Just received and mounted my new DNP Supernova BLADE 08-85 Screen. Pics and impressions inside. - Page 2

Yes.Its just for the 23-23 material.

Hi Kev! Im thinking about getting this screen and have a couple of questions I hope you would answer. When i saw the 0.8 material in store I loved it, no sparkles as you said and it really was the best high contrast screen out there for me.
There was one thing that did bother me a bit tho, and it was that the white areas never felt really white but more like light grey. Is this something you have noticed with your epson? the projector i saw was shooting ~1000 lumens at the screen and i guess more lumens would make this "problem" less apperent.
I would also like too know if you've tried any 3D? Im worried it would be to dark and the whites would suffer even more.

This is actually one of my "conserns" when considering this screen aswell. When i compared side by side on my BD G3 .8 the image apared slightly duller on the DNP. The whites almost looked yellow in comparison. Ofc it might just be that I've gotten used to the cooler color temp of the BD, and that I would get used to the DNP aswell. But still, the BD has more of a pop to the image.
This and the lack of horizontal ambient light rejection are my 2 main concerns.
Kev, are you able to watch movies on your screen at daytime with blinders open ?

Kev: did you ever consider Da-Lite High Power or High Contrast High Power screens? They're also designed to help with ambient light, since their off-axis gain is lower than on-axis gain (a property of retroreflective screens). Draper has Radiant & Contrast Radiant versions of HP & HCHP as well.

My Da-Lite HCHP screen has weird vertical/horizontal banding, so I'm still searching for a replacement. Giving the Draper Contrast Radiant a try (hasn't arrived yet).

DNP seems a little impractical in that it'd be a solid 110" rectangle. Don't think I'd want to move with that...

Is there any white paper on the DNP Supernova technology? Pretty sure it's vastly different from HP/HCHP. Funny thing about the latter retroreflective screens is that you want the throw to be as close to viewing/sitting distance as possible, as this minimizes the angle difference between projected & reflected light going to the projector vs. the viewer. The DNP states that it simply rejects off-axis light, so you actually want the light rays to as perpendicular to the screen as possible (the longer the throw, the less steep the angles of light rays form projector to outer edges of screen). I'd just like to know how exactly the DNP achieves this.

I also have the DNP blade with Epson 3010e (brighter than the OP 8350) and feel that 3D with Sony's 3D glasses, is too dark even at night which is how I found this thread since I'm searching for a brighter projector. To be fair, I felt the light output at IMAX 3D films (alice and wonderland) was too dim as well and I almost wanted to take my glasses off for the extra lumens)

I read that DNP recomends 3000-3500 lumens for this projector with ambient light and 2500 without

Like OP said, day time viewing with enough lights on so you can read fine print is easily doable and day watching is just as good as long as there is no direct sunlight and it's not a dark horror movie. DOOM was almost completely unwatchable. Maybe with a 3500 lumen projector would this be possible

The shot below is an out of box shot and looks a lot better in person so I think the camera messed up some contrast


Edited by snyderkv - 1/20/13 at 2:30am

Gotcha. As I understand it, the HP/HCHP has less sparklies than the 23-23 DNP material. I can confirm I rarely see sparklies on my HCHP; it's really quite amazing. Only in the brightest bright scenes (literally white) might I see it, and even then, only when the iris is wide open. Which it never is b/c I usually run on Auto Limited & cap the max the iris can open to about 2/3 stop darker than fully open. So, again, I almost never see sparklies. I'm pretty sensitive to them too... for example Black Diamonds are out of the question for me.

But you went with the darker DNP material, so I guess sparklies aren't an issue.

On a side note, I find it interesting that some of you are pairing a ~$3k screen (I think?) with a ~$1000 projector... I guess you guys are giving more importance to the screen than the projector? Not that I blame you... a screen makes all the difference. Pair a matte white screen in a white wall/ceiling room even with a $25,000 Sony & it'll look like crap b/c of the lack of contrast!

Wow snyderkv I am really jealous of you room/setup. Are those Magneplanar speakers?

Thanks both kev and snyderkv for answering my questions. the comments about the screen being dim in 3d does worry me. My initial thought was too pair it with a hw50es but maybe i should just go with a white screen and focus more on darkening my living room. A white screen would also allow me too look at the vw95es or perhaps a jvc.

I have some thinking too do! ^^

It was about that much for the 3mm 28lb 100" Blade you see in the picture or roughly the same as some competitors, except I"m sure this screen is much better. Although documentaries like the 3D Universe Series was perfectly fine, Some other movies was about the same as the theatres. It's important to note that Epsons new line comes with glasses of a lighter shade. So that may help as well

Here is a shot of Titanic in 3D (again out of box, you can see the overscan) You can see it's bright, but high tint glasses turn it down a notch. The new ones may aleviate some of that


I haven't tested this yet, but I think I'm also losing Lumens by having the PJ back 13 feet and zooming all the way (in) to try and get the smallest picture. Moving the PJ up to the front and zooming all the way (out) may increase Lumens by 30% according to some review I've read (If I read it correctly)

4:3 video and non lit area example



Thanks, those are actually ML Spires (ESL panels) I think the Magneplaners are ribons



Here is something to think about. Living room first design principals. You want a living room, not a bat cave. It has to bring people together and promote congregation. I can read a book and watch a movie as you can see in my first pic. I have no sound proofing, funky curtains or huge box speakers to remind anybody of a college dorm room. If you want to squeeze every last bit of your equipment, then convert some other room like a third car garage or bedroom
Edited by snyderkv - 1/20/13 at 6:53am

snyderkv-- you just appear to have done a great job of making the theater environment classy, clean, & inviting, while still avoiding contrast-killing reflections. That's very impressive.

I think I've got a good combination with my grey high-gain surface (though I'm trying to get the Da-Lite HCHP swapped out with a Draper Contrast Radiant in the hopes that the latter isn't dirty & rife with patterns/banding) & 30" of Protostar material on my ceiling. May throw a dark rug on the floor since I have light oak. But for the most part, blacks do look pretty black now, finally.

I do wonder though if the DNP screen would do an even better job. The limited viewing cone of the HCHP screen really helps scatter less light than a white screen, and of course the grey helps reduce the effect of reflected light.

So In general, are the BD, supernova and stewart screens roughly the same price i.e. within 10% of each other? I thought Stewart was the most premium

So I almost decided on buying DNP Supernova Core 08-85 84" screen. But then I read in the installation instructions that recommended throw ratio for the projector would be 1.8:1. Otherwise you could get HOT SPOT. So, this screen is susceptible to hot spotting?

All gain screens are susceptible to hot spots some worse than others. In general the further the throw the better.

just seems like a huge oversight to me, and a bit of an indication of a lazy/unimaginative company to leave it that way. i mean, would it be so hard to include a couple small 'stickers' of the same screen material to put over the screws to at least try to address the issue? if not actually fix the design so that you don't have to put holes through the screen.

it may not bug you that much in use, but i still think it would stop me from considering the screen. that's not the type of quality you'd expect from a retail company

White matte screen is 1.0 gain. 08-85 is 0.8 gain. All screens have gain. DNP's is less than 1.
So, I can't use BenQ W1070 or Acer H6510BD (with their max 1.5:1 throw ratio) with Supernova 08-85?

Also, is it necessary that a projector throws an image perpendicular to the screen? Is it incompatible with downward throw PJs?
Edited by Elix - 1/26/13 at 2:43pm

1

I don't think this is true for retro-reflective screens that send most light straight back to the source. If you draw a light ray diagram, and if retroreflective screens (e.g. Da-Lite High Power) actually send most light back along the incident angle, then the optimal position for the projector is as close to the viewing position as possible. A long throw, far behind the viewer, for these screens actually leads to a larger angle between any light ray leaving the projector, hitting the screen, and bouncing back to the viewer. Ideally, you want this angle to be 0.

I believe this is not the case for the DNP Supernova, which, according to the literature, reflects on-axis light (perpendicular to the surface of the screen) the most, and off-axis light (anything but perpendicular to the screen, though in a proportional manner, of course) less. In this case, you actually want all the light rays to be as perpendicular to the surface of the screen as possible, and that happens when the projector is the farthest away (convince yourself of this buy just drawing some ray optics diagrams).

There is no free lunch with any of these screens. I should probably explain further and define a gain screen. A gain screen has a coating or optical layer that is designed to reflect light other than being perfectly diffuse. A screen with no coating can be seen from all angles with no change in picture quality and it also does not matter where the projector is placed, you will still see the same image everywhere. This is called a lambertian surface or lambertian reflectance. The overall gain of the screen is misleading, I'm mainly concerned with what this optical layer does to the picture.

A screen starts with a base material and that color can be different. This alone will change our overall gain and can color shift the image. A reference material is similar to chalk and is a magnesium based compound. So if our base material is gray we have a gain less than one. But we can still have good viewing from all angles. If the base material is whiter that the reference it is often said to have a positive gain, usually a small amount like a 1.1 gain and still maintains good viewing angle from everywhere.

People that have a reference material and are in the 'bat cave' environment will tell you there is no better picture and they are correct. Once we apply an optical coating or layer, light is being bent and our picture is being distorted. Someone had posted pictures of an HP old and new version under a microscope or magnified, do this with a projected image and you will see the pixel distortion especially compared to a reference screen. This is a tradeoff we make to correct for other problems of a given environment.

Any screen that has these optical coatings/ layers has to be used in the right combination of projector and audience placement to minimize these distortions. But even in the best set up for a given screen some distortion still exists. That distortion can come as lack of screen uniformity, hot spotting, color shifting, sheens, glimmering, sparkles, etc. The HP and DNP are no exception.

With a retroreflective screen it is best to have the viewer as close to the audience as possible, which of course is impossible to get perfect or you'd block the image:-) Also, retroreflective materials are not perfect in their reflectivity and often have color shifts with minor amounts of off axis viewing. I did say in general it is best with a longer throw but there are exceptions depending on the screen design. Also, with angular reflective screens it would help to have a curved screen but you might need need a different lens to account for pincushion.

With any gain screen they are said to reject ambient light. This is simply not accurate. They do not reject ambient light they just don't reflect it back to the audience. If there is a light to the side of a screen that light with an angular reflective screen would be easily seen on the other side of the screen. It just wouldn't be seen in front of the screen. If it was a retroreflective screen the light would be reflected back towards the light but again not in front of the screen. Now a screen can be designed to have different characteristics in the vertical and horizontal axis. Sometimes this is done with multiple optical layers/coatings like the DNP.

So let's use a simple example of 2 different screens, The Studio Tech 130 and Firehawk. A 1.3 gain vs a 1.25 gain so it should be very similar? Why does the Firehawk have less viewing angle with less gain? The answer is it doesn't have less gain. I'll use some estimated figures as I don't know their exact ratio.

Say the Studio tech 130 starts wtih a reference 1.0 gain material and applies a 1.3 gain coating for an overall 1.3 gain.
The Firehawk starts with ~.83 gain screen and has a 1.5 gain coating for an overall 1.25 gain.

This is a simplications but overall gain does not tell all the characterisitcs of a screen. I'll let any DNP guys that might monitor this forum talk specifically about how their layers are used to give the results they are trying to achieve and what environments it is best suited. No screen is best in all environments no matter what :Dthe salesman says

I hope this helps with a little primer on screens and choosing the best screen for your environment.

Extremely helpful primer. Thanks

This post deserves its own topic which needs to be sticked to this forum!

True for AR (angular reflective); mostly untrue for retroreflective.

Yes the further throw is not applicable to most retro screens but they still suffer other problems.

Actually, the general principle for retro-reflective is to have it as close to the viewer as possible to minimize the angle between projected light ray & light ray reflected back to the viewer.

However, as long as this principle is adhered to, I believe it's better to have a longer throw (and longer concomitant viewing distance) than a shorter throw (and shorter concomitant viewing distance). Because any offset between projector & viewer position will lead to a larger aforementioned angle with a short throw compared to a long throw.

So I believe your initial statement about the advantage of a longer throw was correct, BobL, even for retroreflective screens, as long as the viewer is also near the projector

Yes that would be true if the viewers move as well especially the viewers that are off center:) You have a good grasp of the angles and good projection systems are all about angles:D

But in many setups there aren't really any issues, whereas I believe an AR screen with 2.8 gain will always have brightness uniformity issues with a much higher % of setups.