Stewart GreyHawk Luxus ScreenWall

Well, I looked at the options for screens and couldn't believe how expensive they were!

I already had a 4:3 roll-up portable slide projector screen with white matt on one side and silver pearl on the other and tried that out with my new Sanyo PLV-70. As it's a 2100 lumen projector, both surfaces were way too bright and the black level was poor. I even experimented with wearing sunglasses and putting smoked glass in front of the projector! It was only projecting a 65 inch diagonal. I have a 100w ceiling lamp on a dimmer to provide bias light and so I can see to find my drinks in dark scenes!

I came to the conclusion that the best thing would be a grey surface of some kind. Luckily, I live in a modern appartment and the walls are made of perfectly flat and smooth plaster board. I tried projecting on to the existing wall that was a light blue shade and apart from the blue cast to the image it looked pretty good so I went to the hardware store and ordered a (roughly) 70% grey matt paint and painted my wall grey! Dulux have an in-store paint mixer that uses a white base and then adds dyes by computer to make any shade you want.

Total cost £25 (about $45). The tricky part was painting the wall evenly and removing traces of brush strokes - about 4 coats were required with careful randomised directional painting and soft pads (brushes leave hairs behind) and I had to be careful about bits in the paint or other 'blobs'. But the results are very good and I'm happy. If I did it again I'd maybe hire a spray gun to air-brush the wall for an even smoother finish.

The Sanyo suffers from poor blacks (like most LCDs) but it's ace is it's brightness. With so much light reserve you can use a grey screen to darken the blacks and the whites are still dazzling (I now project in low bias light with a 7ft 16:9 image diagonal). I went to my local multiplex yesterday and was pleased to discover that the image there was darker than at home and the black level not that much better - from film! I'm now thinking that I could re-paint the wall an even darker shade of grey (maybe as low as 50%) and get better results with the bias lighting off.

I blacked out my living room window with black card but I can have normal daylight come in and if I zoom the image down to it's minimum size it concentrates the projector light enough to make normal TV watching ok. The grey screen helps here as well because it does not reflect the ambient light so much.

I just bought the Sanyo PLV-Z2 Projector. I don't know if I should buy the Greyhawk or Firehawk. I am putting blackout shades on the windows and french doors. painting walls a dark mat finish. Projector will be mounted 11' from screen. My eyes will be 14.5' from screen. I was thinking about a 92" screen. Can anyone help. Please

Tom

I also am considering ordering an Optima 5700 and am now considering screen choices built around this. My throw distance is approximately 13 ft. as well, little ambient light. Saw a Stewart firehawk 100" screen demo at a dealer, using a 600 lumens domino projector from a distance of 9 ft in very low ambient light and the image looked terrific! As the 5700 puts out 1000 lumens, it will be used in little ambient light room, from a throw of 13ft. on a 100" inch screen, what makes sense? I like bright, but not washed out look-

thanks-dave

Rollie,

THANKS for your EXCELLENT help!!!!

Gerhard

Hi Gerhard,

More gain is not always better. Especially when the throw distance of your projector is not that big. A high gain and a short throw distance will give hotspotting. That is: the screen is not evenly lit and shows a white spot of the projectorlamp. And that surely is not what you want. Stewart also advises to project at least from a distance of 1.6 times the screen width when using a Firehawk!!!

First I would recommend that you read the review of your projector on www.projectorcentral.com

Because they give some advise about how to use the projector! (remember however that they always use a 100 inch screen, and place their comment in this perspective!)

Your room description resembles my room!!! I assume that your seating is at approximately 9 or 10 feet from the screen?! Because sitting 1.5 times your screen width away from the screen is said to be the ideal viewing distance. I would not sit closer to the screen because then you can't see the whole screen without moving your head. And watching a movie as if you are watching tennis is not very nice!!! (You can use some colored tape to put the different screen sizes on the wall and see what's looks best for you!). If you are confident that the 82 inch screen is perfect for your roomsize and viewingdistance, you can decide what screenfabric you need!!!

Because the infocus 5700 really gives 1000 lumen after calibration, it is brighter than some of its competitors! So you have to take the brightness in account when selecting a screen.

I went to a couple of projector dealers and measured their screen sizes. And compared their projector setups with my situation at home. After calculations I noticed that I liked a picture in a darkened room that is approximately between 30 FtL and 40 FtL. If the brightness came in the range of 50 FtL and above I thought it was to bright to be comfortable to look at (especially the whites become very white in a darkened room!).

If i were you, I would only use the projector in the darkend room without the little ambient light. This is because it all ambient light lowers the contrast of the image. (blacks become less black en details get less).

Calculation:

82 inch screen - approximately 6 foot wide and 3.4 foot high. A 20.4 Square feet!!!

1000 lumens.

A grayhawk: 0.95 gain

1000 x 0.95 / 20.4 = 46 FtL

A firehawk: 1.3 gain (AND advise from stewart to have at least a projectiondistance of 1.6 times the screen width!!!!!)

1000 x 1.3 / 20.4 = 63.7 FtL

When you have off-white walls, you can be sure that some of the light will bounce from the screen to the wall and back to the screen.

Which gives the same situation as using some ambient light!!! It lowers the effective lightoutput from the screen.

In other words... because of "ambient" light your projector has to put out more light to get the same image. (or the inverse... you effectively don't see the 46 FtL but see for example 40 FtL because 6 FtL is lost because of reflections!)

I hope I have explained the last point in a clear way!?

Conclusion: I think, that if you take a grayhawk... Stewart is right! You will have more than enough brightness coming from your 82 inch screen.