I'm seriously thinking of going from my current 88" framed canvas screen (1.85:1) to a painted screen. My wish is for the new projected area to have about the same height as my current screen but to expand the width to get a 2.35 or 2.4:1 ratio.

What I'm primarily wondering is how to best devise a framing system that will allow me to adjust the side borders, so that when I'm watching a HDTV signal at 1.78:1, or a movie at 1.85:1, I won't have white screen on the sides. I know that my projector (Panasonic AE900) will output black letterboxing, but it's not the same as a black felt frame.

I was thinking of an affixed 2.4:1 felted frame of some sort on which I could attach and remove a solid structure of some sort as needed. My wife was imagining some sort of adjustable curtain like at a movie theater.

Anybody done this or have ideas? Thanks!

Haven't done this yet as it really doesn't bother me to have black bars on the side of my 2.35 screen when watching 1.78 (dvds) or 1.85 (hdtv) material. Curtains (manual/electric) or some sort of panels would work if you can figure it out.

I was just wondering if you mounted a curtain rod (black, if you can find one), that controls both sides with one pull of a cord for manual control would work. Then make some curtains that fits the screen area out of some black felt material, or whatever works for this.

Edit: It looks like they are called Traverse Rods.

Here's one option in black. You could always glue black felt to the front of it, to make it non-reflective.

Imagine trying to come up with your own masking system for the horizontal bars. That was not fun when I did that.

For v4.0 of my theater, I am going with a nice wide screen too. I am just going to use movie style curtains I think.