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White, Grey or Black?

2K views 11 replies 4 participants last post by  Dave in Green 
#1 ·
So I've been working on narrowing down which projector I'd like to get and feel like I'm settling down into either the Sony VPL-HW40ES or the VPL-45ES (more likely the 45). Most of my content would be 2D, but I want to be able to watch 3D. I have something like 14 3D movies, and I've never been able to watch a 3D movie at home.

I've got a room with a fair amount of light control, pictures are of full daylight, and I can fix the curtains for even more control. I'd like the option of having a little light on in the room, as it can be tough trying to find remotes etc in the dark. The image I like is between 110" and 150". My wife prefers 110" I prefer 150". Seating distance is about 10 to 11 feet from the screen. The picture with the movie on it shows you the area I have to work with.

I'm debating between trying to smooth out my wall and using "Easy Ambient Light Rejecting Screen Paint" with the "Tabby Grey or Seal Grey" or maybe something like
"Silver Grey Screen MIX
I mixed 1 gallon valspar brushed pearl Color-BP31A winter blue fox and
1 quart Valspar Flat black

1 quart of that mix and added
1 quart Behr ultra matte 1750 Color-770E-2 silver screen
And 8 oz Behr ultra flat white" - "Az Black Pearl paint and silver grey screen mix for Epson 3600e"

The other option I've been considering would be the Elite Screens CineGrey 3D AR150DHD3. I want to give myself space so I think I'd go somewhere between 135" and 150" diagonal. If I paint the wall, I'll probably do all but 2 feet from the bottom and a 2-3" border of white around the edges. I figure, if I go bigger I can always zoom in for my wife, when she doesn't want to deal with the bigger image. I just wish I could afford a Black Diamond 1.4 gain 158" 2.35:1 screen. I feel like that would be great for light controlled and open window viewing.

The 40ES and 45ES aren't super bright and would need some gain for 3D movies. I really would rather keep the projector on ECO mode as much as possible to extend the life of my bulbs.

I'm open to ideas other than those mentioned.
 

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#3 · (Edited)
White, Grey or Black?
Since you're not sure of either the screen size or material that you want, you should probably get your projector first. Get samples of all the screen fabrics and paints that you're considering, including a matte white and a 1.3 gain screen sample. Paint some cardboard samples and hang them on your screen wall along with the fabric samples. Zoom the image out to your preferred 150" diag and see how you like each sample. Fire up a 3D movie and see if the images on the samples are bright enough. If they're all too dim you may need to consider higher gain fabrics or reducing the image size. Once you decide on a screen size & fabric that you'd be happy with, invite your wife over for a viewing. If she agrees with your image size and fabric/paint choices, then you know what you should get. If not, let the negotiations begin...

Ambient light is the enemy of picture quality in front projection systems. The darker your room, the better the black levels will be. There's normally enough light reflecting off a screen to see your surroundings, especially if you haven't darkened the room with black paint on the ceiling & side walls. If you need extra light when you pause a movie, get a remote controlled floor lamp. Blackout cellular shades can help reduce ambient light:
https://www.blinds.com/p/blindscom-signature-blackout-cellular-shade/518199

Your room is full of hard surfaces that aren't very good for acoustics. Carpet can tame some of the echoes. Acoustic panels (absorbers) on the walls at first reflection points can also help:
http://www.gikacoustics.com/educational-videos/
http://realtraps.com/articles.htm

Good luck with your new HT!
 
#4 ·
I believe the main difference between the Sony 40 and the 45 is that the 40 measures brighter in real life while the 45 adds the dynamic iris function (which will only really matter if the room is dark enough to benefit from it and only if you like it enough to turn it on). For your situation and the roughly $1000 difference, I'd lean toward the 40. You probably won't miss the dynamic iris and your 3D will get a brighter image and your wallet will be fuller.
EDIT: unless I'm confusing the 45 and the 50/55 in which case the 40 and 45 should be pretty similar.

For inexpensive ALR screens that still perform well and solidly bright I'd check out CarlsALR material (a sample pack is around $1-$5) and the Cinegrey 5D Designer Cut Series (which is limited to 135" but available as low as $180 at that size).

For paint I've found a few cool options that can give a bit of added brightness and fight lights too, but I've had better luck spraying than rolling... Although it's worth pointing out that the spraying has been super easy/forgiving and not messy (despite my lack of area protection, I haven't run into anything besides about 4"-6" of overspray on the sides next to the screen/area...not even paint dust) and my Wagner Opti-Stain was only $40-$50 from Walmart (and also many hardware stores although I didn't see it at HomeDepot).

The paint can be bought in smaller amounts totaling about $8 and the sprayer can be returned (at least from Walmart) if you decide you don't like paint or spraying or both.

Elite sells samples of the Cinegrey, and Carl's/carlofet sells an entire pack of larger samples of all their materials for a really low price.
 
#5 · (Edited)
First things first, Henrich3, you're absolutely right with the room. I am waiting for some money to come in, and so I haven't begun the project. That's why it look kind of slapped together. I've got my speakers picked out as well as my receiver. I'm planning on getting a decent area rug and putting it in the room to help with the acoustics. I haven't decided on the walls yet. I was thinking of making them darker, but I hate painting. Though Ftoast gave me a good idea with the paint sprayer. I bet I can rent one from home depot, or buy one less expensive, but that would cut the job way down.

Ftoast, did you catch the fact I was using your post as a reference? You are the first person I found using paint on youtube and gave me the initial spark of hope there. With paint you can have any color/size screen. That being said, do you notice sparkle with the Ralph Lauren metallic untinted?

You guys are awesome. As many youtube videos as I saw with people using samples, for some reason it never occurred to me...I too can use samples. I'm going to start looking into that. I may hold off on the painted samples for now, just because those are bigger undertakings getting all the ingredients together. That one recipe is like 4 or 5 different paints.

Also, I don't think either the 40ES or 45ES have dynamic iris. The 40 is the previous model the 45 just came out to replace it. You may be thinking of the 65 which is a thousand or two more than either of them. You can find the 40ES cheaper right now though since it's the previous model.
 
#9 ·
First things first, Henrich3, you're absolutely right with the room. I am waiting for some money to come in, and so I haven't begun the project. That's why it look kind of slapped together. I've got my speakers picked out as well as my receiver. I'm planning on getting a decent area rug and putting it in the room to help with the acoustics. I haven't decided on the walls yet. I was thinking of making them darker, but I hate painting. Though Ftoast gave me a good idea with the paint sprayer. I bet I can rent one from home depot, or buy one less expensive, but that would cut the job way down.
If you're not up to painting, hire a pro to do it. The best time to do that is before you get your screen & fill up the room with furniture. Darkening the ceiling and screen wall helps not only with reducing ambient light, but also to eliminate visual distractions. Here are before & after pics showing the ceiling and screen wall painted flat black:




You may not want to go all out with flat black in a multi-use room, but choosing a darker, flatter paint for your ceiling & screen wall can improve your HT experience.

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/24-digital-hi-end-projectors-3-000-usd-msrp/1465053-black-theater-improvment-thread-once-you-go-black-you-never-go-back.html
 
#6 · (Edited)
I did confuse that new Sony for lastyear's fancier model then..in that case I'd take a quick look at the projectorcentral reviews of the 40 and 45 to see if the 45 adds anything or changes brightness measurements by anything significant.. Otherwise I just remember hearing it cut off the analog inputs but still only has a pair of HDMI.

I haven't yet seen any benefit to using four or five paint ingredients instead of just two..so anything you'll see recommended by me will only need two paints and they'll be from regular local stores.
I can sympathize with not wanting to paint, but I don't want the reason to be from mixes being needlessly complicated.

The darker-colored and higher gain RalphLauren mixes can get a sparkly look if the paint job doesn't go well (which is easy to have happen, especially when rolling onto a wall)..so spraying with a gun that's good for really thin paint and keeping toward the more medium-grey shades can really help.
The mixes I've been playing around with most recently (combining FolkArt metallic at $2-$16 from Walmart and water-based matte poly at $6-$12 from HomeDepot) have been cleaner/less sparkly than ProGrey/ProWhite with the lighter and 1.1-1.3 ish gain versions.

Mostly the FolkArt+poly mixes are very easy to spray while the RalphLauren+Grey mixes can be a little more tricky to spray, and spraying is usually much easier for getting a smooth-looking result on a large and/or vertical area.

I only recently realized there's kind of a whole little YouTube community of fellow paint-nerds. :D

I think painting a room itself actually goes faster and easier just rolling the paint. Spraying an entire room would need a gun that spits paint fast and hard and messy..and I think spraying a whole room would be worse for fumes than just rolling.

Screen samples are definitely the way to go as henrich3 said.
 
#7 ·
First, there should be zero reason to consider an HW40ES over and HW45ES. Most of the remaining HW40ES units have been cleared from the stock of legit vendors and most of the ones being advertised now are from questionable vendors. Sony lowered the MSRP from $2,499 to $1,999 when updating this model, so you can't even save much money when buying an HW40ES from a legit vendor. Not only is HW45ES image quality (including brightness) improved over the HW40ES, lamp life has been extended.

It's important to understand that most projectors produce 3D brightness that's less than half of their 2D brightness. Professional reviews of the HW45ES are pretty consistent in stating that if your screen is larger than 120" that 3D images will begin to get darker than most people like even on full lamp with a 1.0 gain white screen. A screen in the 135"-150" range would definitely need gain. But adding gain will narrow the viewing cone and can also produce artifacts such as sparkles, hot spots, etc. It's important to consider what percentage of your viewing will be in 3D and how important that is compared with 2D viewing before spending more on a high gain screen that may not be optimum for 2D.

Cinegray 3D is only 1.2 gain and it's unlikely the HW45ES will be able to properly illuminate a 1.2 gain 150" screen in 3D. At 120" the HW45ES will properly illuminate a 1.0 gain white screen like the well-reviewed $250 Silver Ticket in both 2D and 3D. All I can say is if my wife didn't want a screen larger than 110" from a 10' viewing distance I'd consider myself lucky to get her to accept a maximum of 120". :)
 
#8 ·
I'm hoping to get a bigger screen and then zoom down or something to provide comfort to her and for 3D viewing. Is this a possibly very naive way of thinking? Probably. I read a review, http://www.projectorreviews.com/com...pson-home-cinema-5030ub-vs-sony-vpl-hw40es-1/ where they have a chart discussing lumens at eco vs "living room" brightness. The hw40es fares better than the 5030ub. Even though the 40es is rated at 1700 lumens and the Epson at 2400. B&H has the 5030ube for $200-$300 more than the hw45se so I had been considering it, up to that point.

I want 3D for me, just so I can see if I like it or not. My 9 yr old and wife don't care much for it. Actually my 9 yr old hates 3D because of the glasses. I think it's interesting as a concept, though I feel it's becoming a disappearing fad. Many of the 4K Ty's didn't even list it as a feature when they started coming out. The LG OLEDs have passive 3D and brightness/contrast to support it. However $5000 for a 70"TV is painful at best.

2D, contrast, and color brightness/accuracy are the most important things to me. I'd like to have a hint viewing surface for me, that I can narrow down for my wife on occasion.
 
#10 ·
If your family isn't crazy about 3D and you're just curious to try 3D and maybe only watch it occasionally, then you might get by with zooming down to a smaller, brighter image just for those rare occasions. The issue with projecting a smaller image on a larger screen on a more regular basis is that ideally you want the image to fill the screen right up to the black borders because it helps make the image pop. Some people are more sensitive to this than others. What you don't want to do is buy a big screen with black borders, throw a smaller image on it and then discover that you really don't like something that you and your wife may be watching a lot of the time.

The 5030UBe is the same as the 5030UB but with wireless added. B&H is a good vendor and it's likely they still have 5030UBe's in stock and not 5030UB's because most people didn't want to spend the extra money for wireless as it can be less reliable than a wired connection. But in your environment and with your preferences the HW45ES may be a better all around model for less money.
 
#11 ·
I ordered some samples, so we'll see how they look when they come in. I like 135" as a set size. My wife still seems to prefer a smaller image, but she's probably happy with our 55" TV, so go figure. I don't think she's the type of person to watch the projector if I wasn't around to watch with her. It could be that she's just so underwhelmed she can't be bothered with it. She spends most of her time on Facebook or playing games on her phone when we're watching TV anyways, hehe.

I'm not really sure how I'll mount Carl's screen material if I go that route. I was thinking I could put some screws into my wall and tension mount the finished edge ones with grommets, but that seems sloppy. I'm not super handy, so building a frame really isn't on my list of things I'd rather do. That being said, I'm also not super keen on skip coating my wall to make it completely flat.
 
#12 ·
The only reason to go with Carl's screen material is if you are OK with making your own screen frame. Otherwise the simple solution is to buy a Silver Ticket fixed screen that comes with a nice frame that you just bolt together, attach the screen material and hang on your wall. They make a 135" size if that's what you've settled on. The next size down is 120" if you decide to compromise with your wife. ;)
 
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