Commentary on Brightness and Footlamberts

[Trogdor2010]

Hello to those reading. I have been curious about what would be the proper brightness for a large screen (like mine) for quite some time. There were many choices availible, but I wanted 1080p, then came the Infocus x10 which was considered one of the brighter 1080p projectors, and cost $1200 at compusa.com. Then came the other side of the arguement, that you need the right amount of lumens to get the right amount of footlamberts (fLs) on your screen, which the optimal is 20 fLs and the minimum is 12 fLs. A post I did put for the optimal brightness on a 165 inch screen (Brain you may remember) and I needed a projector with 2000 lumens to get 20fLs and that no budget projectors had that kind of brightness (The Optoma TX1080 at $2400 on select websites does claim 3600 lumens, but uses a slow color wheel, comparable to a business projector). I did what was more realistic, but risky, I bit the bullet and bought the Infocus X10 for $1200 at compusa.com, and it was worth every penny for me, but I was mostly using it on a 96 inch screen, and watched a few movies (I am Legend, Valkyie, Defiance, and Knowing) and all looked great (But defiance did had some annoying DNR), but I was so surprised when I fired it up outside in the front yard and watched Coraline and played Call of Duty: World at War on the 165 inch screen. It was a revelation to see it, and this was outside in the dark and the iris was slightly closed (at 64), but the brightness turned out no problem with the 165 inch screen, in fact it was easier to watch and turned out to be more saturated than on the 96 inch screen, and it still had great shadow detail and grayscale tracking. I am really excited when I set it up in the garage when we clean it, and am happy the ventilation is on the side rather than the front (gives me more room for the projector to go back), though I may not fill the whole screen (size of projector, it is large), but I don't mind cutting a few inches, it is still big and I could use some black curtains to cover the missing inches. I don't have a light meter to measure the brightness, however, I did check a calculator and it did claim 16 fLs on my screen (It could be innacurate, but I'm immpressed so far). My real question is if finding the right amount of footlamberts is more for dealing with ambient light, or will it affect the quality of the image such as shadow detail on dimmer projectors, or maybe I had my expectations low.