BenQ W5000

**mechman** · **03-28-09, 05:12 PM**

I recently got in on the refurbished bandwagon for this projector. And I'm very happy with it. My old pj was the Mitsubishi HC3000 which was your average run of the mill 720p projector. The W5000 is a 1080p. I figured I'd share this journey!

When the box showed up at the door I was amazed at how big it was. Turns out that they packed the actual pj in it's original box within this box.

Opening up the pj box I was again amazed at how large this pj was. It was over double the size of my HC3000. Needless to say, hooking it up required a run to the local Best Buy to pick up a new mount. After hooking it up and running it the first time (1 hour on the bulb from the service center by the way), I was yet again amazed at the image it was capable of. I had thought that I had seen enough with my HC3000 that nothing could be that much better.

Anyway, I was originally going to write up a review on this projector but I figured there are more than enough floating around in cyberspace that it was unnecessary to do another. Plus it's a year old release. so instead I figured I'd add to the calibration side of things with a quick rundown of how this projector was, with relation to standards, out of the box. I'll also show how I got it close in about 45 minutes. I would have kept working on it but I ran out of time.

The equipment used was my eye-one pro spectrophotmeter - not to be confused with the numerous eye-one colorimeters floating around out on the market, a Sekonic L758C light/spot meter, my laptop, and CalMAN 3.3.

Back when I delved into calibrating my own projector, I used HCFR. While HCFR is an excellent tool, especially for beginners or the once a year folks, I found myself looking for more. Especially when I was posting some of the charts here and I found out that some of the math in the program was wrong. I believe this was fixed for the current release of HCFR. I still use it occasionally but I mainly use CalMAN.

CalMAN is a bit more intuitive than HCFR in that it actually has various modes that it can be run in. It has beginner mode for the beginner, intermediate mode (what I use) for a little more advanced use, advanced mode for those who want full control, and a design mode which states it’s for “Workspace design mode; chart and report layouts”. It’s a wonderful piece of software and well worth the $100 or so I paid for it. If you’re looking for the simple program that will guide you through by the hand eventually teaching you enough so that you can do what you want on your own, this is it.

Maybe after doing everything in CalMAN I'll redo it in HCFR and see what kind of difference there really is.

These first four sets of readings are the 'out of box' readings on certain factory pre-set modes. The spectro was ~2 feet from the pj lens, facing the pj.

**mechman** · **03-28-09, 05:21 PM**

Cinema Mode - out of box

***Take note that for these readings I had the meter set up ~10 feet from the pj. The others had the meter ~2 feet.***

That's why these Y values are a bit lower. I took readings closer, but the pdf report was empty. I'll have to see if I can rebuild it later.

I'll reserve my comments on this mode until I have a chance to rebuild the closer readings.

**mechman** · **03-28-09, 05:24 PM**

Dynamic Mode - out of box

This mode was extremely blue. Not recommended! By the way the RGB color balance chart is off a bit as my eye-one pro spectrophotmeter doesn't get decent readings at 0 and 10 IRE. And for some reason that throws that whole chart off. If there were a way to not include that chart, it wouldn't be there.

**mechman** · **03-28-09, 06:17 PM**

Standard Mode - out of Box

Not bad considering the two above.

**mechman** · **03-28-09, 06:18 PM**

User 1 mode (Warm color temp) - out of box

Someone at AVS had recommended these settings. User1 with 'warm' color temp selected.
Of all the modes out of the box, this one is probably the closest to D65.

I plan on adding more to this including readings after a DVE and Avia calibration. And maybe even one after running the THX optimizer.

**mechman** · **03-28-09, 06:51 PM**

After getting all of those readings, I made several adjustments to try and figure out the controls in the service menu and the isf menu on the W5000. I've also been in touch with the folks at CalMAN several times as well as lcaillo.

I am still learning as I go with calibrating!

I made several runs only to find out that I goofed something seriously up. For instance, not putting the diffuser on the spectro. In HCFR I didn't have to do that. And for some reason I thought the older version of CalMAN worked without it as well.

So that was the first redo. The second redo came about because I was trying to get my lower end gray scale readings better and I found out that I should place the spectro as close to the pj as possible. Second redo. It was then that I was informed that my meter is fine it's either the pj, the source material, or both that are the problem on the low end of the gray scale. I've seen rumblings over at avs though that my meter isn't that accurate on the low end.

So that was three days or so ago and countless hours lost in the basement theater staring at gray scale windows and 75% windows of the primaries and the secondaries. This morning I had time to do some work on black and white levels as well as the gray scale. I also came up with a better way to mount my spectro on my tripod which puts it 1 foot further back - ~3 feet. So here's where I stand right now:

Still needs a tad more work on the white level but at least my gray scale is more in line and I'm pretty much D65 across the board.

I'm gonna work on the Gamut tonight. I've been having issues with green not lining up properly the last few days. But I've got some new ideas to try out.

**Rodny Alvarez** · **03-29-09, 12:26 AM**

NO PICS????

I want to see some screen shots!!

**mechman** · **03-29-09, 01:57 PM**

Quote:

Rodny Alvarez wrote:

NO PICS????

I want to see some screen shots!!

Here's the pj

You can see I have some work to do on the ceiling now....

I'll get some screenies soon!

**Blaser** · **03-29-09, 04:14 PM**

That's great Mech! Really good job done by calibration. I guess it took you few hours to get it that way1

I got the eye one sensor yesterday, still trying ...

**mechman** · **03-29-09, 05:16 PM**

I'm still not there yet Ahmed. I have yet to work on my color gamut. It had given me fits previously. But I think I have it figured out now and I'm planning on finishing up tomorrow night.

And it was actually several days of trial and error. Mainly though to get a better handle on CalMAN and also to try and figure out the limitations of my meter. I haven't had that great of luck on the low end and I always thought it was the meter. But the folks at CalMAN think it's something else - the pj, the source or a combo of both. I'm gonna keep fiddling with it a bit.

The other thing that's really taken some getting used to is the amount of info that's adjustable in the ISF and the service menus.

**lcaillo** · **03-29-09, 06:10 PM**

Not bad work for an amateur!

**Blaser** · **03-29-09, 06:21 PM**

Been doing trial and error as well since yesterday. I also believe tomorrow's the day

**mechman** · **03-29-09, 07:08 PM**

Quote:

lcaillo wrote:

Not bad work for an amateur!

Hey! I resemble that remark!

**Rodny Alvarez** · **03-29-09, 07:27 PM**

Hey Mech how far is the pj from the screen??
Is the fan noisy??

Thanks!!

**mechman** · **03-29-09, 08:04 PM**

I'm a little over 14' back. I can't recall the exact measurement.

The fan isn't that loud at all. I don't notice it anyways. I believe the fan noise is supposed to be 28db. Not sure if that's in normal mode or whisper. I have mine set at whisper.

**Rodny Alvarez** · **03-29-09, 10:04 PM**

Quote:

mechman wrote:

I'm a little over 14' back. I can't recall the exact measurement.

The fan isn't that loud at all. I don't notice it anyways. I believe the fan noise is supposed to be 28db. Not sure if that's in normal mode or whisper. I have mine set at whisper.

That just seemed kind of loud, my sanyo is 19db so to me 28db looks pretty high on paper, I'm looking to replace mine with a 1080p and some of those number are pretty high, but I've never heard a pj with a 28db fan

.
Thanks!!

**mechman** · **03-30-09, 11:10 AM**

It's quieter than my HC3000. I pretty much sit right underneath it and I never notice any noise from it at all. I think the whisper mode that I run it at might be a bit more silent than the 28db. But who knows?

**mechman** · **03-30-09, 09:41 PM**

I've run into some very interesting peculiarities while comparing CalMAN to HCFR tonight. I'll post my results tomorrow...

**thewire** · **03-30-09, 09:59 PM**

My W5000 is on 180 hours so far tonight.

**mechman** · **03-31-09, 07:27 AM**

Quote:

thewire wrote:

My W5000 is on 180 hours so far tonight.

Steven - you calibrate your gear. Have you done yours yet? I'd be interested in knowing whether or not you can get green to sit properly....

**thewire** · **03-31-09, 09:56 AM**

Quote:

mechman wrote:

Steven - you calibrate your gear. Have you done yours yet? I'd be interested in knowing whether or not you can get green to sit properly....

Mine is calibrated without the use of a quality colorimeter. I turn off the BC because I am in a light controlled room, set my gamma (screen dependent) to 2.8 for my Dalite High Power, set my manual iris to 0, DB to on, tint to -12, color to 53, and sharpness to -3. I used my THX glasses and my Optimizer 2.0 disk. The lamp will not be stable until after around 200 hours, but I'm not sure that I will need to do any kind of ISF calibration, or adjustments to the color management. I use no electronic sceen position adjustments. This is as close as I can get to making screen shots look right. I don't see any problems with green. Are you using the settings from 60P? You will want to use the CMS in that area to start with because the 24P CCS is best suited for other countries that will use PAL I think. It is fine if you want to write down the settings, then copy them over if that is what your having problems with.

edit: I also started with the Warm Color Temp.

This is with Photoshop resize, and Auto Color

These are with Photoshop resize, Auto Color, and A warming filter (85) at 50%.

Digital SLR cameras will make the images look blue in tint by nature.

The left blue square turns slightly purple in the image that does not look true to life, but this is about as close as I can get I think to matching the colors with a digital SLR camera. I did not check other test patterns with the camera, as I was mostly looking for correct skin tone. The deep blacks in the camera also exhibit lines, which is also normal. If I had some kind of WB control on my camera besides Auto WB, I might get better grayscale but I only have a very old 3.2 megapixel Olympus camera. I do have a tripod to use however.

**mechman** · **03-31-09, 10:02 AM**

For some reason I thought you had the gear to calibrate...

sorry about that!

**mechman** · **03-31-09, 10:07 AM**

Ok so here's the final charts after calibrating the pj. Remember this is the pj only! Nothing from the screen. That will come in the next few days and will more than likely be posted in the screen forum. About the only thing that I really want to work on is the gamma. It's low at 2.1 and I'd like to be in the 2.2-2.4 range.

Here's how it ended up:

RGB - got better readings on the lower end at night. Apparently some of the light leaking through may have messed with my lower readings.

Gamma - as I said, I need to get this up a bit more.

Gamut - I guess I am one of the many that cannot get green to sit properly.

It's well within parameters though with a DeltaE of less than 4.

**mechman** · **03-31-09, 10:20 AM**

So after finishing all of the above up last night, I had a little spare time. So I figured I might as well do a run through HCFR and see how the two programs match up. The results from HCFR stunned me.

There will be a short explanation following the charts.

Grayscale measures - not even close

Primaries and secondaries

Color Temp

Gamma - the only thing that was close...

RGB levels - way off...

CIE plot

As you can see it's quite a bit different than the results from CalMAN. At first I figured that I had a bad calibration of my eye-one pro spectrophotmeter. So I re-calibrated and re-did them again. They came out identical and that is what you are looking at up above. At that point I was fairly certain that HCFR was again mired by bad math. The original version was so i figured they had yet to fix it. But later, after heading to bed, I came to realize that these measurements were taken with the diffuser in place. I don't think HCFR is very accurate with the diffuser in place. CalMAN requires it when pointing the meter at the pj. I guess what I'm saying is don't come to any conclusions quite yet. I'll redo the HCFR readings again on Wednesday and see if in fact, teh diffuser is the cause for the major errors.

**mechman** · **04-01-09, 12:35 AM**

I took a few shots of it tonight. Some hockey, some Dark Knight and some other... would've helped to get the tripod level. I always forget to do that for some reason.

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