Screen gain for AE4000 in this room?

Here is a rough google sketchup of my future dedicated room. Although its dedicated, a few considerations ruled out Cinemaesque room colours and decor. First was the shape of the room with sloping roof because its in a loft conversion. Second was that I actually prefer the lounge look and third was that I want to be able to convert it back to a bedroom style room decor wise with minimum effort if the need arises in the future.

Now the colours are a bit wrong in the sketchup. Carpet will be beige. Walls will be cappuchino, celing will be white, couch will be this:



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Room is 3.29m wide and 4.4m long. I want to maximise screen width taking into account the sloping roof. Going CIH. As such the bottom of the screen will be about 16inches off the floor and the top of the screen a little over 1.5m. Speakers will be near the floor inside a frame angled towards ear height covered in black fabric speaker cloth. Hinged masking will hopefully block some reflections from side walls when in the open position. I'll have full light control but I guess it would be nice for some viewers to be able to view in some ambient light. Not everyone likes the batcave. There will never be direct sunlight on screen wall.

I am interested in the dalite or Carada cinemascope fixed frame screens. If the carada screen materials can do what I want in my room I would prefer to go with carada because they are a lot less $$$ than dalite.

I have input my screen,PJ, zoom level, ratio etc into the Projector central calculator. I have entered the following gain figures for the various screen materials

.8 gain for the carada High contrast material
16:9 - 19fl
2.35:1 - 13fl

1.0 gain for the Carada cinema white and the supposedly 1.1 of the dalite HCCV
16.9 - 23fl
2.35:1 - 16fl

1.3 gain for the supposedly 1.4 Carada Brilliant white.
16.9 - 30fl
2.35:1 - 21fl

I was kinda leaning towards the carada 1.3 brilliant white. That gives plasma like foot lamberts in the dark for those that want it or the ability to use eco mode. It means people can watch stuff with the lights on or during the day does it not?

However will I destroy my blacks? I was never a big stickler for contrast in my early PJ days but are we talking in terms of my blacks being a little lighter with the BW screen or are we talking light grey blacks. DOes the AE4000's contrast levels make up for the use of a 1.3 gain BW screen. If this setup gave me at least the blacks of my old ae900 then I would be happy and feel I had the best of all worlds. ie eyepopping picture in the dark or with ambient light and decent enough blacks.

Can anyone advise?

The first pic is of the couch in the furniture showroom. My PJ will be shelf mounted on the back wall of the loft conversion as pictured in the sketchup The PJ would hopefully be a foot or three above my head but will be below the top of the screen by necessity because I will be using the CIH zoom memory feature.

Most of the time there will be 3 people sitting on the part of the couch along the back wall. All these viewers would be sitting within the width of the screen. Only on occasion might there be people up the side of the couch. I presume it is people sitting along the side that would be outside the sweetspot viewing cone and subject to brightness dropoffs etc.

Are you saying that 1.4 gain giving the Foot lamberts outlined above is not enough for ambient light viewing and that I need 2.8 or that because the PJ and views are all within the width of the screen I might as well go to 2.8 because these viewers won't be subject to the negatives of high gain screens and I can get away with 2.8 for eyeball melting views?

Just checked this thread for new replies after reading those very threads you mentioned Doug. A lot of great info to digest.

So am I understanding this correctly. My Screen width, seating and PJ positions lend themselves to Hi gain screens, ie. little or no brightness dropoff or hotspotting to worry about. I don't need to worry about the reflected light from the white sloping ceiling (closest to screen on the left side) washing out the image too much. (the slope of the ceiling is in my favour)? My ceiling spots are above but forward of me so don't neeed to worry about their light washing out the image too much. Ditto with the velux windows. Screen wall will be in shade except dawn till about 9am And did I read in that thread that the apparent contrast level is even better with a HP screen because the bright areas of the picture are so much brighter. In other words I don't have to worry about black levels too much in ambient light never mind with the room dark.

Wow. My only worry now is that I fear my eyeballs will melt! Do you think that with the 2.8 I'll have eye popping views in ecomode in the dark and then if watching sports or when viewing with dark averse viewers I just put the bulb on normal. Sounds like it would be hazardous to my health to view with the bulb on normal in the dark The pJcentral calc gives me the following CIH foot lamberts with the 2.8. 45fl for 2.35:1 and 64fl for 16:9 !!! Are ya sure that isn't too bright Doug!!

Hi Doug,

I just wanted to thank you for replying to my thread. I believe I got incredibly lucky that the sole responder turned out to be you. No disrespect to those people who prefer other screens or have different priorities than you or I but I could have ended up being swayed by an 'absolute black level' afficienado who would steer me towards a .8 gain grey screen. I would have been none the wiser as to what I would be missing.

Up till I read your replies and read the other HP threads I was under the impression that HP screens were for commercial use only and that they were all about brightness at the expense of everything else. Turns out the HP will suit me and my room down to the ground. Plasma like punch in the dark, Bulb life extension in ecomode, homogenus brightness level with the use of ND filters throughout the life of the bulb, Ambient light viewing, Light coloured room reflection rejection, arguably improved 'percieved' contrast.

I didn't even know about the difference between retro reflective and angular in terms of off axis. I don't even have to worry about off axis viewers. I thought that those viewers got a dimmer and non uniform brightness view. Turns out retro reflective in terms of viewing axis means it dims uniformly. In other words, if I am understanding correctly, the side viewers just see a dimmer view with no 'artifacts'. They'd only know they are missing out when they lean in nearer to the hot seat and the view gets brighter. TBH some people might actually prefer the dimmer view and to them the side seats would be the 'Hotseats' And 'Dimmer' is a relative term. They probably still be getting a brighter view than a unity gain matt white screen

Thank you again for educating me.