Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater New Projector Question?

I recently picked up an Optoma H31 front projector. What a great little projector for less than $600. Does anyone have any insight as to the Advanced Adjustment settings? I used AVIA for calibrating contrast, brightness, color and sharpness. All of these settings are really straightforward. How (or can you) use Avia to set up the red, green, and blue brightness and contrasts levels found in Optoma's Advanced Adjustment menu? Trying to eyeball it is a little difficult. Thanks.

Sorry, not much help here- but I agree that color/greyscale tuning can be difficult without the right equipment. Pros use tools to fine tune the greyscale. It may not be worth changing these settings if you aren't sure what you are doing.

I do know of a user on AVSforum.com that has calibrated Optoma projectors for $150. His user name on AVS is guitarman and his name is Tom. He did my Optoma H77. You ship him your projector and he turns it around back to you within 2 or 3 days.

Someone else may be able to give you more information on how to attempt this yourself.

I had just ran the Avia disc on my plasma lastnight. I bought it to calibrate our theater when everything gets here.

Why cant you use the calibration test on the Avia disc that requires the use of the red green and blue filters. the one where they talk about red push and such. I forget the exact name for it.

I highly recommend the SpyderTV colormetre for around $200 and the GetGray calibration disk. The Spyder is pretty easy to use with a laptop and with a R(701) spreadsheet and 75% color windows you can get excellent calibrated results with all your displays. http://www.colorvision.com/spydertv_usa.shtml

I've heard about the SpyderTV product, but by it's nature of design I don't think it can be used with a front projection system.

If it can, then please let me know.

I haven't used it to measure my projector because I've relied on Michael Chen to do the ISF calibration. It can be used with any display including a projector but you need a tripod which I use for all displays anyway. I don't think they have made the correction to their software yet but there is a support mode which access the xyY data to perform a detailed calibration. The other stuff is too basic and I don't use it for contrast/brightess/color/tint/sharpness adjustments. I have used it to dial in 6500K from 10IRE to 100IRE in a plasma and a pair of LCD rear projection TVs. The other tools you would need would be a detailed Excel spreadsheet to perform the HD R(701) color temperature and gamma claculations. I could email you the spreadsheet. You also need a set of good video patterns such as in Avia or DVE though I prefer GetGray for ease of use which you can purchase online for $25.

For video the SpyderTV is as essential as a RS metre is for audio. Highly recommended.

Thanks for all the replys. I had a chance to sit down and play with the projector and Avia this weekend. I'm really pleased with results and very happy with the Optoma H31. The room conditions are not optimal for front projection-lots of ambient light, bright walls, white ceiling etc, but the picture is great on a plastic wallboard screen painted with Behr Silverscreen and Pearl Opulescence. The Behr really improved the image in ambient light conditions and the image in the dark really pops. I highly recommend this projector for anyone on a tight budget. My big issue now is the standard definition quality from Comcast. Is anyone using DisH or DirectTV with a projector? How is standard definition quality off the satellites? I need to get a Comcast tech out and see if anything can be done.

In my setup with my screen and ambient light I had to take the blue and red contrast and brightness up 2 notches.
I can take down all my settings next time its up if you like but these setting are based on my environment which could be different than yours.

http://www.quadloft.com/h30/mini-IMG_2081.htm

the pictures are more sharper but my old point and shoot camara was not focusing properly. I might try this weekend and update shots with my Digital SLR in manual mode.

With my screen my blue levels were pretty dominant-I had to back off the blue levels considerably. I'm very happy with the colors considering my room environment and screen situation. Did you have any issues with sharpness-that seems to be giving me the most trouble. My cable stations (Comcast) that are SD are soft and fuzzy. It seems to be a signal issue that isn't really fixable with the projector settings.