AT screen: cheaper than factory made, easier than DIY

I was planning on building a DIY frame for Seymour DIY AT material - but ran across a review of Jamestown Home Theater screens a while ago, and thought "why couldn't I use that inexpensive frame, and replace the material with Seymour AT fabric?". So I contacted Chris Seymour (Seymour A/V) and James Millard (Jamestown HT) to discuss it, and they said it should work.

So I purchased 13' of the Seymour CenterStage XD material, and hired James to build me a custom 136"x64" viewable frame (no material). The material arrived Thursday, and the frame arrived today, so I set about putting it together. Not quite done, but close - still need to paint the center supports with flat black, restretch the fabric, trim the excess "tab" material, and hang the screen. This far took me about 3 1/2 hours today, not hurrying.

The pictures are probably pretty self explanatory - let me know if you have any questions. I'll add some screen shots once the fabric is restretched, and the screen is hung.









































Flash shows reflection from center supports; will paint them flat black. No noticeable reflection while watching a few movie clips on it.



Edit: removed prices to protect the innocent (me)

Yes, I did tilt it to the degree that I could, given the screen size and material size - I think it ended up about 11-12 degrees? I don't think changes how to tension it - not that I know of.

What I've done so far is just a preliminary tensioning, as much as I needed to do to cut the material to size and cut the tabs. I'll see if I can make some better pics of the tensioning process when I get to that (during the week, since leaving for a weekend getaway).

Well since you asked

The frame was $300 shipped; the material (13') was $294 shipped - so just a little less than $600 total for a fairly ginormous AT screen, I doubt I would have saved much if anything if I built it from scratch (was considering 80/20 aluminum, not cheap) - and I was ready for some instant gratification.

Thanks Ben!


Oh yeah, if I had an existing screen frame, I would have reused that too. Saw your thread before, a great approach if you've already got a suitable frame!


Well Fred, I went ahead with my tensioning, but forgot to take pictures sorry! It was really quite easy, following the instructions that came with the frame, and it worked perfectly the first time - but I feel like I had some experience already after having stretched fabric on all the panels in the room!

The general approach is to loosen all the screws on the metal bars that hold down the screen material "tabs"; then tighten a couple on the bottom middle, move to the top, stretch across the screen, and also pulling out towards the corners, and tighten a couple screws there; then do the same on the middle of the sides; then work your way out from the middle of each side / top / bottom a screw or two at a time, pulling out and towards the corners (and trimming material if the tab cutout isn't deep enough, and is hitting a screw). It went quite quickly, took maybe half an hour; then another fifteen minutes to go around and cut off the excess fabric.


Very! The picture looks great, and significantly brighter compared to the temporary muslin screen that I used for sizing.

Yeah, instructions suggested having one person pull on the fabric while another tightens the screws - but I did it myself, and didn't find it that hard. The scary part was cutting the material - fear of screwing up and ending up too short, or a hole in a screw cutout - but once I made the first cut - "OK, I'm doing this" - it went fine and pretty quickly too. Just had to remind myself to slow down a bit, because sometimes I get cocky, do something too fast, and screw up (predrilled pilot holes on THT top panel, realized I had the panel upside down after I had it halfway attached - recoverable, but better to slow down).

Thanks Cabo!


Hmm, never considered it - but I doubt it, the material is quite thick and stable, not really like a thin fabric where you could pull a thread on the edge and it would run away. And the fabric is held down by pressure across a broad area by the metal bars, not by individual screws - the screws go around the fabric, not through it.

I just dove in with the scissors and eyeballed it, gutsy dude that I am. There is a fair amount of leeway, since the screws are set back about an inch from the viewable area, so you don't have to be super duper precise. I erred on the side of cutting a bit too little, and once I had the material in place, trimmed a handful of the cutouts a little bit more to keep the fabric clear of the screws once stretched.

James recommended buying the frame with material and using the stock material as a template for the Seymour material, but I wanted to save that extra money ($75) and not waste the material.

Got the screen hung - still haven't painted the vertical braces, but its working great nonetheless.

Here's a few pics, check my build thread for more screen shots:

I listened to movie soundtracks during the course of construction before I had the projector installed; then when I had the projector installed and a temporary muslin screen; and now with the projector and the AT material. Maybe the speakers sound a teeny bit brighter with the AT material compared to the muslin, but it could just be placebo effect, as I felt that the muslin was "by ear" pretty transparent, surprisingly.

I really doubt anyone in an A/B test could tell the difference between the speakers alone and the speakers behind the screen - probably could detect with measurement equipment - but even then, once MCACC/Audyssey has been run, maybe not even measurable.

Jvc rs-20

If there any solutions that fit into that category, I haven't found them yet, at least motorized / automated. The only thing that comes to mind would be creating manual masking panels, either hinged or held on by rare earth magnets, like Seymour. Oh, I guess I did see a DIY build that used linear actuator motors, which at least are a lot cheaper than the Somfy motors - but that's real DIY, a lot of work.


Thanks!


Seems like it would work - did you mean for masking a 16:9 screen down to 2.35, or masking a 2.35 screen on the sides to 16:9? For the latter, I've seen some folks used motorized black curtains.

Yes, I did find that I could see reflection off them sometimes on scenes with a white background, so I took them out and sprayed with a black flat spray can that I had on hand, and then put them back. Now they are never visible.