Projector Screens Reviewed/Compared

[krizzz]

I am taking the plunge and building a dedicated media room with a projector. Since this is my first foray into the projector world, I am doing my homework.

Projector reviews are straightforward, (much like TVs) from sites like Projector Central. But I need to find out about projector SCREENS.

I have googled and found a hundred different screens made of 100 different materials and I have no idea why one is better than another. Any of you projector gurus have a good resource for rating or choosing the right screen?

TIA

[guitarist155]

this should be in the projector section then i'm sure people would love to help

[krizzz]

Originally Posted by guitarist155

this should be in the projector section then i'm sure people would love to help

D'oh, can one of the mods move it?

[yellowblanket]

krizz, do u have a budget and what is the size you are trying to get?
There is a different between spending 500 buck screen and 50 buck paint. Would human eye notice it, yes. But with the righ technique and right paint material, you could make the 50 buck paint screen look even better than what people paying 500 buck for screen cloth.
With screen paint, there is always inperfection on the wall itself to worry about, same with screen cloth and wrinkle.

You should at least try to read this long thread at avs
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=929997
let me know if you need a shorter version lol

[kccarl]

I read your request and am offering my own experience. I too built a dedicated theater room and although expensive, I've loved every minute of it.

When I was looking for screens, I not only read all the reviews, over and over, but when to local retail stores and watched snippets of films on some of them. What I learned is that it truly is important what budget you have.

The differences are small, but can be important. First, size isn't as important. Meaning, get the biggest size your room will handle. Don't forget the 1.5 rule. Your sitting distance from the screen is 1.5 times the diagonal size of the screen. So, figure out where you want to sit in your room, then pick a screen size that fits the rule. I sit 180 inches from my screen, and I have a 120 inch screen.

Second, decide if your room is going to have no light, some light, or a lot of light. I say that because good screens have gain, and that gain can help reduce glare in rooms that are not completely blacked out. Mine is completely blacked out and I still got a screen with a 1.3 gain.

Finally, budget. I didn't have a budget. I decided that I was going to get the best screen I could find where the cost versus return of goodness started to drop off. There are a lot of good screens and your review reading will help a lot. I settled on Stewart Filmscreen Firehawk G3. The G3 material was specifically designed for 1080p projection. Its a grey screen. I paid around 2000.00 plus shipping. I can assure you will like that screen, but if its outside your budget, read the reviews, you will find very good screens for less.

Don't forget about ebay. Believe me, you can save money and if the provider is a power user, you can trust them. Mine arrived ontime, in perfect shape, and I've loved it ever since.

You didn't ask for this, but I'm going to share a secret. When you go to do your walls, make sure you use a non-reflective surface. My secret was to use carpet pad glued to the drywall. Then, I press fitted a material overtop of this. It has provided a truly acoustic perfect room for a lot less cost than anything else. I would be glad to speak to you more about that. Acoustic treatment is so very important in a dedicated theater room and mostly everything is a financial rip off out there.

Hope this helps,
KCCarl

[krizzz]

Yellow and Carl - Thanks for your responses!

Budget - I will spend what I need to to get a good image, but I'm no perfectionist. I kinda follow the 80/20 rule. If I can get a setup that is 80% as good as a very expensive one for half the price, I will err on the side of cheapness.

Ideally, I would like to get a decent 1080P Projector and screen for <$3K.

Lighting - The room will have very tighly controlled lighting. It will be in a basement with two window wells, that I will cover with heavy window treatments.

[yellowblanket]

remember, a good screen will be nothing if you don't know how to use it.
Darken the area around the screen, flat black, ect... will dramatically increase your resolution.
And if it's worth your trouble, it would help greatly to work on the accoustic near/behind the screen since that will be your first reflection point of your rear speakers

[kccarl]

Something I meant to add too. I was going to try and get a little bit bigger screen and have a little less border material. I was freaking on every inch. The guy I bought my screen from made the point that losing a few inches of screen size to get a nice wide border around the screen will be worth it in the end.

It was questionable to me, but I decided to trust him and instead of getting a 1.5 inch band around the screen, got their more deluxe 3 inches. Because of (I forgot the actual name of it) but its over shoot of the picture itself, it was worth it. A little bit of the movie inheritantly goes off the screen onto the border. If you get a wider black border, it makes it so you can't really see it while you are watching the movie. Plus outlining the screen itself gives it a classier look.

good luck,
kccarl

[AlaskaDon]

Originally Posted by krizzz

Yellow and Carl - Thanks for your responses!

Budget - I will spend what I need to to get a good image, but I'm no perfectionist. I kinda follow the 80/20 rule. If I can get a setup that is 80% as good as a very expensive one for half the price, I will err on the side of cheapness.

Ideally, I would like to get a decent 1080P Projector and screen for <$3K.

Lighting - The room will have very tighly controlled lighting. It will be in a basement with two window wells, that I will cover with heavy window treatments.

Since you are going to have full control of lighting, I would really consider building your screen yourself. I did that with mine and I was very impressed with the way it turned out.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/diy_screen.htm

That's a very easy to follow plan and will save you a ton of money. I modified the plan a little when I made mine. Rather than using the paper that the plan calls for, I went to the fabric store and purchased Blackout Cloth. This is the material used to line drapes. Several shades available, but you want to use regular white. Then you stretch the cloth on the back of the frame and staple it just like stretching a painting canvas. You'll end up with a very professional looking screen when you're done as long as you take some care in making the corner cuts on the boards, and in wrapping them in the velveteen before assembly. All together, I think it cost me $80 to build this.

[wem003]

Originally Posted by AlaskaDon

Since you are going to have full control of lighting, I would really consider building your screen yourself. I did that with mine and I was very impressed with the way it turned out.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/diy_screen.htm

I've been thinking of doing the same, but I am trying to find cloth that is wide enough since I am projecting at 106". I don't mind shrinking it to fit the cloth I can get around here.

How easy was it to keep the fabric stretched? Seems like you build up the frame with the velvet, and then just try to keep the blackout as tight as you can while you staple it down. Any tips?

We can PM if this is getting too off topic....

[AlaskaDon]

Stretching/stapling the cloth wasn't really all that hard, but it could have been easier if I had got a couple of people to help me do it. I did it all by myself. What I did was lay the cloth out over the finished frame and stapled the top edge down. Then I hung the frame up on a beam that runs the whole length of my garage and started working down the side. Had to alternate sides pretty frequently to avoid getting any wrinkles. Finally I was able to take the little bit of remaining slack out of the material by pulling down on the bottom center and stapling that down.

Something else that happened was that after a couple of months I noticed that the material stretched some and I had some excess slack along the lower edge of the screen. To remove that I took the screen down and just pulled the material tighter and added more staples. I didn't need to remove staples from the sides or anything to get rid of it.

If I was going to do the project over, I think I would get a couple of friends to help with stretching the material, but even doing it totally by myself it wasn't all that bad. Also, looking at it in hindsight, I would cut myself 4 triangles of something like 1/4" plywood and screw these onto each corner on the back-side of the screen to stiffen the frame up some. The metal corner braces are fine once the screen is hanging on the wall, but they do twist around some when moving it. Obvously these would have to be installed last after the screen material is in place.

[krizzz]

Thanks for all the good tips. I think I will try building a screen. If I hose it up, I'm out $80 and can always buy a screen...

Quick question on material. I've seen black, gray, white. I'm very ignorant and am trying to understand how a picture would even show up on a black screen or how it wouldn't be really light on a white screen. I read the AVS thread posted above and am still not sure what I should be doing here. White in a dark room and black/gray in a light room?

Thanks.

[Ben]

I have to chime in here and recommed that you look seriously into Carada screens... they offer a tremendous bang for the buck and deliver not only the best customer service I've ever experienced, but a well manufactured product. I had the opportunity to audition Stewart, Da-Lite and Carada a few years ago and simply couldn't justify the expense of Stewart and Da-Lite over Carada's exemplery performance. Carada screens cost a third of the competition and deliver equal performance. Check it out!

[Justice]

Descent screens are expensive. I'm a dealer and i'm blown away by the cost compared to retail. You can get a detail on them here:
http://www.draperinc.com/Front_projection_screens.htm
the prices range from 200-10,000.
they have everything and you get what you pay for.

[AlaskaDon]

Originally Posted by krizzz

Thanks for all the good tips. I think I will try building a screen. If I hose it up, I'm out $80 and can always buy a screen...

That was my thought exactly. It's pretty hard to screw the job up though. I might have went ahead and just bought a screen, but it's generally pretty costly to have bulky objects shipped all the way up here, and I figured that the cost of material was probably a good deal less than what shipping alone would have cost me for a professional screen. It also helped that I already had all the necessary tools. You'll need a mitre saw or know somebody that has one in order to cut the 45's. Other than that it's just a staple gun, drill, and a screwdriver.

If you decide to do it, I would just stick with white. It should be pretty comparable to a 1.0 gain material which is all you really need unless you have to deal with ambient light, or if you had to mount the projector a long distance from the screen. My setup looks way better to me than the display at Best Buy using the same identical projector and the screen they quoted me $1200 for.

Oh, another note about the blackout cloth. That stuff has a "slick" side and a more cloth-like side. I'm projecting onto the cloth side. You'll see what I mean when you look at it. Good luck with the project

[krizzz]

Originally Posted by kccarl

Second, decide if your room is going to have no light, some light, or a lot of light. I say that because good screens have gain, and that gain can help reduce glare in rooms that are not completely blacked out. Mine is completely blacked out and I still got a screen with a 1.3 gain.
KCCarl

Hey guys, one last question now that I am looking at building a screen.

Does anyone know which materials (if any) have gain? Or is it pretty much only a pre-made screen will have gain because they are using specialized materials and a DIY screen will be 1.0?

I don't know that I necessarily NEED any gain, but it would be nice to explore the options for different materials before building.

UPDATE: I just found this listing. Has anyone ever seen/dealt with this material? If it is as good as claimed, it looks looks like a sweet deal. But if it seems too good to be true.
http://cgi.ebay.com/FREE-SHIP-123-16...QQcmdZViewItem

[AlaskaDon]

I wouldn't necessarily say that it's too good to be true. Just no way to tell if the end result will turn out any better than the blackout cloth.

In terms of finding out if your particular installation will require a higher gain screen, have you played around at all with the calculator over at projector central? Figure out what projector you're planning on purchasing (hopefully it's available for use in the calculator) and then experiment with the various throw distances, screen sizes,, zoom etc. Gain is one of the parameters you can alter in the calculator and it does give some basic guidance on what you need for the room conditions you will have. They also have a great projector review section, and links for you to find the best price. That site has been a huge help to me.

[m_tyson]

The Da-Lite High Power is amazing. Very high gain, no hot spotting or sparklies. Unless you must have an acoustically transparent screen, the HP is top choice.

Originally Posted by krizzz

I am taking the plunge and building a dedicated media room with a projector. Since this is my first foray into the projector world, I am doing my homework.

Projector reviews are straightforward, (much like TVs) from sites like Projector Central. But I need to find out about projector SCREENS.

I have googled and found a hundred different screens made of 100 different materials and I have no idea why one is better than another. Any of you projector gurus have a good resource for rating or choosing the right screen?

TIA

[syncguy]

The main points come to my mind in screen design/selection are:

Size of the screen
Seating distance
Aspect ratio

I feel it is very hard to pre-judge these factors without experiencing this yourself since these factors are personal to some extent.

Look at a commercial movie theater and check positions of various people when there are sufficient vacant seats so that people can have a choice. They sit in various places and they will say that is the best position for them.

We prefer to sit closer to a big screen and usually this would be about 1 screen width. For scope movies (2.35:1) it could be slightly less than 1 screen width. However some people could be uncomfortable with this and use 1.5 or even 2 screen width as the seating position.

Aspect ratio is another important factor. Some people prefer 16x9 (1.77:1) screens and other 2.35:1 scope screens with continuous image height (CIH) setup. We love our scope screen and will never turn back. IMO, the panoramic picture of a large scope screen is stunning and it will allow you to easily immerse in the movie. However, some people do not want to immerse in the movie and wish to sit back and have a narrower field of view.

[m_tyson]

Here is a screen size calculator which includes THX recommendations:

http://myhometheater.homestead.com/v...alculator.html

Originally Posted by syncguy

The main points come to my mind in screen design/selection are:

Size of the screen
Seating distance
Aspect ratio

I feel it is very hard to pre-judge these factors without experiencing this yourself since these factors are personal to some extent.

Look at a commercial movie theater and check positions of various people when there are sufficient vacant seats so that people can have a choice. They sit in various places and they will say that is the best position for them.

We prefer to sit closer to a big screen and usually this would be about 1 screen width. For scope movies (2.35:1) it could be slightly less than 1 screen width. However some people could be uncomfortable with this and use 1.5 or even 2 screen width as the seating position.

Aspect ratio is another important factor. Some people prefer 16x9 (1.77:1) screens and other 2.35:1 scope screens with continuous image height (CIH) setup. We love our scope screen and will never turn back. IMO, the panoramic picture of a large scope screen is stunning and it will allow you to easily immerse in the movie. However, some people do not want to immerse in the movie and wish to sit back and have a narrower field of view.