Screen Border - Black or Gray?

[howellgg]

Hi All,

This is my first time posting, and my projector hasn't even been delivered yet, so please be gentle. :)

I was wondering about the best colour for a screen border. Everything I have seen here seems to suggest that a black flock is the best border, which seems intuitive, but I was watching my rear projection in the family room last night, and noticed something that had me wondering. The TV is 16:9, and the show I was watching was 4:3. The PVR has settings that let you decide if you want the bars at the side to be black or gray (it seems like a medium to dark gray). With it set to gray, the blacks on the screen seem blacker, although I am sure they are not.

That's the long way around to asking if maybe a darkish grey flock would be better for the border if you want your blacks to seem really black?

Cheers,
Grant

[afx]

i'm not exactly the projector screen expert, but i can surely give a general comment...

first, i find it interesting that, on the tv you were watching, making the pillarboxes bars darker actually made the colors in the video darker (or increased the contrast or made the blacks darker). did it actually do that, or was it just a perceived enhancement?

anyway, as far as a projector screen goes, the black boarder (if you choose to use one), is not only aesthetically pleasing, but it increases the perceived contrast of the video. also, it absorbs any spill over light, so there's a distinct end to the picture.

having any color border will certainly not enhance the actual picture as it's being displayed, but it will enhance the perceived picture (contrast). so intuition tells you that black would be the best for this case. and it's also true.

now it's a different case when it comes to the actual screen. in many cases, having a gray colored screen will enhance the picture, of course, this depends on the specific scenario.

[howellgg]

Hi afx,

I guess I wasn't clear.

The lighter border (dark gray rather than black) seemed to give the perceived enhancement of deeper blacks on the screen.

I would think a dark gray flock, or velvet, border would absorb the light, maybe not as much as black, but close.

Intuitively, since front projectors have problems giving true blacks (not perceived) I would think that having a true black beside the projector's closest match would make it more obvious that the picture black wasn't true black.

When my projector arrives I will have to setup with dark gray on one side and black on the other and see how it looks.

Cheers,
Grant

[Treva26]

I was thinking the same thing.
My room gets a lot of ambient light so my blacks are often not very black.
I'm pretty sure having a pure black border would make it look worse, certainly in dark scenes.

Let me know how you went with your experiments.

[Dardog]

I'm just speculating here but I think the black border is best suited for a light controlled environment (theater type setting), where your sitting in a dark environment and the border absorbs and stray light from the projector. In an ambient light setting where you can clearly see the bornder and the walls and your surroundings, the black border may cause your blacks on the screen to look a little washed out. Maybe a gray border (like a gray screen) is the way to go for ambient light settings?