Okay- my setup: I have a mitsubishi 3000 DLP with 1000 lumens and 4000:1 contrast ratio. It's very bright. The room is dark, it's my basement, so there's like three little glass blocks of light at the back and whatever leaks down the stairs in the front (this provides maybe the basic shadows, you could not read, you may trip over things etc)
I currently have this on a 60 something ish dalite model B glass beaded 1:1 screen that i found in the basement when i bought the house.
The glass beads sparkle too much, and the texture is too gritty, which is noticeable as the gain is so high that i have all the brightness settings to "low." Maybe it's dirty/dusty, but light colored stuff looks gritty. I held up just a sheet of paper and it was so much smoother.
I need a wide viewing angle and want like 92-100 inches or so. (there's just somehting nice about triple digits).
We switch from 16:9 to 4:3 a lot (multiple sources) so I'm thinking 16:9. The projector has yet to be mounted.
I need a manual screen. This is over a fireplace (as in it drops down obscuring said fireplace) so it cant be stuck on the wall, and i dont want to wire up electrical stuff. I'd like to save cash- I'll deal with wrinkles as they occur. It won't need to go up and down much, just on the rare occasion we have a fire. It can be pull up or pull down, that's not a problem.
The projector will be ceiling mounted but at the same time this is our basement and for fun movie night someone might want to lie on the floor, so that's a viewing angle, plus i just need to keep it wide a I'm sensitive to the color shift effect, and just dimness. Since I don't need a high gain, that part should be easy. I'm thinking 1-1.2 or so for gain.
Im a broke college student, as is my husband. Well, grad school. but still, we spent wedding money on the projector, and we're going to cheap out on the screen for now, especially considering it's got to be manual anyways. We could install ceiling hooks for fixed frame, but Im trying to keep the price below even those, so maybe if my manual gets too wrinkly I'll rig up my own frame.
I've been really looking around, but screen reviews are sparse. Projectorreviews.com is not helpful as they just love stewarts, which are way out of our budget for now.
I see on tigerdirect etc. there are some Elite screens that are cheap, some Ultra screens, and Optoma's screens, but the greywolf is again glass beaded and high gain, despite being grey, so I'm not sure how that works out.
I need to keep this under 200 dollars, and preferably around 150 ish with shipping. I can get an elite matte white for 80 bucks.
I can get a 92 inch dalite model b high contrast matte white for just under 200 with free shipping ... is it that much better than the elite or ultras?
I'm worried because i dont like my current dalite.
Thanks!