Hello,
I have converted a spare bedroom into a home cinema room dim 10.5'x8.0'
I am replacing my Tosh rptv 42" with a pany 300.My question is which screen should I go for with a budjet of £500 approx?
I will be sittting approx 8.5 ' from the screen and I only have room for a 5' - 6' screen width (widescreen).Would a fixed screen be better than a pull down and how easy can these be despatch from a supplier as i live in N.Ireland.
p.s (may be a silly question) when installing a projector, what goes up first the screen or the projector?
please help!

[Klippie]

yamman,

I put the projector up first so I could see the size of image it projected onto the wall and to find what size of an image I was comfortable watching then ordered a screen to fit.

As for a make, do a search because there are so many types and everybody has there own preference.

Good luck hunting.

Klippie.

[tonytigerrr]

Yamman,

if you're on a budget then you could try making your own screen using blackout blind material. I made an 80" wide screen for my panny300, the total cost was £15 (I already had some wood for the frame). I am very pleased with the results and it was quite a rewarding experience.

Lots of people have advice abouy DIY screens on this forum and AVS - heres a link to one of them.

http://members.shaw.ca/danhanson/The...eenproject.htm

Tony, what type of material should i ask for if i go down the "home made screen" route and where is the best place to get it.

You can easily and very cheaply knock up your own fixed screen. Screw some bits of wood together, like the fancy edging strips to make the surrounding edge. Naill this to wall, then paint the inside with some normal matt white paint, the advantage being that if it is not bright enough or too bright you can mix in other things to get the effect you want. Black paint to make the screen kinda grey and improve contrast, fine powder to improve half angle and viewing angles, glossy paint to improve brightness but reduce viewing angles.

The choice is yours but I have done loads of tests and found that this gives the same or better results than most fabric screens.

[tonytigerrr]

Go to a fabric shop such as fabric warehouse (I got mine a place called Dunelm mill) and ask for "blackout blind" material. One side has an off-white cloth type texture while the other has a white vinyl like texture (this is the side you want to project the image onto).

It comes on 54" rolls and is about £4 per metre. I bought 3 metres which left me enough to make a blind for the window in my cinema room.

I took the view that if it didnt work out I'd only have wasted a day or so of my time and £15 but it turned out really well. Its worthwhile taking care to make a solid & sturdy frame - then you have the option of upgrading later on by buying "proper" screen material and stretching it over your DIY frame, which is again cheaper than buying a ready-made screen.

TBH I think it'll be quite a while before I do this (if at all) as the picture looks great as is.

[Gary Lightfoot]

I made a DIY blackout cloth screen as a temporary measure, and ended up using it for almost 3 years!

I recently upgraded the screen material to a 1.2 gain due to the lower lumens of my new projector, and I got it from www.ellie.co.uk.

Unfortunately, the price seems to have gone up quite a bit, so Harkness Hall could be a good alternative.

I think someone here has used them, but I can't remember if they did a review or not.

Gary.

[tonytigerrr]

Originally posted by Gary Lightfoot
I made a DIY blackout cloth screen as a temporary measure, and ended up using it for almost 3 years!

I recently upgraded the screen material to a 1.2 gain due to the lower lumens of my new projector

Gary,

Out of interest, apart from the brightness issue are there any other advantages to the proper screen material? I think I see grain occasionaly but am not sure if its the material or projector.

Cheers,
Tony.

[Gary Lightfoot]

To be perfectly honest Tony, I can't see any improvement other than the brightness.

The material was a bit whiter than the blackout cloth, but apart from that, I can't see any difference.

If a unity gain screen is all you need, then white blackout cloth should be fine I reckon. If I had some spare blacout material, then I could do a side by side test, but I haven't any left I don't think.

Gary.

[dis]

Hi gary

I see you have the nec ht 1000, do you know if there is any were in Oxfordshire that do any demo’s, I like the reports that it keeps getting but would like to see one on demo first,

Also I would like to get a 6ft screen 4.3 with no masking, does the ht 1000 in 16.9 mode do a good masking job is there any light spill, I would like a 6ft wide picture could you tell me the distance the projector will be from the screen,my ceiling hight is 92 inches,and how far will the projector hang from the ceiling,

I have a unicol gyrolock gk2 projector mount, I had the sony hs10 great picture but to noisy for me and sent it back, a lot of questions I know but hope you can help on this one. Thanks…….dis

[Gary Lightfoot]

Hi Dis,

I don't know of anywhere near you that demos the HT1000, sorry, but there must be somewhere not too far from you I would think. Try posting the question as a new thread and see what comes up.

A 6ft screen is fine for the HT1000. There is no light spill outside of the 4:3 area, but if you watch 16:9 or 2.35:1 movies then the black bars will appear as a very dark grey.

For a 6ft wide screen, the pj can be sited anywhere between 110.6 ins and 133.6 ins.

How far the pj will hang from the ceiling depends on how high you have your screen. Here's a link to the installation pdf:

http://ht1000.necvisualsystems.com/HT1000IG_v25.pdf

At approx 132" from the (7ft) screen, the pj can project from as little as 14" from the ceiling. That can be reduced to 12" if I zoom in to make the image smaller, and move the pj further back - the zoom moves the image up and down a little.

I'm using a 16:9 screen, and you can slide the 16:9 image anywhere up or down within the 4:3 area of the DMD, so it's quite flexible.

I made my own projector mount, so you may be able to adapt the unicol.

HTH

Gary.