Official Sony VW90ES Tweaking Thread

I created this thread to discuss VW90ES settings for both 2D and 3D, service menu tweaks and ways to improve 3D brightness, reduce ghosting, improve contrast, etc... Here's a few settings which worked for me, I am continuously changing things, so I will try to keep this post as up to date as I can.

RCP (this is global):

Yellow Hue : -5

Nothing fancy, yellow was a little greenish to my tastes


3D Settings for brightness :

Picture Mode : Any (I used Cinema 2)
3D Glasses: Xpand x103
Contrast : 90
Color : 60
Brightness : 50
Sharpness : 10
Color temp : Custom-2
Edited Custom-2:
Gain R : 30
Gain G : 30
Gain B : 30
3D glasses settings : glasses High
Gamma correction : Gamma-1 (black +1, white 0)
Color Space : Wide-3

Explanations :

Picture Mode : Any (I used Cinema 1)
You can use any picture mode, they are simply memory slots, containers for the all other setings.

3D Glasses:
The Xpand glasses are a little brighter than the stock sonys, they have a better optical quality.

Contrast : 90
The contrast is clipping above 80, but pushing it to 90 raises the gamma a little more (the drawback is that it clips some highlights)

Color : 60
Color Space : Wide-3
With a dimmer picture and an aggressive gamma, the colors are less vibrant than they should be, so this keeps the colors perceptibly well saturated. This is not really necessary if you have a high gain screen and you use gamma-3.

Brightness : 50
There's no point raising the brightness and washing out the image, there's a better way to raise the shadow details with a dim picture (i.e. gamma "black" adjustment, see below)

Sharpness : 10
More than 10 is causing visible edge enhancement. If you want a film-like picture with no sharpness enhancement, I would recommend setting it at "1" and not "0". Setting it at 0 seems to disable some important processing.

Color temp: Custom-2
The Custom-2 preset is fairly close to an accurate white point when used with the xpand x103 glasses, it removes the green tint that is present with the custom 5 setting. It's a little darker than the custom-5, but it's my prefered setting for films.

Edited Custom-2:
I edited Custom-2 and set Gain R, G and B to +30 for additional brightness. That gain is a headroom used by the projector for white field uniformity, but with normal material the negative impact is not really noticeable, while the additional brightness is.

3D glasses settings : glasses High
Glasses High is an option which keep the shutter glasses open for the longest period of time. It also happens to be the only usable setting if you have xpand glasses (until they update the firmware).

Gamma correction : Gamma-1 (black +1, white 0)
Gamma-1 is the brightest gamma available on the Sony without making a custom curve.
Black+1 is improving shadow details a little, useful if you have a low gain screen.

Possible issues:

• The gamma setting above is not a "correct" gamma. It makes the image more "washed out". If you have a high gain screen, consider gamma-3(0,0) which should be more accurate.
• If you decide to use gamma-3 for a more accurate gamma, you should also change the color space to Normal, and the color to 50.
• Contrast at 90 is clipping the highlights, it could be noticeable with very bright scenes. Lower contrast to avoid this.
• "Glasses High" could cause visible ghosting. To reduce ghosting, use the sony glasses at mid or low setting.
• The Color Temp Gains could cause some uniformity issues at 100 IRE. If that is a problem, lower all RGB Gains to a more reasonable level.

3D Settings for quality (same as above but with gamma-3 and no color boost) :

Picture Mode : Any (I used Cinema 2)
3D Glasses: Xpand x103
Contrast : 85
Color : 53
Brightness : 50
Sharpness : 10
Color temp : Custom-2
Edited Custom-2:
Gain R : 30
Gain G : 30
Gain B : 30
3D glasses settings : glasses High
Gamma correction : Gamma-3 (black 0, white 0)
Color Space : Normal


2D settings :

Picture Mode : Any (I used Standard)
Iris : Auto-2 / recommended
Contrast : 80
Color : 53
Brightness : 50
Sharpness : between 1 and 10
Color temp : Custom-3
Edited Custom-3:
Gain R : 30
Gain G : 7
Gain B : 10
Bias R : 0
Bias G : -2
Bias B : -2
Gamma correction : Gamma-3 (0,0)
Color Space : Normal

Possible issues:

• Color at 53 is a personal preference, it's more saturated than it should, 50 is a more accurate setting.
• These settings are bright but might cause some uniformity problems at 100 IRE, if the uniformity issue is objectionable, lower all RGB Gains until the issue disappears.
• It's just a starting point which is at least better than default settings. For the best settings, you should consider hiring a professional calibrator.
• This is for my projector, and my current lamp usage (200 hours), the white point will drift over time, and might be different for another projector.
• I still have some flaws in the color temperature tracking, this will require editing the curve with the Image Director software.

2D Iris tweak to double the on/off contrast:
(alter service menu settings at your own risk, note your factory values... etc...)

Service Menu :
Other - Iris/Close Reg : 266 (factory was 334)

User Menu :
Iris : Auto-2 / Fast
Gamma : gamma-3 (black +1)

The defaut value (334 on mine) makes the iris work within a small range of 3:1 ratio. In the past, SXRD projectors were more aggressive than that (5:1).
Changing this value to 266 will make the iris work at around 6:1, giving about 150k:1 on/off contrast.
At 250 it would make the iris around 8:1, giving about 200k:1 on/off contrast.
Black +1 is to correct an issue with low-light scenes. When the iris closes, the display engine thinks that it closes up to 3:1 but It's now twice that ratio. Only the very low-light scenes would suffer from this, so only the bottom end of the gamma curve needs to be changed (which is exactly what black+1 does).
"Iris Fast" is to help the fade-to-black between scenes, but might cause the iris to be more noticeable.

Possible issues:

• The iris action becomes more noticeable
• Some low-light scenes might be a little darker than they should
• The white balance seems to shift when the iris closes too much
• The black level is already great, so this tweak is questionable, considering the additional artifacts it introduces

CIH Lens Shift Limits :
The service menu has Top and Bottom limits for the lens shift, so you can set them at the 2 positions for your CIH setup, it makes changing aspect a little easier, you only have to shift vertical until it stops, then zoom until the image reaches the edge of the screen. It works both ways.
(alter service menu settings at your own risk, note your factory values... etc...)

Service Menu :
Other - Lens Shift V Top Limit
Other - Lens Shift V Bottom Limit

Possible issues:

• The mechanical stop of the lens shift is not very accurate, it's only a circuit which kills the motor beyond a certain point.

Future tweaks considered:

• There's some more brightness available with the panel drive options in the service menu. I'm not sure it's safe, it mess up the gamma curve a lot, and uniformity too, so I didn't touch it.
• For 3D, I should make a custom curve with the Image Director software. It would be fun to replicate the JVC gamma A and B, for example.
• The xpand glasses need a firmware update to support the "medium" and "low" setting, which would reduce the ghosting.
• Lots of green available, maybe a good candidate for an FL-Day filter

(reserved)

(reserved)

Thanks, glad you liked it.
Yes, I agree the extreme gamma is useful only if you really don't have enough brightness from your screen.

If you guys want more color saturation for sports and such, I suggest using Wide-3 and avoid boosting the color dial too much (no more than 60). Because I just found the color dial start clipping the saturation immediately above 50, and the RCP color control is also clipping, but the wide color spaces are fine. So it's better to start with a wider color space and narrow it down if necessary, because you can't do the opposite.

I changed my 3D settings above to reflect that.

Most good titles are placing the scene's center of interest at the screen's distance (converged perfectly one over the other), so the important object or actor you're looking at has no ghosting at all, while your peripheral vision is less sensitive to the crosstalk, so it makes no noticeable ghosting overall. That's why "bad" titles are better when playing with this control, they didn't do that adjustment in the mastering.

If we ever get a firmware update for the xpand, we might have zero ghosting with glasses set at low, while they would have the same brightness as the sonys at medium. The Sony glasses at low are doing a good job but are too dim.

Yes, I also see it has an impact, but it only does half of the job that it should. According to the SXRD documents, this is what is really happening:

• Lowering the brightness control is making the shutter open "later" and close "earlier".
• The ghosting at the top of the image is caused by the shutters closing too late.
• The ghosting at the bottom of the image is caused by the shutters opening too early.

The xpands are reacting to the opening timing change, therefore reducing the ghosting at the bottom of the image.
But the xpands are NOT reacting to the closing timing change, that is why the brightness doesn't change. It's an xpand firmware feature that is missing.

The reason it has a positive impact on some material is that the part of the image which has the most separation (i.e. where you see the most double image when you look without glasses) is on the bottom half of the picture. It's normal, because the top of the image is usually the sky (far away, little separation) and the bottom is usually the ground (closer, lots of separation). Coincidentally, this is what you are changing with the "3D Depth" control, it changes which part of the image has the least separation.

This is all with the projector ceiling mounted, upside down. If it's on a shelf it would reverse the top and bottom in the above explanations. It would also cause more ghosting with most material.