How many fL do I need to have quality film? I'm going to buy a Mitsubishi HD1000 and because I have such a big room, it will be mounted 16.5 feet back. That says I will have a screen that is 114inches diagonal 16:9, and I will have 15 fL. Of course I will be showing (for now) on an off-white wall with less than 1.0 gain......so if I can do a DIY screen I'll be okay? How much is optimum fL? What is TOO bright?

Please help- I cant' seem to find any threads regarding appropriate brightness....

Thanks in advance
Chad

12FL is the standard, I believe. It can look fine at a bit less though, but 12FL is just the set standard. However, if you have sufficient on/off contrast you can get away with less easily. Most digitals lack sufficient on/off contrast to get away with it as easily. A CRT projector can easily pull off less simply because the black end is what's so dark (just like it's supposed to be) which gives less ANSI lumen output.

IMO, there is no such thing as too bright IF you have sufficient on/off contrast (by sufficient I mean a lot more than digitals are currently capable of natively). That means if it can do a much blacker black than most digitals are capable of while also doing a much brighter white. Lack of great blacks levels and sufficient on/off contrast is one of the only reasons not to go really bright in my eyes. The black level would be raised too much and dark scene contrast would suffer.

Plasma TVs, I believe, have over 60FL. If the black level is great it becomes hard to get "too bright". The problem with going to bright now is you end up with even more elevated blacks with digitals. It's the tradeoff.

What you're really asking though is a bit subjective. You're asking for us to give you your opinion really when asking what is too bright.