So after reading tryg's review, thought what the hell I'm game for a $4 can of spraypaint. I'm using an X1 with an 8' on a white wall and suffer from too much daylight. Looks fantastic @ night.
Anyway, I found some goodness and badness. These are my uneducated opinions, YMMV.
First, this stuff is hard to get flat. I painted several surfaces, none which would be suitable long term.
Second, the texture makes a huge difference, mostly to gain. The rough backside of a 2' square panel of MDF was about right, the flat front side boosted too much if thats possible. It's almost a mirror. Cardboard was ok also. More texture seemed better.
Third, this stuff does affect colors. Blues and especially greens just pop out. reds are about the same. The problem I have is with bright colors - yellow is diffucult to tell from white. Bright green (some of the menus in media center) are difficult to tell from white text on it. I played with mspaint fullscreen for while, just seeing what different colors did. It's a bit disturbing that there is a significant difference in colors between the white wall and the painted surface. The surfaces change colors, and not always in good ways. I supposed you could tweak this out pretty easily with avia or whatnot. Also an interesting test is visualizations in windows media player - lots of colors on black spinning across the surfaces.
Lastly, brightness - all surfaces really did gain, lots. Much more viewable with bright ambient light. Unfortuately, the blacks were hammered pretty hard. I couldn't get them to look like the blacks on the white wall no matter how mich fiddling I did with the projector. Also unfortunately I found a problem with my setup or PJ where pixels in dark areas switch when theplayback is paused. It says something that I didn't see this on the white wall and now it's driving me nuts.
Anyway, if I go this route, I'll probably just order a vutec screen and let the pros deal with getting it right.
It's a color accuracy and dimnished black level vs. use in high ambient light battle. Not sure who will win yet.
Chris
Anyway, I found some goodness and badness. These are my uneducated opinions, YMMV.
First, this stuff is hard to get flat. I painted several surfaces, none which would be suitable long term.
Second, the texture makes a huge difference, mostly to gain. The rough backside of a 2' square panel of MDF was about right, the flat front side boosted too much if thats possible. It's almost a mirror. Cardboard was ok also. More texture seemed better.
Third, this stuff does affect colors. Blues and especially greens just pop out. reds are about the same. The problem I have is with bright colors - yellow is diffucult to tell from white. Bright green (some of the menus in media center) are difficult to tell from white text on it. I played with mspaint fullscreen for while, just seeing what different colors did. It's a bit disturbing that there is a significant difference in colors between the white wall and the painted surface. The surfaces change colors, and not always in good ways. I supposed you could tweak this out pretty easily with avia or whatnot. Also an interesting test is visualizations in windows media player - lots of colors on black spinning across the surfaces.
Lastly, brightness - all surfaces really did gain, lots. Much more viewable with bright ambient light. Unfortuately, the blacks were hammered pretty hard. I couldn't get them to look like the blacks on the white wall no matter how mich fiddling I did with the projector. Also unfortunately I found a problem with my setup or PJ where pixels in dark areas switch when theplayback is paused. It says something that I didn't see this on the white wall and now it's driving me nuts.
Anyway, if I go this route, I'll probably just order a vutec screen and let the pros deal with getting it right.
It's a color accuracy and dimnished black level vs. use in high ambient light battle. Not sure who will win yet.
Chris
