Hi all,

I'm looking for a new pj for my living room/ home theatre.

I can shut almost all of the light out, at least in the evening, during the day a little less.

But since one wall is a matte dark colour and the 2 side walls and the ceiling are lighter (As I said, I didn't want a batcave for a living room) I do have som reflected light off the walls on the screen.

The screen diag is about 110" at 235:1.


Would it be better to go for an extra dark pj to help blacks?
Or am I better off to get a bright one with a little less dark blacks for extra contrast?

After all, because of the bounced light, the screen can only be as dark as the the stray light that lands on it.

Greetz,
Djorre.


on the pics you can see my room in 'living room'-mode and in 'Theatre'-mode.

The type of screen is equally important (if not more so) when considering image performance in a room with ambient light challenges. Tell us about your screen fabric and whether or not you would consider changing it if necessary.

The screen I have now is basically a drywall-plate with special screen-paint on it in about 6 layers.

The paint currently is matte white, but I could do some extra layers with the light gray contrast version if that would improve contrasts.


In fact, when I just pop on my current pj while leaving the dark 'doors' shut, it is in fact quite amazing that it doesn't have a lot of problems painting a colour picture on the allmost black background. Of course the overall picture is somewhat darker. But that pj is an old data-pj (with terrible blacks) so it is kind of made for it. The blacks are, of course, a lot better when projected on a black background :)

Regardless of the next pj, would you guys (and girls) think redoing the screen with the gray version of the paint would be worth the effort? I didn't take the gray in the beginning because I was scared to get a dull, dim picture.


Djorre.

If you want to reject some of the ambient reflections and room light use the gray treatment. More screen gain would help reject off-axis illumination but would also narrow the viewing cone. A matte white screen is the worst choice for controlling ambient light contamination in the image.

A gray screen doesn't improve contrast, only black level, since brightness is reduced along with black threshold.

Thanks,

I'll try the gray coating,

Brightness isn't really an issue since I can practically shut out all external light except form stray light from the pj.

When I put my current pj in 'bright' mode it's even hard to look at the screen, so I guess I have a some headroom there until It would get really dim.

Greetz,
Djorre.