Acer PH530 Home Theater Projector Review - General Performance3

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Art Feierman

PH530 Projector Screen Recommendations

PH530 Projector Measurements and Calibration

The Acer PH530 was definitely off the target of 6500K temperature in Theater mode.

Before adjustment


100 IRE (white)	6033K
80 IRE	6185K
50 IRE	6201K
30 IRE	6274K

By applying these changes


Red	95
Green	99
Blue	100

Skin tones with these settings really were very good, as was overall color.

The Video preset was worse out of the box, with very strong greens.

Grayscale balance was almost dead on the ideal 6500K for movies


100 IRE	6388K
80 IRE	6515K
50 IRE	6562K
30 IRE	6656K

To fix Video, R,G,B was adjusted to 100, 90, 102, respectively. That yielded a color temp of 8053K for white. I did not measure the other IREs (grays), but the very tight range of color temperature seen in the Theater mode should hold here as well, so that these settings should (and did) produce very watchable TV/HDTV/Sports.

PH530 Image Noise

I didn't spend much time here, and sadly never got around to running the HQV test disk. Still, I spotted no severe problems. There was about an average (maybe, just maybe) a touch more noise visible than with other DLP projectors, but again, for a low cost projector, not an issue. I found no real problems with handling motion artifacts or jaggies. It was very typical in that regard.

I hope you have room lighting under control, because, due to the brightness of the projector, I'm recommending screens with a little gain, and that means white surfaces that can't reject side ambient light. If you are keeping the size small, say under 100" diagonal, and are on a tight budget (which I assume would be typical, since this is the least expensive home theater projector out there), then you might also consider the Elite HC Gray surface. The surface, I believe is available in motorized, pull-down, and fixed screen configurations. Not only is the Elite affordable, but it is a very light gray surface, without too much "HC - high contrast." As a result, it tends to work well with lower powered projectors, that need a bit of a boost in black levels. Because it is both low in contrast and light gray, it's not as effective as others in terms of ambient light, but still far better than a white surface in that regard.

Overall, the PH530, in my testing room (fairly dark walls), worked very nicely with my Carada Brilliant White screen (gain 1.4).