Thread: diy screens

Originally Posted by dfergie

Found some good info here...
http://www.seymourav.com/articles/DIYFixedFrame.pdf

That was a good discussion on use of a perforated screen material.

I did research before I broke down and bought the Elite screen. Most people's options probably come from the following:

1. painted wall. You need to sand, fill and sand again. The paint selected is important. This is the lowest cost, but probably the most labor intense option. It is also easy to get it wrong when applying the paint. The AVS thread has a lot of info on buying the proper sprayer, how to apply, finish sanding, care, etc. Tyhe biggest long term advantage I see is that if you decide to rearrange the room, you get to start over, as it can't be moved. Some have gotten around this by painting laminates. These folks usually have built a laminate screen and are trying to get around some shortcoming.

2. laminates. This may be the most popular option, with WilsonArt designer white and fashion gray materials being the leading choices. You can get the laminate in sheets up to 5' by 12', so a 120" 16:9 or 140" 2.35:1 screen is doable. My big problem here was mounting it. The laminate is thin and tends to bow against the wall. Many have built lattice grid backings of poplar and pine, but you can see cupping between the grid elements develop over time. The consensus seems to be to mount it with a plywood backing. If you want to do a 120" screen, you will need to do more than one sheet of plywood as it comes in 4x8 sheets. That generally means sandwiching 2 layers of 1/4" plywood with the junctions offset between layers. Lots of work and heavy. You still need to build a frame, but it can be screwed to the laminate. Some complain about hot spotting from Wilson DW screens. It usually means the projector is too close and too low. If you go with this screen, you really should go with ceiling mount for the projector. Finally, the cost is getting up there. I estimated that a 120" Wilson screen was going to cost around $250 plus a month of labor. The Elite cost $320 delivered and was on the wall in less than 2 hours. That is what finally tipped it for me.

3. Other Boards. Homeite is a popular choice. It is light, easy to use and cheap. It has a low gain. Downside is that you will be imiited to a 96" screen as it doesn't come larger than 4x8. Other materials have been tried and suggested as well, but none seem to have caught on.

4. Fabric coated laminate. That's the one Don is using. Looking at his thread, it appears you can do a good job of fine tuning laminates this way. Lots of material choices available. The material gets rid of the hot spots and working with various whites and grays can let you tune your gain, thus your tolerance to ambient light.

5. Commercial screen material. Lots of places out there selling raw material. The SeymourAV site is one of the more reputable ones. The commercial materials seem to fall into 3 camps. First is a non-glossy vinyl sheet. This is the material on my Elite. It has several advantages. The most obvious is that it can be kept at a fairly high tension and is wrinkle resistant when properly stretched. The disadvantages are that it can tear easily and can be damaged by stretching if it is hit. Probably not a good choice if small kids or drunk friends are around a lot.

Second choice is the same vinyl, but with small perferations punched at regular intervals. The reason to do this is when you want to place speakers behind the screen. That leads to better sound imaging, but it is more complicated.

The third choice is a woven screen fabric. The can be acoustically transparent, but some apply a vinyl coating over the fabric, so know what you are getting. These generally provide the best results. They are available in a wide range of gains and grayness. They can also be difficult to mount, and as the SemourAV site says, they can generate moire patterns on some projectors.

6. Final one. Lots of folks have used blackout cloth. This is the backing material for light blockking curtains and it is generally white or off-white with an interior plastic that blocks all light. It is quick, easy and cheap. Lots of folks build a frame and stretch the cloth over it, like the commercial materials.

There has been lots of discussion on stretching material over a frame to avoid wrinkles and artifacts. I think that is something we should discuss, but this response is too long already.