Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Tell me about... screens

Of course, the day after I purchased my projector another place in Canada (Complete-IT) offered the same projector at the same price... but with a free spare bulb.

Oh well, interesting times...

You could always call the place you purchased it from and mention this, who knows, they may say we will match the deal. At most stores they will match deals within certain time periods....I still want your Z4, ha ha.

In a triumph of irony, it turns out that the place I bought from had the same deal until about a week ago, when they ran out of spare bulbs, and this other place offered the same deal in response. Apparently the other place hasn't run out of spare bulbs yet.

I smell a high margin on bulbs.

I think this was something to do with a Sanyo factory offer, believe I saw something like that advertised on projectorcentral.

How much are bulbs running in those things, anyway?

They are being advertised as "$426 CDN value, free with projector" so I assume that is list and actual pricing would be lower. I wasn't able to find any actual prices in a brief search before I had to leave the house.

Looks like average price is about $330 US, or a bit under $400 CDN.

Almost forgot to mention, I had another chance to see a Vutec SilverStar screen last night. It's a light silver, slightly shiny paper finish (pretty easy to damage apparently) but EXTREMELY bright and with a very wide viewing area. We were walking around looking for evidence of hotspotting and didn't find a thing. For a minute I was wondering if this might have actually been something other than a silverstar, but (a) most of the other reviews report the same results and (b) none of the other vutec screens are silver.

The high gain (claimed 6.0, actual seems to be ~2.7) makes the picture very clear even in high ambient light conditions. There seems to be a lot of support for using high gain as a solution to ambient light in the room, rather than a darker grey screen.

There is some interesting reading at :

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=262466

Right now I have to admit my thinking is either to look for a good price on a SilverStar or to go with the "Behr Silverscreen plus some mixings to pump up the gain a bit" DIY approach. They certainly wouldn't be the same, of course -- even with the mixings a silverscreen paint job seems to be a bit under 1.0 gain, while the silverscreen seems to be around 3.0.

Spending more on the screen than the projector seems somehow wrong, even if I did spend more money on speakers than electronics. If I could have made my own speakers for $100 with one trip to Home Depot I probably would have given it a try

This is the current screen I use and it is pretty close enough to the quality of the Dalite I used to have. Their prices are 1/4 of Dalites.

http://www.audioholics.com/ces/CESmisc/EliteScreensezCinema.php


Manual pull downs $76.99 CDN
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1016716&CatId=0

Electric motorized $317 CDN
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1384890&CatId=0

There is a Tigerdirect store in Markhan which I picked up my screen.

If your ever in Toronto drop me a line and you can check out the screen.
http://www.quadloft.com/concerti/mini-DSC_1207.htm

Check their site for screen gain.
http://www.elitescreens.com/

I tried DIY which yes is self fulfilling did not warrant the lots and lots of time I spent to get it to a level thats commercial. Ask the other folks who did DIY.

I think Nickbuol mantioned Carada, I would also check them out John if you take the mfg route. Great prices and very well constructed screens with black velvet borders.

Ahh, now we're talking

A general purpose $76 matte white screen, very slightly >1 gain, available a two minute drive from work, sounds like just what I need right now. There are just too many questions I need to answer about my own HT plans before getting anything more specialized... and I *really* don't feel like messing with painting anything right now.

Thanks !!

I learned something else interesting last night -- when you look at high gain screens, there are different types of reflective mechanisms available and so you need to figure out how & where your projector is going to be mounted before you can get the optimal screen.

There are "retro-reflective" screens where the light reflects back to the light source, eg. if you have a table top projector the light will be reflected back down towards the viewers. If you have a ceiling mount projector the brightest light will be reflected back up towards the ceiling. Many of the traditional high gain screens (eg. Da-Lite High Power) apparently operate this way.

The other kind is called "angular reflective", or "shiny" for us normal people. It works the way you would expect -- if the projector is mounted high then the brighest reflective light comes down towards the viewers, but if you have a table-top mount then the brightest reflected light is above the normal viewing position. Most of the silver screens (eg. the Vutec SilverStar) are like this.

I was going to start table top then eventually go to ceiling mount either when I finish the basement or when I feel like hanging a 6 foot pole down from the ceiling.

Matte screens don't care about this, of course, and I believe with moderate gain screens the viewing angle is wide enough that it only makes a bit of difference. Once you get up into the 2-ish gain or higher though this seems to be something you have to consider.

I still haven't figured out how the SilverStar gives such a wide apparent viewing angle along with high gain. I think the trick is that (a) the viewing angle seems to be a bit wider left-to-right than top-to-bottom, (b) the brightness drops off sufficiently smoothly that a typical viewer doesn't notice, and POSSIBLY (c) I read a number of posts indicating that hotspotting was often made more visible by colour shifts off axis, not just brightness variations, so maybe the SilverStar is better for off-axis colour balance ? Again, point c is just a guess, I hadn't read these posts when I was in front of the SilverStar.

I used to have the portable Dalite with Wide Power material. Material was very fragile and thin. It had a 2.4 gain and hotspotted with bright material. Picture though on this material is bright and vivid like a plasma due to its reflective nature.

The elite screen is more film-like. Not as punchy but more natural looking. The material is rather thick and durable. Screen gain is not an issue. My Optoma is only 800 ansi. I believe yours is much higher. You would most likely need to take your brightness down to give you that large contrast ratio. No issue with light drop at any angle in my 23' long x 18' wide(25' at the back) room. All in all I am happy with my elite. 1 small 2mm mark on corner which cant even be seen in the dark. Electric to boot for under $400 cdn. Seeing my visitors drop their mouth as they see the 100" screen come down automatically...priceless.