Need advice on AT screen for conference room

[jinjuku]

Hey krzywica, it's good to hear things are going well for you. It's been about nine months or so since I've posted here, and I probably won't post again after today for a long time

Good to see you are around. Long time no type. Hope all is well with you and yours.

Your ears must have been burning because I started a thread asking where you had gone off to

Take care.

[BMXTRIX]

I didn't realize that Seymour made tensioned electric screens.

Just like the DaLite woven screens, this screen will have care issues, and you will want to check UL and fire code certifications with them prior to purchase due to the multitude of headaches associated with commercial installations and your potential insurance/fire risk with a permanently mounted screen.

Other than that, I've heard nothing but good things about Seymour Screens and their focus on AT screens with direct to consumer pricing tends to be a win-win for everyone involved.

[jostenmeat]

Ok, maybe just this one last post before I take my leave, to throw up the advices on cleaning. It appears Seymour has been making electric retractables since late 2007.

I honestly have never heard of a Da-Lite weaved/woven AT screen, that's a first for me. I tried looking for one, ran some searches, I still can't find any that specifically are weaves. I do see perfs though. Anyway, what do I know, maybe it's a very recently introduced product or something.

So, I looked up a few things C.S. said about cleaning the XD stuff particularly, and here are some snippets.

You can easily wash the screen fabric with mild cleaners and soap and water. The vinyl extrusion over the threads means it won't care about water, however vinyl doesn't like heat or folding. So if the common vacuum brush maintenence doesn't clean what you need, spot cleaning is easy.

First, I'd use a vacuum brush to get the loose stuff off. Then, step it up to a damp cloth, then a mild multi-surface cleaner, and if all else fails use a kitchen/bath cleaner that has a bit of bleach content to it. You may find the discoloration you see is because you cleaned a spot and moved the schmutz around. You might find yourself needing to clean the entire screen if you have accumulated enough on it.

If you have an uncleanable stain, consider reversing the material if the backside is blemish-free. It looks barely different but specs the same.

This one is not as relevant, as it's regarding fixed frame.

A woven AT screen is actually much more durable than most non-AT screens because the fiber thread cores reinforce it. You can area-clean the screen using a vacuum brush or rag with the milder cleaners or soap. If you have our fixed frame screen, the o-ring tension system allows you to area clean it or gently spot clean it without stretching it enough to cause waves. The o-rings will just eat it back up like a trampoline. If you really have to scrub something, put the screen flat on a table or otherwise reinforce the back so you're not poking as much of a dimple into the material.

If that doesn't do it, let me know. We have some more aggressive steps that can be used too.

[BMXTRIX]

Shoot - I think I was just looking at the SI site at the same time I was looking at the Dalite site. SI has woven screens, DaLite is just a perf screen.

It does worry me about the cleaning, but I have no first hand experience about how it would truly go in a head-to-head "we got something nasty on this" competition.

Would be interesting to get some screen material from both companies and try them out head-to-head. See how each manufacturer does.

[FirstReflection]

Did you say low priced, retractable?

How about the Elite Cinetension2 with AcousticPro1080 material?

Not knocking the other suggestions, but if you want acoustically transparent and a low price in an electric screen that comes with pretty much every type of control option in the box, you can't beat the price on the Elite Screen products

[krzywica]

I've been doing more digging and I think the boss will go for ~$2k. He mentioned that the screen cannot be "shiny" though...not sure if any of the suggestions would have a reflective surface or not...I'm such a projector noob...

[FirstReflection]

None of the woven screens are "shiny". They don't have micro-beads, a sheen or a retro-reflective surface.

There are perforated screens with high gain, but not the woven ones - none that I know of in any case. Pretty much all of the woven screens are basically a nominal zero gain - just a plain, white fabric. I'm not aware of any less expensive woven AT screen than Elite's. Elite has also recently introduced a tighter weave option - the AcousticPro1080P2 It's a bit more expensive than the original AcousticPro1080 material and most vendors don't seem to have it listed in stock just yet, but you can probably order it if you call directly.

With the woven screens, it's definitely best to have a tab tensioned frame if you're going with a retractable drop-down screen. They definitely show waves if you go with an untensioned screen - at least in my experience. It's too bad VApex doesn't offer an AT material, since their tab-tensioned screen is about as inexpensive as tab-tensioned screens get! But Elite's Cinetension2 isn't too pricey - a fair bit less expensive than a lot of the competition. It's not fancy. The tension is provided by string that you can ratchet if it starts to come a bit loose over the years. It isn't a stiff cord like most other tab-tensioned screens. But it does the job and is easy to manage and it keeps the cost down

[krzywica]

Ok so I ended up going with a CineTension 2 135" from Elite Screens. Installed it this morning and it sure is perty! Now we need a projector...

However we have a bit of a tricky installation, projector needs to be mounted on a beam 7'2" from the screen, and needs to throw 135" of projection goodness while also having pretty good brightness output. Does something like this exist?

[Clint DeBoer]

Wow, so you grabbed the screen before the projector, huh? That's a little backwards, but you can pull out of it OK with some research... Check these out to see if any will help you:

Short Throw Projectors, Business Projectors, Portable Projectors

Use Projector Calc Pro to figure out if a particular model will work, it's fairly reliable.

[BoredSysAdmin]

Krazy, from my own experience kinda similar to your - selecting projector with existing screens the process should really start with determinate on what exactly "pretty good brightness output" means to you. For us in large and very brightly lit conference room and (unfortunately) gray screen this number is about 5000 Ansi lumens, but in your room it might differ considerably. Try to talk to local A/V vendors and ask for a demo unit or two

After that you obviously must decide on projector resolution.

Use this tool to get rough idea use this tool:
Find Projectors By Feature

My own favorite choices are:
NEC NP-PA550W and NEC-NP-PA500U
both come with various lenses and as a kit too (kits are better value)