Grey Screen

[desmondlewissmi]

What is the benifit of a grey screen for my projector?

 

[BMXTRIX]

What is the benifit of a grey screen for my projector?

A grey screen can be good in a poorly treated room in bad circumstances (ambient light issues) to help improve contrast ratios on critical content such as movies.

The key being that if you have a properly treated room which is fairly dark with dark ceiling/carpet and you keep the lights off for critical content viewing (movies) then you basically get nothing from a grey screen.

If you intend to have lights on, but only view sports with lights on, then the grey screen doesn't do much since it isn't critical viewing.

If you have a poorly treated room, the grey screen can help combat that, which is good.

Likewise, positive gain, grey screens such as DaLite's high-contrast cinema vision material are well worth considering as it will fight ambient light while still adding a bit of 'pop' to your image.

I typically prefer minimal gain white screens - 1.2-1.5 gain - and find it to be appropriate for the typical viewer.

http://www.avintegrated.com/lighting.html

 

[Chicagorep]

Gray screens also help black levels.

 

[desmondlewissmi]

Gray screens also help black levels.

Is that even in a controlled lighting type scene?

 

[jostenmeat]

Is that even in a controlled lighting type scene?

Technically yes, but then you can say that about a black screen too!

Today, it seems to be that grey screens are unnecessary in dedicated theaters, because projectors have started to really push the contrast envelope already, and that's even at affordable prices.

Grey screens are the least interesting to me, personally, by far. Not that there aren't excellent grey screens out there ($$$$), but for me, I'm simply not interested.

Look towards your room conditions and PJ choice firstly. These will assure you of maximizing contrast.

The only times I ever consider grey for others is when the PJ in question is a business class PJ. No shortage of lumen output, but sorry contrast ratio. The thing is that if this person ever upgrades to a high contrast HT projector, the grey screen is rendered nearly useless, IMO.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Is that even in a controlled lighting type scene?

Grey screens do not really correct for poor black level performance, but help to bring down extraneous ambient light a bit while dropping the entire brightness level of the projected image. This is a win/lose situation and in a properly treated, light controlled, dark painted theater a grey screen has zero positive impact on the image and typically just brings down overall lumen output which is a neutral-lose scenario. Makes no sense.

I have worked with both a minimal gain white screen and a grey screen which I currently am using, and given the choice I would go with a minimal gain white screen myself and in about 90% or more of the installations I have worked on.

The lack of punch of a grey screen is more frustrating than the loss of black levels when I'm watching in ambient lighting conditions, especially since I'm typically watching sports under those conditions.

When a critical piece of viewing is on with ambient lighting the front projection setup is not enjoyable anyways since I've killed the contrast ratio anyway. The light of a candle in a room can bring a 10,000:1 contrast ratio down to lower than 50:1 contrast ratio...

The key is controlling ambient light, and then a grey screen becomes pointless.