I just got my Mits HC1500 calibrated by Michael Chen. He has calibrated a number of my other displays as well including my old (now defunct) Panasonic 47" RPTV and an older Infocus 4805. Needless to say, I'm familiar with the quality of his work and I wasn't disappointed in the results.

For what it's worth, I didn't play around with the projector before he came. I kept the same, over-blown contrast, poor color reproduction settings that came from the factory and lived with them for the 6 months before he came to Ottawa. As a result, I actually started to get used to the overblown, blue-tinted whites, red-push, crushed blacks and poor grayscale. Now I'm wondering how I could even watch the image before!

I've said it before and I'll say it again - a good calibration takes a cheap projector (or any display for that matter) and makes it leaps and bounds better. I can only imagine the difference it would make on a projector with better optics!

pics?

pics?

DOH! I knew someone was going to ask that. I'll be perfectly frank, I spent over an hour trying to figure out how to shut the flash off on my cheapo Canon digital camera and I can't figure it out. Once I get past that, I'll endeavor to get some screenshots.

Care to share the settings or if you dont...i prefectly understand. TIA.

yes, post setting and you don't have to post pics

Care to share the settings or if you dont...i prefectly understand. TIA.

The correct settings should be different from lamp to lamp, and also change with time as the lamp grows dim. It also depends on the coloring of the room the projector is installed on, the time of the day, etc.

Even more, I've noticed that, as every studio seems to follow different mastering practices, I need different presets for Lucasfilm movies, for Warner movies, Pixar movies, Disney, etc.

And let's also take into consideration the interaction with the internal settings of the particular video player you're using...

So asking Keith to share his settings seems pretty pointless to me.

The correct settings should be different from lamp to lamp, and also change with time as the lamp grows dim. It also depends on the coloring of the room the projector is installed on, the time of the day, etc.

Even more, I've noticed that, as every studio seems to follow different mastering practices, I need different presets for Lucasfilm movies, for Warner movies, Pixar movies, Disney, etc.

And let's also take into consideration the interaction with the internal settings of the particular video player you're using...

So asking Keith to share his settings seems pretty pointless to me.

It may seem pretty pointless to you, but others might want ot see a baseline of what a pro calibration looks like. I, among others would be curious to see his settings to see if it actually made a difference in viewing........it doesnt hurt to try out other peoples settings. If you dont like it, you can always revert to what you had before.

The correct settings should be different from lamp to lamp, and also change with time as the lamp grows dim. It also depends on the coloring of the room the projector is installed on, the time of the day, etc.

Even more, I've noticed that, as every studio seems to follow different mastering practices, I need different presets for Lucasfilm movies, for Warner movies, Pixar movies, Disney, etc.

And let's also take into consideration the interaction with the internal settings of the particular video player you're using...

So asking Keith to share his settings seems pretty pointless to me.

:rolleyes:

The correct settings should be different from lamp to lamp, and also change with time as the lamp grows dim. It also depends on the coloring of the room the projector is installed on, the time of the day, etc.

Even more, I've noticed that, as every studio seems to follow different mastering practices, I need different presets for Lucasfilm movies, for Warner movies, Pixar movies, Disney, etc.

And let's also take into consideration the interaction with the internal settings of the particular video player you're using...

So asking Keith to share his settings seems pretty pointless to me.

I would be interested as well. Im using the factory settings and I personally like the picture. Im curious to see if its improves. If you could post it I would really appreciate it.

I agree that it is helpful. Sure, there are so many factors that are present to make the calibration not work for his or her particular environment, but to come on and actually take the time to post and tell everyone that you got your projector calibrated, and that it makes a huge difference ("leaps and bounds"), and not share the settings...

Of course it would be beneficial, but it is up to him if he wants to keep it a secret or not.

Ok, I take it back. But you'll have to wait. People on this thread are still waiting for the settings:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1006264

guys, do you want my settings while we wait? Opened box, set it up. There you go! Enjoy

guys, do you want my settings while we wait? Opened box, set it up. There you go! Enjoy

That's what I did, but I do feel that the image could be made better by running the test patterns found on any good calibration disc (AVIA or DVE). I'm just too lazy to perform such a complete calibration.

Here's what I did:

- First, turn off Brilliant Color, set gamma to Cinema and color temp to medium.

- Then, set sharpness to -2. This might seem odd, but even a setting of -1 applies oversharpening and shows halos around borders. -2 simply turns it off.

- Then, I played the THX optimizer included on a Star Wars DVD and found that for my particular source (A PC via DVI-HDMI using the VLC player on Win XP) I needed to raise the brightness to around 16. I left the contrast untouched. For other sources you might need different brightness and contrast settings. If you want to adjust the color you should get the THX blue glasses (http://costore.com/thx/productenlarged.asp?peid=87&pid=930793) (edit: when fed a digital signal the HC1500 won't allow you to change color saturation or tint). For gamma adjustments, you can find patterns online.

That's it. the lazy man's guide to calibrating an HC1500. However, the color temperature and shadow detail still feel a little off, so I'll scour the Web looking for a more complete set of test patterns to be used with my PC.

You can also read Audioholics' calibration:
http://www.audioholics.com/reviews/projectors/mitsubishi-hc1500-dlp/hc1500-calibration-getting-those-blacks-right.html

guys, do you want my settings while we wait? Opened box, set it up. There you go! Enjoy

Relax...I'm actually working on getting some images...I figured out the camera and now I just need to rig up some books on the coffee table to act as an ad-hoc tripod.

FWIW - The difference between OTB and calibrated is different than you might expect. A calibrated image is considerably dimmer than the factory presets and whites seemingly take on more of a gray tone. The reason for this is quite interesting - it seems that people respond to "whiter than white" which led TV/projector manufacturers to push blue in the image. This gives the false impression that whites are in fact whiter than they are supposed to appear. Of course, with blue getting exagerated (my blue was far above neutral), reds need to be upped in order to compensate (otherwise people look like zombies) so red-push is incorporated by design.

Long story short, it takes some adjusting after you've gotten used to an image that seems to jump off the screen with vibrant colours and overly white-whites. The flip side is that the calibrated image does appear more natural and has substantially better black level, shadow detail and flesh tones. It's also much easier on the eyes (my OTB settings were ridiculously bright...even on low lamp mode).

As others have noted, the calibration is very bulb specific. My friend has the same projector and his calibration settings are much different than my own.

I tried someone else's settings from their ISF calibrated HC1500 on mine, didn't turn out too well. Colors were really messed up, the image was far too red. I didn't think there would be that much variation, but there is. I'm not going to bother trying anyone else's color temp settings again.

As for the other settings, they had:

Gamma: Cinema
Contrast: -13
Brightness: 2
Sharpness: -5
BC: 0

I'm not going to bother trying anyone else's color temp settings again.

Indeed, the color temp settings depend on the bulb. But brightness and contrast adjustments depend on the source, so unless you specify the player/video card model and its configuration, they're not very useful.

Does anybody else hope that with the advent of LED-based projectors that produce pure Red, Green and Blue, color temp settings will be more consistent between projectors of the same model? After all, each technological advancement has set us free from having to make some adjustments:

- The jump from tube-based displays to flat panel displays meant we no longer had to worry about adjusting the geometry of the image.

- Fixed-pixel displays made it a lot easier to make sharpness adjustments (simply plug it to a PC showing small-point black text in gray background)

- Digital connections set us free from HV position, tint, pixel phase and pixel clock adjustments. In some models (HC1500 included), even color adjustments.

So with each iteration of technology, there is less and less to be tweaked... If LED indeed brings pure, unfading primary colors with it, I hope we will also get rid of the need to adjust the color temp.

If the movie industry + the manufacturers of players and displays reach an agreement over a set of universal settings for black level, white level, gamma, etc. to guarantee that what you see is what the director intended, give it a catchy name (Something like "THX plug and play") and put a single button in the remote control to activate this profile, that would be great, too.