My DIY screen for HT

[chasw98]

I have noticed some people asking what screen to buy. If you must have a pull down or hidden screen, then you probably have to go the store bought route, but if not...... Look into Doing It Yourself! There are many formulations out there from simple DoAble material available at Home Depot to very exotic paints custom mixed for your room and light level from guys that seem to be more chemist that HT guy. Here is a link to my "custom mixed" formula that allow us to watch the screen in daytime with full sunlight in the room, yet it looks fabulous at night or when the blackout drapes are closed. If you want more info, PM me, or leave a reply here.

http://www.cwitt.com/images/bflf-122.../thumbs_p.html

Chuck

[JCD]

chasw98..

Much in the way of props to you man! Between this and the HTPC I just read about, seems like you've got that can do attidude with the can do ability!

So, just so people (like me) can get an idea of what it'll cost to get a screen like yours, mind spilling that bit of knowledge?

Again, great work there. It looks awesome.

JCD

[chasw98]

JCD wrote:

chasw98..

Much in the way of props to you man! Between this and the HTPC I just read about, seems like you've got that can do attidude with the can do ability!

So, just so people (like me) can get an idea of what it'll cost to get a screen like yours, mind spilling that bit of knowledge?

Again, great work there. It looks awesome.

JCD

Thank you, I just enjoy building things. As far as screens go, the cheapest way to go is to paint it directly on the wall that you are ging to view the picture on. The simplest paint to use is Behr Silverscreen available at Home Depot. You should build a border to "frame" your screen and paint the border black. I forget the exact technical reason, but it fools the mind into thinking the contrast is better than it is. If you don't want to paint on the wall, just get some 1/2" MDF and cut the proportions and hang it on the wall. From there you can go on to putting WOP as a basecoat and using more exotic materials like plexiglass mirrors for the screen to be painted. one thing that is for sure, for a lot less, and I mean a whole lot less, you can put together a screen that will outperform a Stewart Firehawk or the Sony Black screen.

Just so you know, I can not take any credit for these screens, I just followed the directions given freely to me by other people like PB maxx and Mississippi Man. I also went through 3 or 4 screens, upgrading each time to another level of quality until I got where I am at today. I am still wanting to buy a compressor and an HVLP rig to be able to spray paint my own screens, but that is for another day.

Chuck

PS - The next time someone wants to talk about their 60" big screen for $5,000 plus, think about front projection with a DIY screen (8 foot diagonal) that will blow it away for under $1500.

[Chance]

I am very interested on how you did that. Did you just paint the wall?
I just purchased my first house and I now have the ability to build a full blown HT.
I have been looking at 120" screens and was going to go with the Elite screens version.
I can get them at a descent price being a HT Installer for BB.

I will be able to fully control the light in the room, but watching football etc. in a fully darkened room just doesnt cut it. I will be using a the Panasonic AX100U for the time being until my funds can grant an upgrade to the Panasonic AE1000U.

Any tips you can provide would be great

[Prof.]

chasw,

Well done...That is a very good example of what can be achieved with a DIY screen...
For anyone who has a high ambient light situation to contend with, a screen of this type would fill the bill..

[wbassett]

One thing to note about Silver Screen is since the original post there has been some testing done and spectrophotometer analysis and Silver Screen has a blue push and also plots almost midway between C and D75 on the CIE graph... That's getting pretty far away from D65 and may be hard or impossible for some projectors to calibrate to it. RGB value is 207 202 215. I have the CIE color space graph too and will find that and get it posted, probably tomorrow. (Part of vacation is spending time with the family and today was a Bday party for a 5 year old I'm particular fond of )

[chasw98]

Chance wrote:

I am very interested on how you did that. Did you just paint the wall?
I just purchased my first house and I now have the ability to build a full blown HT.
I have been looking at 120" screens and was going to go with the Elite screens version.
I can get them at a descent price being a HT Installer for BB.

I will be able to fully control the light in the room, but watching football etc. in a fully darkened room just doesnt cut it. I will be using a the Panasonic AX100U for the time being until my funds can grant an upgrade to the Panasonic AE1000U.

Any tips you can provide would be great

I did not paint the wall. I used a 1/2" thick piece of MDF that I covered with 2 coats of Behr Ultra Pure White as a base. Then I used Black Flame Light Fusion formula available here http://www.xtreme-fusion-screens.com/home.html . If you are going to do a 120" screen then you are better off painting it on the wall. It can be found but it is very hard to find smooth material that is 120" wide. When you paint it on the wall, just make sure you are in the right position because you can't move it up or down or side to side once you are done.

Chuck

[wbassett]

I am still in the process of reorganizing all the data and formatting it into a nice presentation.

Some quick information about Silver Screen. Back on '04 when Silver Screen was discovered, it was a break through and the darkness of the gray does help contrast and black levels. It was one of the things that helped bring grays to the forefront. UPW alone doesn't show the blue shift, but when the pigments are added to create Silver Screen it does shift. That isn't just supposition, there has been actual testing done and a lot of people that have confirmed this as well.

Here is the ColorSmart software Behr has online and in Home Depots.
Going on the color family it does tell us a few things...

Behr Silver Screen


Silver Screen is listed by Behr as the blue neutral family range. Everything so far has corroborated the color analysis that was done on SS. I will also put up a CIE plot that also backs this all up too, but first I want to put together a little 'color space' 101 post to explain what people are looking at before I just start throwing color space charts and graphs around.

So Silver Screen is more of a blue/gray than gray and even Behr's own color family confirms that. I'll go into a little more as to why we get color shifting, but maybe this does help some see there are a lot of different colors of 'gray' out there. There are different shades of a true gray, but when colorants are added to make it 'pretty', it has deviated from what a real gray is.

I'll get more into grays and have some comparisons and images up later today.

This swatch does show how much difference there is between SS and a neutral gray reference.

From this comparison it is very easy to see the blue shift the color has. When looking at the color swatch alone, it is being seen in reference to other colors in the same color 'family'. It really is hard to just pick a swatch and determine by eye if a color really is neutral or not.

I will get more into what makes a well balanced color and the advantages of neutrals too.

[blownrx7]

Chasw98:
What were your 3 or 4 previous iterations of diy screens? Was each change an improvement?