Which Screen For My New Theater?

My finished room dimensions will be close to yours and I went with the 120", 2.35 screen from Seymour AV and love it.

Tom

Grandview and Dragonfly are also good choices.

With just the above info I would stick to a 16:9 screen. 70% of your screen use is 16:9 format material (HDTV/sports & game consoles) etc.

Also, given the width of your room an AT screen would be preferred if wanting a large screen. Can you move your seating back 2 or 3 feet? With a 120 inch screen a first row at 13' and second at 16' would be better. I just have a single row at 12'8" from a 126' 16:9 screen. We like it yet 14 or even 15 would have been optimum IMHO.

I went round and round with your same decision with exception to the AT. It came down to the amount of viewing in the two formats. 16:9 won. I just went with the largest 16:9 that "felt good" with our seating distance etc. That way you get the largest 2.35:1 projection when viewing that format as well. If your PJ is good with black levels the "white bars" shouldn't be an issue. If they are you could always implement a form of masking etc.

Cheers

I am sitting 13' from a 125" 16:9 diagonal Seymour XD screen and you cannot see any texture. Just make sure if you do get a Seymour screen to have them do the max tilt to remove moire.

I think your PJ will be fine for a 120 inch screen. Especially a screen with greater than 1.0 gain. The Seymour XD claims 1.2. Seymour also claims you shouldn't see the texture of their XD AT fabric at greater than 8 ft viewing.. Their actual comment is something like: "if sitting at 8 ft or closer you will see the texture.". Your first row at 9+ ft may be OK, I just know sitting at 9 ft from my 126 would be unacceptable unless viewing thee best HD/1080p material. And even then the overall size of picture starts to effect the enjoyment (another IMHO statement of course) :-)

Not knowing your speaker and/or sub arrangement, do you need the false wall 30 inches out? Could you make do with say 12 - 15 inches to gain a foot + or so of viewing distance?

My HT room is actually wider than it is deep. This worked out well for me to use my large powered towers for mains and side surounds yet I went with inwalls for rears given the three ft distance from rear wall to couch. My large center then sits below the scream angling upward directly at head level at seating distance etc. My screen was actually my last purchase / instal. The entire size and format decision actually came down to hanging a sheet on the front wall and experimenting with different size projected images, speaker separation/widths etc. All obviously given a limited, "fixed" viewing distance, kind of where you are at now. That may be a good approach for you as well to help decide on a screen size/format.

Cheers

Tamas - do you mind posting or sending a pic of your screen wall with the Seymour screen installed? I'm curious how the 120 inch 2.35 looks on a 12foot wall.

I'd be interested in seeing this too. I am caught in between a 110" or 120" on my wall that is 13' wide. I am leaning toward the 120 myself.

Here's a 124 inch with a 12ft wide wall. I went with the 120 inch after seeing this pic. I think this looks great. If you have a 13ft wide wall, I would go 130 inch.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...2&postcount=14

How many fl will you have with your projector on that size screen? Assuming a utility gain of 1?

Haven't measured but it's plenty bright. What projector do you have?

I was sort of playing devils advocate. Big screens are nice but if you do not have the light output to support an image at a reasonable brightness or a high gain screen, you will end up needing to replace projector lamps well before their useful end of life to maintain a good image.
The projectorcentral calculator will tell you what fl you can expect with a given projector, screen size and gain.
No one in this thread has mentioned these facts... Big is better but a dim images just sucks.. and spending $300 every 6 or 12 months to maintain the image is even worse.

Rule of thumb is 12fl, some say 8 or 9 is ok, but if you start with 8 or 9 400 hours later you may be at 4 or 5.. just one more thing to consider when buying projector and screen.

Oh, and if calibrate you projector, you light output may be a lot less then the calculator says..

Be careful with the calculator, as you will not really know which picture mode and lamp output mode was used in those calculations.........therefore, you do not know how many lumens were used in those calculations. Although, I believe they are using the high spec. output with some lamp degradation built in.

If you plan on using dynamic mode then you will probably be safe, but if you use "best mode" you may be too dim.........hard to say??

The point I was making is folks should at least have some clue how the size of the screen effect the image other than size..

Agreed! That calculator is good for relative comparisons........screen size, gain and throw distances.

If wanting better absolute numbers then maybe this calculator should be used:

http://http://www.eliteprojectorcalculator.com/

Here's the thread discussing it:

http://http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1360824&highlight=elite+projector+calculator