Project Screen Goo

[inzaman]

First a bit of background, i really enjoy home cinema which i have been doing for about the last three years and particularly enjoy the diy aspect of it and learning about how it all works without being to techy. I have made the merlino and twisted snake power leads and then when i got my first projector Sanyo Z2 i made a screen out of black out material over a woden frame.

When i first projected an image on the bo material i wasnt that impressed as it seemed to glow and looked washed out so i firstly painted it icestorm 6 but it still wasnt good enough so i painted it a mix of 5 and 6 to much better effect i.e the glowing had gone and the blacks were now quite dark.

As this screen was my first effort and i had started to get the upgrade bug, i wanted to buy a fixed screen and had pretty much settled on a permawall hccv from da-lite which weighed in at about £600, then i came accross the Goo System and the diy in me just had to give it a go.

I ordered 6mm mdf board 84inch x 48inch and 1inch x 1inch wood strip 84inch long from a wood merchant. Then i bought two paint rollers two paint trays and three smooth gloss roller heads. I then ordered the Goo, Digital Grey Base Coat with Digital Light Grey top coat both x 1Ltr, i also ordered the 2inch flock tape.
The Goo base coat is quite thick with the top coat being very thin, but both are quite easy to roll imo.

Painting the Board
I rolled the mdf board with two coats of normal wood undercoat leaving an hour between each coat. I then thoroughly cleaned the roller tray and used a new roller head to roll three coats of the base coat, leaving an hour between each coat. I then left this for 24 hours to dry thoroughly, and so i could then do the top coat in normal light and with the lights on so i could see any potential roller marks. The top coat was rolled the next day again using a new roller and tray, the first coat still showed the base coat so i applied two other coats, again leaving just over an hour between each coat.

Tips on painting would be to definitely have a very light environment so you can see any roller marks, be very careful when overlapping coats and dont over apply.

Finishing
I left the final top coat to dry for about another five hours before attempting to move the screen. I then no nails and screwed the 1.5inch x 1inch strip wood to the back top of the screen and screwed hooks into this wood for the picture rail wire. The next day, to ensure that the goo was thoroughly dry, i applied the flock tape as border, 2inch at each sides and 1.5inch for top and bottom giving a viewable screen of 80inch by 45inch. The flock tape has the advantage of giving a black border and also covering the screw holes, i then positioned the screen and set the pj back up.

Conclusion/Recommendations
The finished screen colour is lighter than my old screen i would say it is about the same lightness as icestorm 6, not same grey colour though just the same lightness.

When i first projected onto my Goo screen i was amazed by how bright the colours were in relation to my old screen, i can even use the projector with ambient light which i couldnt do with bo material but could do with icestorm 5/6 mix.
The only colour that is not any better is the black level, i could have probably got deeper blacks had i gone the digital grey top coat route as opposed to the light grey route but i have made my screen to last a few pj upgrades not just for the Z2.

I was reasonably happy with the icestorm 5/6 mix but i have now realised that yes that infact does give a deepish black but it does also darken all of the other colours in the spectrum and by a considerable amount.
Also with the Goo screen door is far less of an issue, scenes where i could just view screen door i can no longer see any or see far less and only if i go looking. The colours seem far more natural and the picture seems to have more depth to it or more of a distinct 3d effect.
My room also has cream ceilings and with the Goo screen there just seems to be far less light shining on the ceiling and onto the walls than there was with the icestorm 5/6 mix?

The only real downside at the moment is that i do have two roller streaks down one side that stand out during certain light scenes, even though i was very very careful when rolling. Searching avs a few people have had this problem but these do dissapear/reduce over a few weeks as Goo apparently can take several weeks/months to cure.

Also for anybody thinking of doing this for a screen size similar to mine i would just buy 1ltr of base coat and 0.5litre of top coat.

Notwithstanding the roller streaks i am really glad i opted for the Goo system as i now have a very professional looking fixed screen that gives a very nice picture and has cost me £170 as opposed to £600.

 

[inzaman]

A picture of the finished screen

 

[inzaman]

A picture of the comparison between the Goo colour and the Icestorm 5/6 mix. Goo is on the left and icestorm 5/6 is on the right.

I will also try and get some pictures of a side by side with the icestorm and Goo but it is a pain trying to get the two screens together. I did take some screen shots last night of the xbox image but they were a bit blurred as i dont have a tri pod.

 

[MattH]

Any news on the comparison screenshots inzaman, I am interested as I have bought an HT1000 and some Goo, just waiting for the time so that I can get everything sorted out. Another question for you, you rolled the paint, did you think about spraying or think it too difficult, I am in this dilemma at the moment, rolling easier but spraying supposed to produce better results - providing you can do it?

 

[inzaman]

Matt, will try and get some side by side screen shots over the next few days just started a new job so not had much time to fiddle in the last few weeks.

For me spraying would have been too difficult as i would have had to buy a sprayer and spray outside etc. I would have liked to have given it a go but the rolling route for me was far more accessible. The only problem with rolling is roller streaks which for me have reduced considerably since i first posted this thread, i believe they take a few months to totally disappear.

 

[MattH]

Thanks, look forward to seeing the before and after shots and your views.

 

[mikeaitch]

Great job Inzaman

I too have some Goo awaiting application, digital grey for base and top coat.

I saw it at Nexnix compared to a stewart and could not see £300 difference in it, let alone £3k!!!

I think I'm going to spray though, its looking like a trip to B and Q or HSS hire shop

Be interested to find out if blacks improve

 

[Peter Parker]

Ken Hotte deisgns the goo for specific projectors, and given the slight pink effect the screen has, makes me wonder if it's that colour to take into account the red deficiency of the lamp.

The Z2 (and many other digital pjs) is red deficient, so the scren will help boost red in much the same way as an fl-day filter would.

I'd be interested to know how the overall image looks. Are the colours improved, and was the pj slightly green in the first place?

If you've got a copy of Avia, could you put the horizontal ire display up (the one that shows black to white with grey levels in between) and see if any of the greys have a colour shift to them?

Cheers,

Gary.

 

[inzaman]

Gary have you seen a screen goo screen, the only reason that i ask is that i am sure mine does not have a pink shift. Well not to my eye anyway which isnt that well trained . I have avia and will try what you suggest when i get a few minutes. Still trying to get round to doing some comparitive screen shots but it is porving pretty awkeard to get the two screens side by side

 

[Peter Parker]

I only say pink because in the pic, the screen has a pink hue.

Having looked closer, your ceiling coving looks pink too, so it's probably just the photo.

Gary.

 

[mikeq]

Or did you have a light on in the room? tungsten lights give a slight orange hue in photographs, fluorescent gives a slight green hue in photographs.

 

[inzaman]

Now you come to mention it, it does look rather pink. Def must have been the lights as the coving is antique white and the screen should be a light grey.

 

[Peter Parker]

Oh well, that's a prefectly good theory out of the window then.

I thought I'd seen another pink screen form ken recently though via one of his posts on avs. I'll have to try and find it sometime..

Gary.

 

[avanzato]

The pink on the photo will just be an incorrect white balance the digital camera should correct it automatically but they often get confused. IIRC there was a post on AVS about a new/prototype Stewart screen that had an obvious pink tint is that what you're thinking of Gary?

So onto the Goo. Does it make the texture of the screen surface more obvious. I would be painting onto a current screen that has a texture and I've found high gain gets a bit 'sparkly' with my Z1. OTOH I can get large 8x4 sheets of very smooth foam cored board but getting them to my house is pretty difficult.

 

[Peter Parker]

Hi Mat,

You could well be right about the pink screen being a Stewart now that you mention it - it was a while ago when I saw it....

Gary.

 

[inzaman]

Does it make the texture of the screen surface more obvious.

I rolled mine onto a perfectly smooth surface (mdf board) and it definitely has a texture which i imagine is the roller texture. If i was to paint this on a textured surface i would def see about getting it sprayed.

 

[DJW]

What roller did you use, as I see there are now rollers specifically for GLOSS paints ? ......one presumes to get as near a smooth finish as possible.

Dave

 

[inzaman]

I got the smoothest ones for gloss that i could find, i think that they are white foam

 

[inzaman]

Dave, what i would recommend if you are not painting the goo on a wall is to put your screen in place first and paint it. That way you can keep shining your projector on it after each coat to ensure there is no or very minimal streaking, they do fade/disappear after a while though.

 

[Gliese 581c]

any pics inzaman ? I'm interested in goo. Would like to see how it looks with a projected image

 

[inzaman]

I'll take some over the weekend and post them up, but it does look very good. I dont know if a photo will give the true feel of the more pronounced 3d of the image though.

 

[Gliese 581c]

ok thanks.

 

[Peter Parker]

I'd forgotten about this thread (no email notification for some reason - probably spam filtered, I'll have to look), but thought I'd give an up-date on the pink screen I mentioned earlier.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Don Stewart of Stewart Filmscreen, and I asked him about a 'Pinkhawk' or 'Rosehawk' screen I thought I'd seen mentioned on the forums. He told me that it was a real screen that was indeed designed to boost red due to digital pjs having lamps that are red deficient. It used a pinky base coat, with a clear optical coating. It's only available in Japan - one of their marketing points is that it isn't available anywhere else in the world.

Of course even with a pink screen, the lamps colour changes over time, so although it may be colour corrected initialy, it will drift at one point, so recalibration will be necessary. A lens filter will do the same job and allow for easier changing (redder lens at a later date), but will reduce light output.

Gary.

 

[godisi]

Hey, nice job mate,how thick was your mdf board, and this flock tape stuff, is there another name for it, what exactly is it, im trying to find something similar here in nz, i can get the medium density fibre alrite, just not the flock tape.

other thing is, you say you had two coats of normal wood undercoat,how smooth a surface is mdf as it is, did you sand the board down at all before coating with wood undercoat???

 

[inzaman]

Cheers godisi, the mdf is just 6mm thick as it is heavy stuff when you start to get thicker and i didnt want to bring the wall down that it was hanging from.

The mdf at 6mm can bend a bit so at the top and bottom i screwed 1x2 strips of wood to make it rigid and still maintain the relative lightness.

The mdf is very very smooth so didnt need any sanding, the first coat will go on strange as it is so smooth but after that it is fine.

As for the flock tape i got mine from nexnix, you could also search for velvet tape as that is pretty much what it is.

I am in the process of trying to take some screen shots but have been busy of late.