# BenQ W5000



## mechman

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. :dizzy: 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. :scratch:

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.


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## mechman

*Cinema Mode*

*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.


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## mechman

*Dynamic Mode*

*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.


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## mechman

*Standard Mode - out of Box*​









Not bad considering the two above.


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## mechman

*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.


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## mechman

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. :bigsmile: I am still learning as I go with calibrating! :reading:

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. :dunno: 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. :dunno:

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.


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## Rodny Alvarez

NO PICS????:scratch:


I want to see some screen shots!!:bigsmile:


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## mechman

Rodny Alvarez said:


> NO PICS????:scratch:
> 
> 
> I want to see some screen shots!!:bigsmile:


Here's the pj










You can see I have some work to do on the ceiling now.... :wits-end:

I'll get some screenies soon! :T


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## Blaser

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 ...


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## mechman

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. :T

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. :reading: :dizzy: :scratch:


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## lcaillo

Not bad work for an amateur!:nerd:


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## Blaser

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


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## mechman

lcaillo said:


> Not bad work for an amateur!:nerd:


Hey! I resemble that remark! :1eye:


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## Rodny Alvarez

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

Thanks!!:bigsmile:


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## mechman

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


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## Rodny Alvarez

mechman said:


> I'm a little over 14' back. I can't recall the exact measurement. :scratchhead: 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:dontknow:.
Thanks!!:T


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## mechman

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? :dontknow:


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## mechman

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


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## thewire

My W5000 is on 180 hours so far tonight. :bigsmile:


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## mechman

thewire said:


> My W5000 is on 180 hours so far tonight. :bigsmile:


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.... :scratch:


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## thewire

mechman said:


> 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.... :scratch:


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%.

[MOUSE]Digital SLR cameras will make the images look blue in tint by nature.[/MOUSE]

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.


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## mechman

For some reason I thought you had the gear to calibrate... :scratch: sorry about that!


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## mechman

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


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## mechman

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. :blink: 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.


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## mechman

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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## Rodny Alvarez

With the HCFR you need to remove the diffuser to take the measurements!


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## mechman

I actually knew that Rodny. I just forgot to in this case. :hide: The confusing thing to come out of that was that the diffuser causes that much of a shift in the measurements? :dunno: 

New readings will be coming today with HCFR.


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## Blaser

I have a lot of trouble getting correct Gamma readings...:wits-end: Even set at 2.2 in best mode I obtain 1.8 when measuring. That's a pity, there must be something wrong. I am also only getting about 6.5 FL from the sensor pointed to the screen with 100 IRE. It doesn't look so dark to me though.

Mech, do you measure directly from the projector? What about brightness, how do you measure it?


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## Rodny Alvarez

Hey Blaser did you calibrate the sensor??

How many hours on the bulb??


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## Blaser

Rodney! How are you? The bulb is a replacement bulb with only 333 Hrs now on it. 

I use HCFR and I press the measure, calibrate sensor tab, I put the eye one sensor on something very dark and that's it. The calibration is very fast though, just when I press the button, it is instantly done. I am not very sure this is correct...:whew:


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## mechman

Everything so far has been projector only. After dinner tonight I plan on doing another run of HCFR pointed at the projector. And then I'm going to do a calibration with the screen. If I am correct in my thinking, very little if any will need to be adjusted since Black Widow is D65.

If your gamma is too low, then your image may be too dim with your blacks being too bright. I fixed my gamma by adjusting my W5000 up to a gamma of 2.4. I did a reading of it yesterday and it was 2.2 across the board. I believe your gamma will be fine once you get everything else set right. Work on your black and white levels Ahmed, after that check your grayscale, and when you get that all set do your primaries and secondaries. Hopefully lcaillo will chime in if I'm cuckoo!

As for the 6.5fL, have you tried moving the sensor around? Ideally you should be somewhere around 12fL. I measure my brightness using a spot meter. My HC3000 with a new bulb was ~12fL. I haven't checked the W5000 yet but I'll do it tonight and let you know. I use a 100IRE window for that.


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## Blaser

Thanks Mech, and apologies I don't mean to highjack your thread.
I have done all this, can't get the blue excactly right, and I have manually adjusted the Gamma to be about 2.1, but that's the highest setting I could obtain...Anyway I feel there's either something wrong with the sensor calibration or with the sensor itself.


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## mechman

I'm finally getting around to posting the CalMAN/HCFR comparison

These were readings from my screen - Black Widow

Here's the HCFR readings of the primaries










HCFR CIE Plot










CalMAN measures


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## Rodny Alvarez

Hey Mech!

can you explain the Panamorph set up on that projector??
What it is 
How it works....etc:bigsmile:

Thanks!!:T


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## mechman

Rodny,

To be honest, I have yet to use it. I completely forgot about the feature until you mentioned it now. I'll give it a try this next week and report back! :T


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## Rodny Alvarez

mechman said:


> Rodny,
> 
> To be honest, I have yet to use it. I completely forgot about the feature until you mentioned it now. I'll give it a try this next week and report back! :T



Thanks!!:T


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## mechman

I looked into this last night. It's only 'panamorph compatible'. It requires a panamorph lens. :thumbsdown:


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## Rodny Alvarez

:crying:

thanks!!


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## mnfish

Hi! So I have a new BenQ W5000 and will be setting it up this fall. I'm not a calibrator at all. Do you have any suggestions on how to get it tweaked a little better than out of the box? How can I get into the service menu to adjust the settings? 

And overall how do you like the projector? What screen and size do you have? I was looking at a DIY 110" 2:35:1 and adding a DIY anamorphic lens on a sled. Any suggestions on screen color? It will be in a room that is not totally dark during the day but close and certainly dark at night. 

Any help is greatly appreciated!! :T


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## mechman

Hi Ken! I love the BenQ W5000. It was quite the leap from a HC3000U. You'll definitely want to stick to 'User Mode1' with 'warm' selected for color temp. That was the closest to calibrated 'out of the box' I saw. Standard mode was fairly close as well. If you watch hockey as I do, you may like the 'Dynamic' mode for that. I like the blue push when watching hockey for some reason. :dontknow:

I have a 100" Black Widow right now. But I'm switching to a 106" Elite Silver Frame CineGrey soon. I would recommend either C&S or Scorpion N8.5 for a diy paint. And the Elite CineGrey for a commercial option. :T


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## mnfish

Do you prefer the grey over the white for screen color and why?


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## mechman

If it's not totally dark you need a gray to help with blacks. :T


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## mnfish

It isn't so much (light) during the day but is totally dark at night. I will be using black out curtains, too. My fiance likes to watch college hockey and needs to see all the details. She's a BIG St Cloud State fan. :T


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## mechman

Well then you may like a white screen. The beauty of painting is that if you don't like it, you paint over it. I like very dark blacks. That's why I like gray screens.

What I would do is paint whatever it is you're going to use as a screen with Kilz primer and then try it out. If you like it, paint it with Valspar Ultra Premium Flat Enamel White. If you want darker blacks, go with one of the grays. :T


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## mnfish

That would be fine if I have flat walls but the walls are textured. :sad:


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## Rick

Hey mechman, how do you like your BenQ W5000? I was thinking about getting the BenQ to replace my Mitsubishi HC1500. Is the 1080p picture that much better than the 720p? I really like the picture on my Mitsubishi with my blu-ray player. Would I have any problems in mounting this on my ceiling.I had to sit my Mitsubishi near the floor so I wouldn't have to use the keystone.The height of the ceiling where I would be mounting the projector is 6' 6". The rest of the ceiling is 7'6' but where I have to mounted the projector to get the right distance from the screen (which is a 110"screen)there is a drop in the ceiling to 6'6". With the projector mounted on the ceiling it would put it about 10" to 12" down from the top of the screen. The room is 12x 21. Thanks, Rick


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## mechman

Rick,

Take a look here. Select "Home Projector", "W5000", "16:9", and "Ceiling mount". If you mount it 15' back at 6'6", you should have enough room between the bottom of your screen and the floor. The further you go back, the less room you will have. There is a vertical image shift as well. You'll want to mount it pretty close to the ceiling.

As for 1080p vs. 720p, it all depends upon where you're sitting. We sit close enough to be able tell the difference - 13.5' for a 100" screen. The nice thing in going to this projector from my Mitsubishi HC3000 was the option of actually adjusting some of the settings for a decent amateur calibration. :T The HC3000 offered very little in that regard. But it is a very nice projector.


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## Rick

Thanks for the information. I guess I will have to decide if it is worth the money to go to 1080p or just be happy with what I got. Thanks again. Rick


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## mechman

Keep an eye on their site for the refurbished deals. :yes:


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## Rick

Last time I checked they didn't have any.:hissyfit:


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## Bruce Fisher

mechman said:


> Rick,
> 
> Take a look here. Select "Home Projector", "W5000", "16:9", and "Ceiling mount". If you mount it 15' back at 6'6", you should have enough room between the bottom of your screen and the floor. The further you go back, the less room you will have. There is a vertical image shift as well. You'll want to mount it pretty close to the ceiling.


Thanks for this link - I hadn't seen this before. You might have just saved me some aggravation!

I have a W5000 sitting in the box that I received last week. Getting ready to mount it this weekend - and based on that calculator, my screen is too low by a few inches!

I want to confirm I'm reading this right. My screen is 55" high (plus 3" border) and it's 10" from the ceiling (for a total of 68" drop needed). The PJ lens will be about 4" below the ceiling so I need to enter 64" (65 to be safe) in the screen height box (bottom right entry on the window)? Or do I just enter 55" and not worry that it's 10" (+3" border) below the ceiling?

What is confusing me is that they show 0" as distance from lens to top of screen... does that mean my screen top needs to be the same height as my lens? Or can it be lower without issue? And if it's lower, do I include that amount in the screen size calculator?

Thanks! :bigsmile:


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## mechman

Bruce Fisher said:


> Thanks for this link - I hadn't seen this before. You might have just saved me some aggravation!
> 
> I have a W5000 sitting in the box that I received last week. Getting ready to mount it this weekend - and based on that calculator, my screen is too low by a few inches!
> 
> I want to confirm I'm reading this right. My screen is 55" high (plus 3" border) and it's 10" from the ceiling (for a total of 68" drop needed). The PJ lens will be about 4" below the ceiling so I need to enter 64" (65 to be safe) in the screen height box (bottom right entry on the window)? Or do I just enter 55" and not worry that it's 10" (+3" border) below the ceiling?


It is just a basic calculator. I think it's main purpose is to give you min/max screen sizes for the distance you mount your W5000 at. I'd enter the distance first and note the min and max screen sizes. There's a 20% vertical shift either way on the W5000. For a 55" high screen I believe you'd have 11 inches of play up and down. _There is no horizontal shift though!_ So get your left and right lined up perfectly. 

So the top of your screen is 13" from the ceiling. And your pj lens is 4" from the ceiling. That's a 9" difference so I think you should be fine.



Bruce Fisher said:


> What is confusing me is that they show 0" as distance from lens to top of screen... does that mean my screen top needs to be the same height as my lens? Or can it be lower without issue? And if it's lower, do I include that amount in the screen size calculator?
> 
> Thanks! :bigsmile:


They show zero but you should be fine as long as you're within the 20%. So no, the top of your screen doesn't have to be lined up with the lens. :T

There's a 20% vertical shift either way. For a 55" high screen I believe you'd have 11 inches of play up and down. _There is no horizontal shift though!_


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## Bruce Fisher

Cool! thanks for clarifying.


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## mechman

I recently hit the 500 hour mark and decided to check the settings/readings. Turns out some of my previous settings reverted back to the original default settings. Two hours later, here's where I'm at:


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## atledreier

That's not bad at all. Reminds me I need to do mine as well.


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## mechman

Yep. I'm fairly happy with it. I may try to find out what the 'burp' is at 40IRE. And I'd like to get gamma back up to 2.2. 

Maybe I should just relax and watch a movie! :dunno: :bigsmile:


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## atledreier

I recently redid mine as well, with 400+ on the lamp. Did the first run after only 50 hours, so some shift was to be expected.

What I didn't expect was the huge drop in perceived blacklevel when I blacked out my room. Went from a fairly light room with complete light control to a blackened room with complete light control, and the blacks look much brighter than before. Kinda bummed about that. I'll work with it some more and see if I can get it down a bit. Swapped screen fabric a while back to a white one, so that may be a cause as well. Problem is my current fabric (dreamscreen Acoustic Ultra HD) don't come in grey, just white. Hopefully the v2 of that fabrick will have a grey side and a white side like the AcousticHD fabric did.


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## lcaillo

That would be a normal response. If your design can accomodate a small amount of backlighting with no spill onto the screen you will percieve deeper blacks.


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