Quick Question

[Suave]

Mike is much better qualified to answer screen related questions than me so you should get a more indepth answer from him. Although right now he's trying to finish up a TV review for us... so it might be a couple of days before you get an answer from him

In my opinion, any screen would result in a significantly better picture than projecting the image on the wall. The least expensive option would be to go with a fixed screen on the wall but of course this will have to stay permanently on the wall. A manual retractable option may be a more desirable option for you.

Here's a company that offers some very affordable screens: http://www.tigerdirect.ca. Just type in "screen" in the search box.

[Mike Osadciw]

Hi Adam

Ok...if willing to paint your walls/ceiling a very dark shade of gray (or black!) and keeping your screen size under 92" (84" would be better) I would recommend checking out Da-Lite's JKP Affinity 0.9 or 1.1 gain screen. The Cinema Vision ain't so bad either, but I would much rather prefer Stewart's StudioTek 130 screen material. Fixed screens are my favourite as they are always tight and under tension; not only do they look super sexy hovering out from the wall especially when lined with the dark velvet material, but they do look the best as well in terms of uniformity (most drop/pulldown screens aren't tensioned, therefore the screen has warping to it which appears as dark and bright patches accross the screen. It's cheap, but you pay for it with performance. Drop tensioned screens are much more $$$ over a fixed frame screen).

There are many other screen manufacterers out there especially new over the past several years. While I haven't taken the time to test them, there are others out there who have...but you need to know why they are used for the way they are. I've seen many cheaper screens in video shoot outs (well, several years ago) and I wasn't always impressed. There was colour shifting when compared against the reference screen material. The two I mentioned are reference screen material and are several hundred dollars more than the cheap stuff...but then we tend to accept that for performance. If you spend $1000 on cheap....suddenly it seems ok to spend $1400 on good or else your are blowing the $1000 for mediocre performance...makes me not to happy for spending the $1000...'cause that isn't exactly cheap coin either. Your local dealers should give you pricing...make sure you specify screen size, frame type (thick or thin), V-Lux/Dark trim, and of course, screen material. All of these things will affect price. The best dealers generally have screen samples of decent size that you can put up on the screen and see how the screen surface type actually affects image quality.

If any other questions, post here!