Epson Home Cinema 5030UB Calibration & Settings

Before we provide our settings, let’s see what we started out with: Pre calibration, these are the color temperatures over the grayscale range.

Here’s a look at the other modes, just reporting on White – (100 IRE).  Note that Natural, Cinema and THX are, best we can tell, virtually identical.  For those with EU or other international versions, the Cinema mode is what you should use instead of the THX mode we list, since, as best I understand it, the TW8200.  (I trust that your units have a Cinema mode!)

There was an error on this page regarding the grayscale settings for Gain and Bias for RGB.  That has been corrected, and it now matches the same data on the Advanced page for our subscribers.  Subscribers though have access to our CMS calibration data, that is, the calibration of each primary and secondary color.  It may be what I’ve often called “the last 5 or 10% of a calibration, but it can make a real difference!

Average gamma =   2.18

To the left are Mike’s adjustments for the THX and Dynamic modes. Again the goal of “best” is a great looking 6500K grayscale, and the goal of “brightest” is to improve a bright mode in terms of color accuracy, but without compromising brightness significantly.

Gamma:                             2.2     2.0 (default)
Lumens:                678@6517    1706@7036

That covers the calibration data, except for CMS.  More on that on our Advanced Calibration page for our subscribers.

Mike’s calibration comments: Overall, the 5030 UB is very similar in performance to the 5010.  Lumen output is slightly higher in Dynamic mode with the 5030 UB, but the biggest increase (169 lumens) is in the better picture quality modes (Cinema, THX, Natural).  Grayscale is okay right out of the box and is virtually the same in THX, Cinema and Natural modes, with the correct red levels in the higher IREs, but it’s deficient in green and has too much blue.  It calibrated extremely well (see graph), with Delta E under 2 for the entire range.  This is an improvement over the 5010 we tested, which had a huge jump at 100 IRE as the red tapped out.  The gamma settings are more accurate than they were with the 5010, with the average gamma coming in at only 0.02 less than the preset value (2.18 vs. 2.2).  Similarly, setting gamma at 2.3 yielded an average gamma of 2.27.  There are extensive gamma settings available, but, like the 3020e, the simple gamma setting is so good, most people won’t need to use them.

The Quick Cal of Dynamic reduces the green that’s apparent in whites, but it causes a rapid drop in lumen output and also starts to look too red with light grays.  Living Room mode has a better picture and its output of over 1400 lumens is probably sufficient for most uses.

The color gamut is quite good by default in THX mode, with Red too high in absolute luminance and Green being off the Rec. 709 target mark.  Blue was fairly good, but oversaturated.  The secondaries were generally good, with only Magenta being noticeably off the mark in hue.  Green and red couldn’t be completely moved into alignment with the CMS, but they were close enough and everything in normal viewing appeared accurate.  Skin tones were better than the 3020, but the skin tone setting is subtle enough that if you think there’s a touch too much red, you can tone it down with that control.