Questioning choice in projector screen

[Jedi Master Thrash]

Anyone else out there use a projector? I'm looking for some opinions on projector screens.

I got myself a projector for xmas. I got a greywolf II screen, but am since questioning my choice.

The greywolf II screen has amazing 1.8 gain, but only if your head is within 2 feet of the projector. Anyone sitting more than that away (which would be the end two people if 4 people are watching a movie), or if you have the projector ceiling mounted, the gain is completely gone, and you can clearly see the patten of glass beads.

The problem is that the glass beads create a retro-reflective surface, so all the light bounces right back at the projector, rather than to the audience around it. So I think I'd like to return that one and get a non-retro-reflective screen.

I was looking on-line, and there's a lot of other types of screens, but no real comparison reviews, and no real discriptions of how well they perform at realistic viewing angles.

There's several matte materials:

matte white

high contrast matte white

video spectra 1.5

silver matte

high power

My room has uncontrollable ambient light, and since I have a home-theater projector rather than a presentation projector, it doesn't have much lumens. The reason I got the greywolf to begin with was because the desciptions said it's best for rooms with ambient light.

So I'm worried that by going with a white matte screen, I'd lose some of that light immunity.

I did a small test. I put some pieces of white printer paper on the screen to compare. If you're within the gain cone of the glass beads, then the picture is much more brilliant on those than on the paper. However, if you're outside of that at normal seating positions, the paper is definitely brighter than the greywolf, by at least 30%. Hover, the paper never achieves quite the contrast of the grey screen

Any opinions or resources?

Thanks,

JMT.

 

[Malakai]

I have several opinions but not sure if either will help you out. A friend of mine just bought a projector, but pre-built screens are pretty expensive. EBAY and other shops can sell you the materials to make a huge screen for probably less than $30. It'll be the silver/greyish material. You just cut to size. Some people also use a projector paint in their walls, where they won't need to use a screen.

The problem with my friend's setup is that he won't get rid of all of the light sources, and his projector is 3000 lumens. What happens? Big screen with faint semi-blurry picture, except when the sun goes down and the lights are out. I tried to talk him in to putting a door in to the theater room/dining room hallway area, where it is open and brings in a lot of light, and even trying to create some type of dark shading for the windows inside the actual room, but he's the type of person that talks a good game but when it comes to actually doing some thing right, it's either too much time, too much work, too much money, or all of the above.

I've read several sources that say that you only need 300 lumens for a descent picture, but in order to achieve that, you have to have virtually no light leaking in to the room.

I think my whole point is that, after reading many home theater forums, light is the ultimate enemy of any projection system. It probably wouldn't matter if you had a 8,000 lumens projector. Changing out screens are only going to make subtle differences and not any thing dramatically different.