I've got a Panasonic AX100U and a room that's hard to limit ambient light. I can't use the basement so I'm stuck with th eliving room for my home theater. Have an 8ft sliding door to the viewer's right, and an open doorway (no door to close) to the kitchen to the viewer's left. Kitchen has a fluorescent light and opens other end to dining room for light from there to drift through.
I've put darkening vertical blinds across the slider which helps, but its still hard to get a dark room before the sun goes down. It's a small townhouse and I don't have room for a CRT for daytime viewing along with the projector stuff. I'll find another forum to ask about curtains and stuff that might help out more.
Image currently projects onto a tan wall (I know, yuck, but not as bad as I expected when I painted) and I'm pondering what screen would be best for my situation. I've seen discussions saying gray screens are bad because they dull the image or mess with colors because they aren't truly "neutral" or whatever. I may accept those qualities if they help with all the ambient washout which I really don't like.
I saw a review of some screens where they seemed to like the DaLite High Contrast Cinema Vision as a second choice to the Stewart Firehawk. Is the Firehawk's advantage really worth the price difference? HCCV 106" is about $1200 and FirehawkG3 100" is about $1900 for fixed-frame. What about the Sony "black" screen, though it seems it's a bit smaller? My projector is ceiling mounted, about 13 or 14ft from the image wall.
I saw some DIY pix comparing white to light gray paint and I would have been happy with the gray considering the snapshots. Maybe full-size is different than what fits in a forum post pic, but I wasn't seeing terrible colors compared to the white. Is it really that bad on a gray screen, and is that and enough to go white screen in my room where light control is not good?
I've put darkening vertical blinds across the slider which helps, but its still hard to get a dark room before the sun goes down. It's a small townhouse and I don't have room for a CRT for daytime viewing along with the projector stuff. I'll find another forum to ask about curtains and stuff that might help out more.
Image currently projects onto a tan wall (I know, yuck, but not as bad as I expected when I painted) and I'm pondering what screen would be best for my situation. I've seen discussions saying gray screens are bad because they dull the image or mess with colors because they aren't truly "neutral" or whatever. I may accept those qualities if they help with all the ambient washout which I really don't like.
I saw a review of some screens where they seemed to like the DaLite High Contrast Cinema Vision as a second choice to the Stewart Firehawk. Is the Firehawk's advantage really worth the price difference? HCCV 106" is about $1200 and FirehawkG3 100" is about $1900 for fixed-frame. What about the Sony "black" screen, though it seems it's a bit smaller? My projector is ceiling mounted, about 13 or 14ft from the image wall.
I saw some DIY pix comparing white to light gray paint and I would have been happy with the gray considering the snapshots. Maybe full-size is different than what fits in a forum post pic, but I wasn't seeing terrible colors compared to the white. Is it really that bad on a gray screen, and is that and enough to go white screen in my room where light control is not good?
