Viewsonic Pro8200 Projector Calibration and Settings

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Art Feierman

We calibrate every home theater that we review. The Viewsonic Pro8200 received the usual treatment. I "played" with the Pro8200 for a couple of days, passed it off to Mike for calibration and measurements. 24 hours later, I'm back to watching it.

Ours is a pretty standard calibration, there's always more done by some of the "hi-end" calibrators. Our calibrations, including the Viewsonic Pro8200, are normally limited to a grayscale calibration, along with brightness, contrast, color saturation, etc. Only in very special circumstances will we calibrate the individual colors, in which case we discuss why. Let's take a look at the numbers:

Viewsonic Pro8200 Color Temperature

Color Temp over IRE Range (Best Mode, Pre calibration)
30 IRE	8172
50 IRE	7685
80 IRE	8142
100 IRE	7718

Before we provide our settings, let's see what we started out with: Pre calibration, these are the color temperatures over the grayscale range:

Header Content
Brightest	1653 @ 7232
Standard	1529 @ 7718
Theater	1296 @ 7891
Dark Room	839 @ 7993
User 1	1108 @ 10280
User 2	1108 @ 10277

NOTE: There are three other color temps in addition to Mid, but Mid gives the highest lumen output.

(By default, Dark Room is on Eco lamp. With Eco off, Dark Room has same lumens as Standard)

Lumen Output (Eco Lamp On, Brightest): 1306

That represents a drop from 1653 lumens at full lamp power. The math says that's a drop of an almost perfect 21%. Most projectors drop 20 to 25% when going to their eco - low lamp, power mode.

Viewsonic Pro8200 Basic Settings

In addition to calibrating Red Green and Blue for a correct grayscale balance (6500K), there are a number of other settings that come into play. Typically Contrast and Brightness (white balance and black balance), need to be done first. Color saturation and gamma also need adjustment.

Settings for measurements (default values are in parenthesis)
	Brightest	Standard	Theater	Dark Room	User 1	User 2
Contrast	(52) 50	(48) 50	(48) 50	(48) 50	(48) 50	(48) 50
Brightness	(45) 52	(49) 53	(49) 53	(49) 55	(49) 55	(49) 54
Color	50	50	50	50	50	50
Tint	50	50	50	50	50	50
Color Temp	(Mid)	(Mid)	(Mid)	(Mid)	(Mid)	(Mid)
Gamma	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)