[RandyL712]

Okay, I took an hour or so at Home Depot and I found a few options:


• The afforementioned screens. They come in White, kind of yellowish off-white, red, and blue. Widths are 55" or 73" and you can't cut them because of the metal rod type thing that holds the vinyl. Looks like a cheap solution for someone who can use those widths.


• White tile board. Costs $10-15, comes in 8x6, very thin, pretty light, but certainly needs SOME sort of solid frame because it's a bit wobbly. Very clean, smooth finish in a sort of kinda glossy bright white. I bet it'd make a good screen! I'd like to try this with some sort of black trim around the edges.


• Melamine board. Basically 'mica' painted on. Very heavy, as it is painted on 3/4" particle board or pressboard.


• Mica sheets (for countertops). Very nice - bright white with a matte surface. No blemishes, pretty durable, but sheets are $40. Like the tileboard, it's flimsy and needs a frame. Better finish than the tileboard which can have some small blemishes.


I suppose, you could also get a sheet of plywood and adhere a plain white vinyl linoleum to it. No need for stretching, just glue and cut. Then trim it out and you're done. My only concern here would be that vinyl generally has a pretty deep pattern (even if its "random" stone look or something) it's never just a smooth finish when its designed for flooring, is it?


Looks like making a frame and then adding either tileboard or mica would be a great, prefinished option that you could always paint if you decided to change what god (or Home Depot) made it with. That leads me to making the frame! I thought of just cutting 4 pieces of 'cap' trim at 45º and setting the material in it... but those trim pieces are pretty flimsy themselves and really don't have much strength. I guess some 1x2's with a routered edge would look pretty good, with a rabbit or groove for the material, and painted black for a nice clean blacked-out edge.


I'm no woodworker, and I have no idea who I am going to bribe in my family to do this http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif I just want a very cheap but useable screen 68x38 that is light enough to hang or nail onto the wall without needing to add roman columns to the house http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/wink.gif

 

[Deane Johnson]

RandyL712:


I think many people have been very successul using plain old sheetrock painted with Sherwin-Williams Luminous white paint. It don't get much easier or cheaper than that.


Deane

 

[bwolff]

after messing around thats what I did


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~~~~~~~~Bwolff~~~~~~~~

Champagne tastes with a beer budget

 

[RandyL712]

Hmm, that must be pretty heavy! I want it to be FAIRLY light, hopefully I won't have to nail into a stud.


At this point, I'm seriously considering making a 2x4 simple frame and just adhering the mica/laminate countertop material to it. then cutting and adding some sort of black trim.


Are there any other ideas you all can think of? Light, cheap, and white! Again, the size I'm shooting for it around 68x38.


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Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain

 

[Spotter]

Quote:

Originally posted by Deane Johnson: RandyL712: I think many people have been very successul using plain old sheetrock painted with Sherwin-Williams Luminous white paint. It don't get much easier or cheaper than that. Deane

Does anyone know what gain you get from the Luminous White paint?


I wonder if you could paint the Home Depot pull-down shade??

 

[RandyL712]

Here's my thoughts:


After playing with an LCD projector against my WOOD PANELING (still wood color) at around 65" width, I'm realizing that the quality of the screen at such a small image isn't as important. It's a very bright and useable image even against the wood (though I wouldn't LEAVE it like that of course) which makes me think that against any smooth white surface of this size I'll be pretty happy. Right now I'm leaning towards a very simple 2x4 wood frame with white tileboard or white laminate glued or nailed atop. I'll trim it with black moulding and hang it on the wall (it won't be very heavy, so two screws into studs should hold it just fine).


Has anyone does something similar, or different?


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If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

 

[Carl Romanik]

RandyL712:


Nobody's mentioned blackout fabric yet. There has been a lot of discussion in this forum about it's use as an inexpensive and quality DIY screen material (search "blackout"). To my eye, it is as good as any commercially produced 1.0 gain screen material. I got my fabric at a local Jo-Ann (about $3 per yd), 54 inch width. I built a wood frame 54" x 94" from 1x2 stock, stretched and stapled the fabric to it, masking the outside 3-4 inches with black fabric to get a 48 x 85.3 inch screen. The fabric stretches a bit, so you can make the frame 55 inches high if you want. The result is a perfectly flat screen that is very light.

The only screen upgrade I would consider is to go to a 1.3 gain Stewart screen (if I can only get a sample of the material). BTW: my projector is a Sony D50.



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Carl

 

[kelliot]

It depends a lot on what your projector is.


With a CRT, use white material. With an LCD, DLP or DILA, use matte gray with gray level adjusted to provide sufficient screen brightness. Consider 20 ft-lamberts to be a good target.


This should not be interpreted as saying a white screen and low output is equal to a gray screen and high output. Higher output is always better when ambient is present if contrast can be maintained.


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Ken Elliott

 

[EHUFF]

I'm about to paint my DIY screen made of 1x2's and stretched blackout material. While experimenting with different shades of gray, how do I know if I've reached the 20 ft-lamberts mark? Do I need special measuring equipment?

 

[pcdoctor]

I bought 3 yards of curtain blackout fabric from Joann's also.

$2.99 per yard and (6) pieces of 1x4 pine at Home Depot.

My frame will be 56x96 with a 52x92 screen.

The pine was less than $10 at Home Depot.

This 1x4 pine came 6 in a bundle.

The pine is painted flat black.


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My HT

 

[RandyL712]

Did you buy it painted black? Or you painted it?


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Television is a medium because it is neither rare nor well done.

 

[pcdoctor]

I painted the pine using flat black paint.


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My HT

 

[Vic C]

I am going to use the formica material for my screen.


I have a SONY CRT and I understand white will be best, I dont know or trust grey.


I have a DWIN hanging in a local A/V showroom and they have fixed fram perferated screen and up close it looks much like canvas. I though of using white canvas but, some artests cant even get what they need and paint over old pictures. Thats not gonna work real good for us AV NUTS.


I decided to use formica because of my experiance with it and its lightness.

I am problably going to use contact cement (like a counter top guy would) an laminate it to 1/2" MDF (medium density fiberboard) most high quality speakers are built of 3/4" MDF.

The screen will be a bit heavy but 1 person should be able to hang it, it will be 100% flat and it should look great!


MELAMEAN should work ok if you can get mate white. The slight grain or bumps should not really bother the image too much. A good projector w/ slight scan lines should be able to blend it all in nicely.


With the formica material you can clean it very easily and it will never YELLOW on you. This might be a slightly more expensive way to go but guess what, it still beats buying a DRAPER or STEWART or DAYLITE.

 

[RandyL712]

It's not expensive at all - a sheet of MDF is dirt cheap and the formica laminate sheet isn't more than $40.


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I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.

 

[indygreg]

i did the fabric route. i built a 45 x 80 1 x 2 poplar frame and stretched white fabric over it. i put a center channel as a set of inwalls behind it that are the same as the inwalls for r and l. when the screen is stored the theatre is gone. i built a larger 4:3 frame and stretched black material over it and affixed the screen to the front of it. it basically blacks out the whole overfill from my dlp. problem is that the wood frame is slightly visible under the white. i should have painted it. i am thinking about buying a real screen to replace it but it works well for $40. if i could figure out how to post a picture i would put one up.


greg

 

[pcdoctor]

A friend of mine just built a 58"x104" sheetrock screen for me. My el cheapo Agfa camera won't take any decent pictures anymore so I'm waiting for a decent digital camera to take pictures with.

I'll post pictures of the screen once the new digital camera arrives.

I will be using Behr "ultra pure white" flat.


Thanks to Mark Torrec> for the idea!
http://www.armorform.com/page25.html


I think this is better and much more cost effective than any pull down or permanent mount screen.


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My HT

 

[Huey]

I'm interested in your tile board idea. I saw it but worried about its glossiness causing hotspotting. The upside is it probably has a gain of 3-4 which will help dimmer projector. I read that besides above ideas one guy bought white insulation sheet of styrofoam in 4'X8'X1". This would be very white but not as durable due to its nature (you'd probably not move your screen much anyway). Let us know how the tileboard works out.


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Huey ;-]

 

[jeeper]

I got the Sony VPL-VW10HT about 2 months ago. I plan on getting a screen someday, but in the mean time made my own. There are a lot of threads on this forum with all kinds of great ideas. What I ended up with is a 4' X 7.1' (16:9) screen image with a 2" black boarder all around. I used the back side of some cheap ($6) Home Depot wood panneling, 4' X 8' in size. It is very smooth, lighter weight then drywall and not as 'flimsy' as formica. I painted it with Glidden interior flat white mixed with a little Glidden ultra flat black. The color I ended up with is darker the 'Snowfield' and lighter then 'Veil', it is close to 'Universal Gray'. I used a 'smooth surface' roller and applied 3 coats of paint. First coat was just the staight white, then a light gray, lastly a little darker gray. The image looks great, with better blacks and the whites are still clean and bright. I then made a frame of 1" X 2" pine (also from Home Depot). I wraped the pine tightly with black felt from JoAnn Fabrics. I stapled felt on back side of boards, then attached to wood pannel with screws from behind. I hung the screen to the wall using drop ceiling wire. It looks and works really good.


Steve

 

[Neil L]

I have a tile board screen set up in my "test" area (really the guest bedroom). Its smooth even surface will produce a very sharp well defined image with good color reproduction. However it is way too reflective with a Sony W400Q projector with over 1250 hours on the lamp (not very bright), the picture looks good but you have to set off to the side of the screen or you get a very bad hot spot reflection. With my DLP projector (new bulb, bright image), whites are reflected so brightly that you have to squint. So I'm not recommending tile board for a HT screen. I plan to experiment with painted surfaces. I'm going to try jeepers idea of using the back of some paneling. I think I have some flat wall paint stored here somewhere that should be a good shade of gray.

 

[MassaCure]

i was thinking about using a flat sheet of white acrylic plastic, the kind used to business signs, or maybe a white piece of aluminum