You may be able to improve your gamma at the dark end (which is the most important region for gamma) by increasing the Brightness setting a little bit. Although your gamma right now averaged at 1.8, but the low end is not linear and is much higher than 1.8 (e.g. 10% is at gamma 2.5). You can try the 2.2 gamma setting and measure again to see whether the gamma curve follows the same pattern. If it does, the gamma values at the lower end (10% - 30%) may be too high (e.g. > 2.5) so that's why the image will appear too dark when the gamma setting is at 2.2. If increasing Brightness a little bit can improve your gamma at the low end, you may be able to achieve a better result by using the 2.2 gamma setting (or whatever gamma setting which can give you a linearity of 2.2 at the lower end) while maintaining a little bit higher Brightness setting (usually just one or two clicks will do the trick).
I don't know what controls that your JVC 550 gives you to adjust the gamma. If it has such 9-point gamma adjustment control for you to fine tune gamma, you should try it to achieve linearity of gamma at 2.2 for the entire range of 10%-90%. For example, after I did such calibration to my AE4000, the picture is just stunning and has more depth and 3-dimensionality in every scene:
And how come your measured on/off contrast (264:1) is so low? Do you have substantial amount of ambient light when you did the calibration?
Zappiti Pro 4K HDR Media Player
Pioneer UDP-LX500
Pioneer SC-LX901
JVC DLA-N5
JL Audio E110
PS Audio Power Plant P10