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Falcon Screens is a newcomer to the manufactured screen world. The owner, Rich Antonucio - member snickers1, sent me a sample of their screen material and frame. They deal only in fixed frame acoustically transparent material at this time.
Falcon Screens came about as Rich worked on his home theater. As is the case with most of us, Rich was looking for ways to cut costs by doing a lot of the work himself. When it came time for him to select a screen his wife told him "You've built everything else from scratch. Can't you build your own screen and save some money?" And thus, Falcon Screens was born!
Frame
The frame is built from sturdy aluminum with a state of the art quick connect corner bracing system. Here's Falcon's video on installing the quick connect corner system:
The framing is 3 1/2" wide with a nice beveled edge and 1 3/4" thick. It is extremely solid/beefy! It's wrapped in black velvet which will most assuredly absorb any over scan from your projected image.
The backside of the frames has a number of screws that attach to nuts within the framing. It's to these screws that you will attach the screen material via O-rings supplied with the screen.
Screen Material
The screen material is named Falcon Vision HD and is a woven material that seems to have some sort of a coating applied. I believe the coating is to hold the material together as opposed to providing any sort of optical enhancement. Here are some magnifications of the screen material:
10X
60X
200X
The coating is evident in the 60X and 200X shots.
Falcon screens claims the material has a gain of 1.1. I may be able to double check this in the future but it appears to be around the 1.0 mark to me.
I measured the screen material with my i1pro Spectrophotometer to check it's neutrality. Since this is an acoustically transparent material, I folded over the material until there was nothing peeking through the small holes.
It's not exactly a dead on neutral but it is a white material and white screens are the most forgiving. Color temp came in at 6382 and RGB values are 242 244 239 respectively.
Cost
A 100" 16:9 screen will cost you $1100. That's about $120 less than a Seymour Premier frame screen and quite a bit less than what I recall SmX charging way back when (I believe SmX is out of business now :huh
. That's quite the savings when you figure the materials are pretty similar.Warranty
Falcon Screens warranties their screen material for one year and the beefy frame for 10 years.
Conclusion
If I were on the market for an acoustically transparent screen today, I wouldn't hesitate to give Rich a call. The framing is as I stated above, extremely solid and the screen material is of high quality. And pricing seems to be on the low end for these types of screens. I highly recommend Falcon Screens. :T
http://www.falconscreens.com/
