Digital Projection M-Vision Cine 230-HC DLP Projector HT Labs Measures

HT Labs Measures

Full-On/Full-Off Contrast Ratio: 2,127:1

Except as noted, all of the measurements here were taken with the projector adjusted for the most accurate image, with the Lamp Power on Standard (high mode), Gamma on Film, and both Brilliant Color and Adaptive Contrast off. The screen was a 101-inch-wide, 2.35:1, 1.1-gain Elite. The projector was located 16 feet from the screen, roughly the shortest possible throw distance that will allow its 1.85:1-to-2.40:1 zoom lens to produce a 101-inch-wide image.

The peak-white and black levels that produced this contrast ratio were 12.76 foot-lamberts and 0.006 ft-L, respectively. With the lamp power in the Economy mode and the image zoomed down to fill a smaller Stewart StudioTek 130 screen (82 inches wide, gain 1.3), the corresponding numbers were 15.01 ft-L and 0.007 ft-L for a full-on/full-off contrast ratio of 2,144:1—not surprisingly, about the same. (The smaller screen is 78 inches wide, but the zoom lens could only reduce the picture to 82 inches without moving the projector closer, another variable I didn’t want to add. In addition to the screen size change, altering the zoom can also change the peak brightness and contrast ratio. Since the Elite isn’t one of the screens we’ve used in previous projector evaluations, the StudioTek 130 numbers are presented here to provide an approximate comparison to earlier reviews.)

The Brightness setting for these measurements was 102, the Contrast setting 60. I later found it possible to increase the Contrast to 70 or even 80 to compensate for a slight additional loss of brightness as the hours on the lamp approached 200, without excessive white clipping.

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The Color Tracking charts show how well a display adheres to the D65 standard white point; the tighter the overlap of the three primary colors, the nearer the result is to D65. The Before Calibration result shown was taken in the 6500K color temperature setting, which produced a respectable result, with the Delta E values never exceeding 4.33. Calibration required only small changes to the RGB controls, after which the Delta Es were all under 2.45. (Delta E is a figure of merit indicting how near the result is to the ideal white point of D65. Below 4 is good, and below 3 is generally considered visibly indistinguishable from a perfect result.)

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The CIE chart above shows the Cine 230-HC’s color gamut in the Rec. 709 setting of the Color Gamut control. The white triangle is the measured result, the black triangle the Rec. 709 HD color standard. The color points were accurately positioned. The brightness levels of the colors were slightly excessive, by about 8 percent in total, but while there was no way to adjust this without a color management system, the deviations weren’t obvious to the eye. Overall, the 230-HC’s color performance was hard to fault.—TJN

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