Why a white sheet on the wall won’t do
A home theatre projector and projector screen combo is the stuff a true home theatre enthusiasts dream is made of. Your neighbour can brag all he wants about his 65-inch LED-LCD, but when a 120-inch diagonal video screen features in your home theatre you know you have died and gone to heaven in the video department, often with a better image and for less money.
Even the most affordable projector beamed onto a modest projector screen can make for a compelling home theatre experience. If you are the lucky guy or gal with a big budget, an auto-masking monster screen positioned into place for a 2.35:1 movie is at the pinnacle of “wow” factor in luxury goods.
But how do you go about selecting a projector screen? Can’t you just blast the image onto a white wall? How about getting a big white sheet stretched onto your wall? What exactly do you need to know about choosing a projector screen for your awesome new home theatre system?how do you go about selecting a projector screen? Can’t you just blast the image onto a white wall? How about getting a big white sheet stretched onto your wall? What exactly do you need to know about choosing a projector screen for your awesome new home theatre system?
Basically it comes down to the four decisions you have to make: what style of screen, what size of screen, what shape of screen (or aspect ratio), and what screen material.
We’ve discussed home theatre projectors and aspect ratio quite recently (blogs are here and here), but what we haven’t sunk our teeth in so far is the style and material of your projector screen. Let us explain.
Roll-down or Fixed frame style?
There are basically only two different styles of screens: fixed and roll-down.
A fixed screen stays on the wall all the time in a solid frame that has the screen material attached to it. It stretches to the frame, usually fixed by a spring system of some sort.
A roll-down or retractable screen on the other hand raises and lowers into a case on a roller.
When it comes down to selecting a screen for your theater, this is the first decision that you’ll need to make.
Roll-down screens
Roll-down screens have been around forever. Most of us remember them from school, when the teacher broke out the projector to show educational films.
Roll-down screens are housed in a container and can be either manually pulled down or automated to have motors drop the screens. A roll-down screen often has a heavy weight on the bottom to keep it from being moved by a breeze or the air conditioning unit.
The main reason for installing a roll-down screen is when you are installing a projector and screen into a multi-use space like a living or family room where having a 120-inch screen-of-awesomeness hanging down all the time might get you served divorce papers.
Some people have a 60-inch Plasma TV that they watch during the day and the screen lowers down in front of it when they want to watch movies at night. So, motorized screens definitely serve a purpose in the non-dedicated room and can be great problem solvers. It doesn’t even have to look bad.
When choosing a roll-down screen, you’ll have some different case and mounting options; do you want it to be mounted to the wall, to the ceiling, recessed into a soffit or attic? Not all screens are made equal and an elegant and durable case and ease of installation are considerations to be made.
Say, you decided a roll-down projector screen is the way to go for your situation.
The second decision for you to make is, are you going to go with a motorized screen or go manual?
Your room, needs and budget will be the major deciders in this. Obviously, a lot is to be said for getting that screen rolled-up and down at the touch of a button, but then again your budget might decide otherwise.
When you opt for a motorized screen, a quiet and durable motor is a factor to keep in mind.
One of the issues you might get with a roll-down screen is that despite a careful choice of fabrics used, you can get curling and wrinkling in the screen.
Tab-tension is a system that keeps the screen area perfectly flat when it is unfurled and ready to use. A smart technique of tensioning from several sides as well as additional special flexible screen material results in a screen that remains tight and flat over its entire viewing surface.
Fixed screens
If you have a dedicated home theatre, we personally prefer a fixed screen for a number of reasons.
1. They’re cheaper. You can purchase a relatively inexpensive fixed screen for a few hundred bucks.
2. Because a fixed screen doesn’t have to roll up-and-down, it can maintain a really tight, tensioned surface for a perfectly smooth image.
3. You don’t have to get power to a fixed frame screen or figure out how to make it roll up-and-down with your remote control, which makes it a lot easier from an installation point of view. It is just there, always ready and waiting to service your every movie watching need.
You might think fixed-is-fixed-is-fixed, but you’d be wrong. Depending on the screen and the manufacturer you choose, you’ll likely notice multiple models of fixed screens. And beyond the different quality, the biggest differences between lower-end and good quality models will be the frame or border around the screen image.
When you look for a fixed frame, we highly recommend getting one that has a thick – 3 to 4 inch – frame around it that is covered in a black, velvet material (although other options are available). The velvet border serves two really important purposes.
First, because it frames the screen and focuses your eyes onto the bright image. It also improves the perceived contrast of the image.
Second, you might need to zoom the image out beyond the screen for some reason, and this black material will “kill” this image overspray, again making the picture look better.
We don’t recommend screens without borders. Sure, some people may like how they can look like a giant flat panel and not like a projector screen, but frankly, we’re not a fan. Here’s why:
Just like the drapes in a commercial theater help the image to look better, the black frame around the screen is there to help you, so we recommend you let it.
For large-scale home theatre systems, we also list curved projector screens.
A curved screen offers some improvements over a traditional flat screen in that it better wraps the image around your periphery for a more engaging experience. It also more evenly reflects lighting back to viewers from edge-to-edge with no hot-spotting for a more perfect picture.
Finally, it’s good to note that a curved screen must be fixed. Of course…
Projector screen materials
Traditional video screens are made of materials specifically designed to receive and reflect light from a projector and make it look better and more consistent in a given room. Your budget, the technology of the projector and the ambient light characteristics of the room where the screen is to be installed will define the screen material that is needed.
The options offered at Rapallo vary from an economical Normal Matte White Fabric to a Nano HD Fiberglass Fabric, knitted with fiberglass instead of traditional matte white fabric material. This greatly improves both gain and contrast of the screen
For a fixed frame screen, there is also the option of a HD Metallic Fabric for high gain.
Gain refers to the amount of light the screen reflects compared to a reference, uniform reflecting surface (Lambertian surface).
The perfect Lambertian surface scatters light evenly in all directions. This sounds like a good thing but it is not what you want for a projector screen. A screen is designed to focus light back towards the viewer and a screen that reflects evenly in all directions will actually wash out the image.
On top of that, there seems to be a bit of a myth that more gain is better, but that is not necessarily the case. Balance is the word, as with anything in life.
The problem with adding too much gain is that it can create hotspotting, where the center of the image is noticeably brighter than the sides.
It also cuts down on your off-angle viewing, where the image will be much dimmer towards the sides. This may be a problem if you have a wide room with people sitting all over the place.
In a really dark room with a good-lumen projector, a lower gain produces a better picture. If you have a narrow room, or are trying to drive a large screen with a low-lumen projector, then increased gain will be needed.
For projectors with higher light output a grey screen may be what you need. A grey color screen successfully deepens dark colors addressing the shortage of contrast. However, for other colors the color fidelity of grey fabric may be lower than with white fabric.
If you ever get up close to a commercial movie screen you’ll likely notice many little tiny holes in the screen called perforations. These perforations allow the sound of the speakers hidden behind the screen to pass through the screen.
If you want to recreate this experience at home, then you’ll need what is called an acoustically transparent screen.
The potential drawback with acoustically screens at home is that you lose a bit of light output from your projector due to the little perforations.
Also, with some acoustically transparent screens, you can get a moire pattern with the pixel structure of your projector. No need to say that this is not a good thing, so it is important to pick your screen supplier wisely.
Rapallo offers a Nano HD Acoustic Transparent Fabric, which completely avoids Moiré effect and demonstrates incredible visual performance.
Alternatively, there is the cheaper HD Acoustic Transparent Fabric available in white or grey, which is knitted with high-density fiber. With more than 76,000 microscopic holes per square foot the fabric ensures high-quality sound transportation as well as reduced Moiré effect.
While no material is 100% perfectly transparent to sound, we have been very impressed with the performance of the Nano HD acoustically transparent screens we have installed for our customers.
Painted-on projector screens are without question a budget application for consumers.
So you may ask: “Why can’t I just shine the image onto my wall? My wall is white. The screen is white. So why should I spend all that money on a screen? You tryin’ to rip me off here?!?”
Yes, you could fire your projector onto a wall. And, yes, you would see an image.
But the reality is that it wouldn’t be a great image. A wall has texture and imperfections to it, and that texture is going to be visible when you are shining an image on it.
Also, the surface of a dedicated screen is formulated to reflect light back to you, whereas paint isn’t designed to do this. The result will be a washed-out image and killed contrast.
So unless it is a temporary solution until you have the funds to take the next step in your home theatre project, we really think you shouldn’t.
On a final note, this is probably a good time to point out that at Rapallo, we pay visits to the manufacturing site of our projector screens in person; we have reviewed the manufacturing process, the components and techniques used. We have personally inspected the quality of the products and compared it to alternatives. And last but not least, we ensured that you as a customer get the best product at the best possible price. No bragging, just facts. J