others - that is more - pop to the image. While too saturated colors and too much contrast is far from ideal in a fully darkened room such as a home theater, those are the attributes that cut through a fair amount of ambient light, which makes the Viewsonic very viable as a home entertainment projector, suitable for watching TV, even movies in rooms where some light is present. I mean technically, for serious movie viewing, the Viewsonic is technically too bright for a fully darkened room on a 100" screen, in its 2000 lumen Movie mode.
But then dedicated home theater use isn't what the PJD7822HD was built for. In a typical family room, or living room, it's got the muscle to do a respectable job with respectable color.
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PJD7822HD - Skin Tones - A test of "how good"
Mike Calibrated Movie mode, and placed that in the User 1 savable memory. As mentioned elsewhere, calibrated Movie mode measured in at 1993 lumens (Brilliant Color On).
Above, for your consideration are the usual batch of images showing off how well this Viewsonic projector looks on a variety of skin tones. Mind you lighting and images taken with different effects are included in the batch. Why? Because that's what you get watching movies and TV. There are gorgeous skin tones from Victoria Secret Fashion Show commercials, under both normal and pastel type lighting. There's the usual Daniel Craig as Bond in Casino Royale, with his face lit by direct, and diffused sunlight, a night scene, and fluorescent lights (airport scene). There are football players faces during games. In other words, there's a reasonable cross-sample of what a home user is likely to encounter.
Neither on paper, or in reality did the calibration create highly accurate colors, so some images do look better than others. But, all considered, the Viewsonic did well enough as a very affordable home entertainment projector, especially if we assume some ambient light present. There are times that skin tones seem to be a touch heavy on reds, but also I noticed sometimes a face will almost pick up a bronzed look.
Bottom line on skin tones: Respectable, definitely although not exceptional!
HDTV and Sports Viewing on PJD7822HD L
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For the images above, I used Mike's calibration settings based on Movie, and placed into User 1 mode for all of the non-sports images. Ambient room lighting was kept pretty low for all of those, but never fully darkened. All were taken in the daytime with the shutters mostly closed. Sports images, by comparison had the shutters far more opened. The two image of the room shows how the shutters were set for the sports images note that the door to the outer room with its large skylight was also open. ViewMatch, PC and Dynamic Movie were used for various sports images, which explains some shift in color. There was enough ambient light present that the brighter modes had an advantage. I did not bother to use Brightest mode, because it's color was (as expected) the most off, and that other bright modes did far better color without being significantly less bright.
The Viewsonic produces respectable color while outputting 3000 lumens. View match and PC are both right around that mark, while User 1 calibrated, for the other images still managed 2000 lumens!
Bottom line: Lot's of horsepower for watching traditional TV type content, be it sports, cartoons, The Tonight Show, other typical TV programming or music videos/concerts.
