A better grey screen - Page 13

CMRA: Actually, I have been thinking about a few tweaks. I see that our friend from Memphis is thinking along similar lines - he diluted some ME with UPW (go to Scoob555's thread on ME and a one-coat solution). His pics look encouraging. My problem is time - and I marvel at how you find the time to do all of your tinkering. At least MSMan does it for a living! I have several old pieces of drywall in the cellar I hope to play with but with the holidays coming.................................I have a gorgeous wife, a darling 11 year-old daughter and an extended Italian family of more than 20 within a few miles. They make life worth living BUT it takes time to enjoy those better things in life.

One idea I had was to replace some of the lamp black in ME with SM. Maybe cut the black tint in half, cut the thalo green by 25% and substitute what tinting is removed with SM. I need to talk to my paint guy to find out how much "24" lamp black is in ounces or milliliters. What do you think? Did you try lower levels of black before the final ME configuration? Do you think the clear glaze base really adds anything?

I can't wait for your "details" on the new stuff!

John in Northern NY

I am at a loss to explain why, but I created something today that works better for me than ME. After my disappointing tryout of ME+, Saturday was a rousing success! I have been watching a split screen, 1/2 ME and 1/2 ME+ (see ME + silver one-coat solution thread) for most of a week. The ME+ was too dark, the whites were totally crushed. I had to do something - our extended Italian family was coming over tonight for a double-feature!

This morning I tried a 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 test. Bracketed by ME and ME+, I applied some of the following with my foam roller:

1/3 gallon (~70%) of ME
1/3 qt. (~15%) of WalMart latex base
1/3 qt. (~15%) of clear faux glaze

My hypothesis was that my high lumens/moderate CR SONY HS10 LCD pj needed NO silver and a bit less of the black and green so dilution of ME should do the trick. I expected a slightly lighter grey than ME and a slight sheen. This finished off most of my partial paint containers and I have a fresh gallon of ME if this test failed!

Results? A surprise. The finish was lighter than the ME+ as expected but still one shade darker than ME. Only a very slight sheen is noticeable. No hotspotting. The big surprise was that the middle 1/3 of my screen gave BETTER results than both ME and ME+!!! The blacks were just as good as ME+ and the whites were not crushed! I recalibrated to this new concoction and only had to make a very small increase in brightness from the ME settings. The viewing cone remained at 179 degrees, like ME.

I painted my entire drywall screen with the remaining mixture this afternoon (2 thin coats required over ME+ and ME.) The entire family noticed the improvement while watching Harry Potter. My wife, who had seen it before on ME, commented on seeing more detail in the dark scenes. I found my old tripod the other day and when I get time I will work hard at improving my screen shot abilities with my digital camera.


I know this makes no sense. Maybe it is relevant only for owners of the same projector with well controlled light conditions and who have drywall screens. I dunno. I only know that we are thrilled with the results. I am still watching CMRA's and MSMan's work closely. I do like experimentation (my R&D days with General Motors were exciting!). But it will now involve HANGING something (like plexiglass?) in front of this screen for comparison, not changing any paint scheme!

John in Northern NY

CMRA:

I am not sure I would call it anything because I do not know if it is repeatible by anyone else. I suspect that widely ranging conditions in HT's such as PJ's, PJ settings, ambient light, screen surface, personal tastes, etc. lead to widely ranging answers to the "perfect one-coat" paint quest. I only know I like my concoction slightly better than the ME and a LOT better than the ME+. When someone else gets the same results I did then maybe we can give it an official name!! I am not sure how many people actually ended up with the same results that Scoob555 did with his recipe. I know of two who didn't- you and me!

Which only shows you that ME is a very robust solution since so many people find it very pleasing. I still can't figure out how my ME3 concoction dries slighty darker than your ME. There is actually LESS pigment by volume since I added 2/3 of a qt. of material with zero pigment to 2/3 of a gal. of ME. And why it enhances blacks without compromising the nice whites from ME is beyond me. Any ideas?

John in Northern NY

Just curious, but what would the approximate gain of the ME by itself be? Right now I'm using an cream colored wall as my screen and it's been ok.

My concern with ME is that I have a Sony HS10 that has been calibrated and the picture is not that bright, even using this off-white colored wall. IN addition to watching DVD's, I also play a lot of XBox video games and at times I'm wanting that added punch and vividness that seems to be lacking unless I take the CC40R filter off the HS10.

Any suggestions on this? At times I'm convinced it's ME for me and at other times, I feel that I should just go with the Behr Ultra White stuff.

Thanks. Jimmy

JimmyDaves: Take it from an HS10 owner with an easily light-controlled room - if you simply want a paint solution, you want the ME or ME-ECE on your wall. I started out with a light tan/creme color on my drywall and the improvement was HUGE. You can't go wrong with either one. I suggest you start with ME. It is a proven winner, especially for LCD pj's.

BTW, I need to correct my last post. That was 2/3 of a qt. of zero pigment material to 1/3 (not 2/3) of a gal. of ME for my mixture.

John in Northern NY

Jimmy,
Realizing the color correctness that the proper mix gives you 'without' reducing luminosity any further is the key to obtaining a blissfull state. ME is great for lazybones who want easy results that mostly satisfy, but it IS NOT a universal panecea. It works best with pjs outputing 800 to 1100 lumens, and it's grey/green properties are there soley for enhancing Black (contrast) levels. By it being a lighter shade of grey than other High Contrast screens or mixes allows colors and white to be more vivid with low Lumen PJs. But the continuing search for reclaiming lost white levels after applying ME is what drives other's, including CMRA, Scoob, and myself to further experimentation.

Except now, after my latest two adventures, for me, this arrogant, displaced Hoosier dwelling in the bottoms of Mississippi, feels that really, at this point, as far as "Painting Walls" are concerned, no more experimentation is really necessary. CMRA must feel that way too because he's gone off into the Twillight Zone in search of a window into the future.
(...either that or he just came into some stock in a Plastic Resin Company...)

The bitter part is that his results ARE also outstanding, but like expensive Mfg. Screens, the Plexi scheme involve sacrafice. Mabey a drastic one if your first painting attempt with CMRA's "Witches Brew" on a full size Plexi sheet goes awry. Rocket Science, this needs not to be, nor does anyone deserve to crash & burn trying a new idea. Now I'm not really dissin' CMRA's Plexi idea, only pointing out that road should not be taken without accepting the potential for more heartbreak than joy.

Better to wait and let some fool spend his or someone elses' money trying it out on a 5'x10' plexi sheet, eh CMRA?

Back to the real world.

You need:

A grey or silver background coat followed by a white or white/pearlesence topcoat. My 'bottom coat' vote goes to using 2 quarts of almost pure Beir Silver Metallic mix containing 6 oz of straight Flat white base if rolling, or 4 oz. of water if you spray.

Boy o Boy. If you didn't do an excellent job of smoothing your wall, the SM will cause every little defect to jump off the wall at you. Critical is the need to lay down both the necessary amount of Mud across the wall, and sand every inch of the screen area. Adding a thin skim of mud between areas where mud was necessary to fill or cover defects reduces the chance that variations in mudded wall texture vs plain Drywall surface will pop through.

Cover the entire area with a good, flat white primer, or better still, a medium grey primer.

HEY! why didn't I think of that before!???! Yeowee! Using a Primer mixed with Lamp Black to acheive a moderate grey hue will / should greatly enhance the ease of coverability with the subsiquent SM!

Won't nuthin' make covering the SM with thin layers of GOO or UPW-F with 50% Perlscence added any easier, so buck up. White over dark is always a bugger bear, hence why most cover dark paint with white primer first.

If the wall seems smooth to the touch over it's entire surface, then it's ok if after applying the SM if you see scratch marks from sanding. As long as the Silver color within the specific area is uniform, the Top Coat will erase those visible lines. Trust me.

The finished product should give you outstanding contrast, better color saturation, excellent veiwing angle, a really REALLY bright image, and the slight grey hue will diffuse the HS10's SDE.

Unless your rolling, DO NOT wet sand any but the final spray coating of Top Coat. And sand that very lightly or you may need another finising coat on top of that because the layers from spraying are mighty thin. The SSs I posted on "Friday Night Fish leftovers" last night are on a unsanded sprayed wall because i must wait until the final construction mess is over to sprayapply another couple coats of Goo CRT White Top Coat to round out the final finish quality. That's when I'll lightly sand the very top layer.

I just sprayed the screen mentioned above with the SM/water mix and the results were outstanding....but when spraying thin coatings, it is exceedingly tedious work to equalize the coverage of SM. To be safe, a 3 quart mix for both rolling and spraying will assure that you have enough mix to completely cover your wall. @ $20.00 a quart, the SM really isn't that expensive when you consider the pain and suffering you'd experience by being "just that close' to finishing your coverage and darn, your at the bottom of the tray or can.

Either way, expect the coverage of the wall with the SM to be a slow, careful process when rolling, and slower still when spraying because of the multible coats required.

When applying the Top Coat of choice, expect the first coating to look horrible. (...for that matter, so does the first coat of SM...) The SM shines right through and highlights EVERY discrepency in your coverage, tempting you to go back over it again. But don't. Let each thin coat dry throughly, then apply more top coat to the darker (thinner coated) areas first, let dry, then apply another full coat over the area.

This all may seem like a lot of troble, but is isn't really.

..and the results won't give you the longer list of considerations and concerns Plastic sheet brings to the equation, such as finding a way of mounting it flat, keeping Static Electricity under control, keeping kids from touching the screen with 'scratchy' objects, oh...the list is pretty long, and includes a lot of the undesirables that Mfg screen posses.

..if it didn't look so damnable fine!

Below is a SSs showing a true color sky combined with correct flesh tone.

..and dem Blacks be mighty black, as well.

All from a pure SM base with Goo CRT white top coat. Get it while it's hot.

Jimmy: MSMan is exactly right about ME - it is for the lazy man, to which I continue to plead guility. I think the reason that ME and my slightly different concoction work well with the HS10 is the higher lumens compared to some other<$3000 pj's. My overall picture is very acceptable BUT the whites could be brighter. But for the man with no time and/or motivation, it is wonderful and a great bang-for-the buck compared to a purchased screen. Are MSMan's and CMRA's work worth trying? Absolutely! When I get the time and motivation..............

Now, back to completing the ME paint job on the rest of the walls and ceiling in my HT!

John in Northern NY

Better you and others than me. My 'experimentation' must be limited to tweeking screen applications that already exceed anyones' expectations.

I'm an impatient man. You speak of results CMRA, but only offer cameos of what might be a good thing. At this point, you cannot even say for certainty, and/or at the risk of leading others astray, that the application is even plausible for any but the most adept of DIY'. Or even plausible, period. it could just be an exercise in "Carrot dangling" that reaps only empty air. I know the majority want answers, they want someone to say,"This works...DO IT!".

Adept DIY'ers?

Lemme tell ya, that description does NOT fit the majority of posters seeking advice here. I myself, as you and others know, derided the need for using Spray equipment, yet in using SM, I have found it essential in assuring a correct application. Not absolutely required, as I've proven previously, but preferable in the least. How many DIY'ers does, when suggesting that Spraying is the ONLY way to go, it rule out them considering the SM based screen application I've advocated?

At $300.00 for a Gravity Feed Spray Gun & 5 HP /28 gallon Compressor;

......a bunch. That's why I stress learning a little Rolling & Sanding technique as the affordable way to achieve the best results for less.

Yet Spraying is exactly what will be the ONLY way to effectively coat a huge piece of Plexi (or glass) So that equipment's purchase price (or Rental, if one is lucky.) must be heaped upon the already pricey list of materials.

I'll be content to follow along after the effort has been made on this one, since it's basis is that of using silver and maintaining a smooth surface. both of which I already do quite nicely.

Wassamatter? Is everyone a'scared to pick up a sanding sponge? If anyone out there in PJ & DIY Screen land would even consider the Plexi scheme, I'd think they would have already have painted every wall available to them, for the logistics of attempting the Plexi-Screen are daunting at the full size level. For just the price of the size Plexi needed, but before any other materials are purchased, you could buy 3 quarts of SM, 3 quarts of UPW-f and 1 quart of Beir Pearlesence, three rollers, 3 sponges, Beer for three days, Pizza on the first night, Hot wings the second night, Steak for the grill on the third night, and a new DVD to shine on your 10' diagonal screen on the 4th night.

Very soon I'll emphasize my point with a series of SSs that will clinch the argument as to whether or not exotic variances of practical applications are worth the trouble. Plainly, it will be a straight up comparison of the quality quotient as relates to the "Pain in the Ass' quotient that each represents, since both will present exemplary results. I think I'll getcha on that. In fact, I'm bettin' that no one even attempts the full size application until after the New Year. I'd love to be wrong on this point. I make the best of being wrong by coating my Humble Pie with the Syrup of Knowledge. (burp!)

Anyway, it would be a shame to rule the roost by default, but that itself would be a telling aspect to consider.

But as always, I'll close on a positive note. Who knows? Maybe I can 'lead the way?" I have a Client in San Diego, CA who wants a 60' diagonal 235:1 screen directly over his Study's Fireplace Mantel installed by December 17th. The wall over the Mantel is Red brick. I was considering a painted Parkland application, but now........................................, who knows?

The Shadow Knows.............*

Question?

How many times must 2'x2's of Plexi or glass be "tested?"

Your tests already should either justify the next step, or are you waffling here? Why not spring for a 4'x4' er? 4' x 8'? 5' x 10'? You started this idea, so why depend on others to test out your own hypothisis?

Put up something realistic, or you might as well go stick those Plexi plates on the wall over the Litterbox so the cat won't scratch the wall.

oh...I forgot. The cat burned up, didn't he?

[quote]Originally posted by MississippiMan
[Wassamatter? Is everyone a'scared to pick up a sanding sponge? If anyone out there in PJ & DIY Screen land would even consider the Plexi scheme, I'd think they would have already have painted every wall available to them, for the logistics of attempting the Plexi-Screen are daunting at the full size level. For just the price of the size Plexi needed, but before any other materials are purchased, you could buy 3 quarts of SM, 3 quarts of UPW-f and 1 quart of Beir Pearlesence, three rollers, 3 sponges, Beer for three days, Pizza on the first night, Hot wings the second night, Steak for the grill on the third night, and a new DVD to shine on your 10' diagonal screen on the 4th night.]

I am not sure about that...............have you seen the price of steak lately! But you make a valid point. As the ultimate lazy DIY'er, you MIGHT see me try your roll and sand technique sometime in the future. Spraying on Plexiglass? I would have to see it UP CLOSE and PERSONAL and judge that its characteristics were significantly better than roll-and-sand before I would attempt it. It is the skills required more than the money that makes it daunting. Thousands have probably tried ME or its variants by now. Dozens have probably completed the roll-and-sand screen with many more to come, maybe me. I am waiting for the 5x10 Plexiglass results from someone!

Enjoy your turkey today - and the NFL in HDTV!

John in Northern NY

I just finished painting the OTHER walls in my HT with a gallon of Misty Evening mixed into Home Depot flat wall latex paint purchased last week in PA. I noticed a slightly lighter tint than the ME on my screen - which I had mixed to what I thought were ME specs with True Value flat white ceiling paint several weeks ago. And just now I checked out CMRA's mixture with HD Masonry/Stucco flat white base on page 8 of this thread. ALL OF THE TINTS WERE DIFFERENT! CMRA's is a 25-Lamp Black and 6-Thalo Green mixture, my True Value was 24-4 and the gallon I just bought at HD is 20-4. I gotta stop doing drugs - WAIT! Those are just for my thyroid condition..................................

John in Northern NY

After Thanksgiving comes Christmas, and all the commensurate scamble for "must have" goodies.

The many will become legion. The Posts will fly. A level of satisfaction geared to the needs of almost any PJ system is available through the various formulas already.

As for 5' x 10' Plexi ? Somewhere, someplace, insanity mixed with direction of purpose will combine to make it happen. When/if it happens...., brrrrrrr..*, I get the chills just thinking about it.

Be there, or be...., dull.

Most of what I have done over the past 3 years can be directly attributed to excellent posts by Tryg, and those few like him who truly deserve reconigition for thier having pioneering new ideas and/or thier exhaustive efforts reviewing existing screen formats.

Take a good Idea and make it better.

Combining the Contrast and Detail properties that Silver brings to the table with the "whitening" effect a white based translucent overlay provides seems to be a logical blending of the properties of both.

Must be working because what I've seen does and most excelent job compared either of the others standing alone on thier own individual merits.

(seems a lot of people start out praising the Silver Star, then mute thier praise in short order)

Pure Silver screens (curved) are old school, but deliver extreamely concentrated light within thier respective viewing cones. Which are very narrow. (70 degrees +/- center at best)

Essentailly, I'm looking for increased gain without hotspoting, reduction of Viewing Angle, and whites that are brilliant but not too 'contrasty' (re; blue)

check out :
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...4&goto=newpost

or:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...7&goto=newpost

....to follow the continuing story, and see the latest Screen shots of a pure SM screen, which will then be covered with a "Goo-Like" white pearlecent substance.

These pictures are amazingly good. However, I was taught never to judge the quality of an image from animation. That images with real people, real places, foliage, cars, trees, etc. were the truest test of image quality rather than digitally made images. Most of the pictures I'm seeing posted are of animation.

CMRA your work has been awesome and I've learned a lot from your posts, but can we start using movies with real people and places in addition to images from Nemo?

Thanks. Jimmy