Treat Your Projector Screen as an Important Accessory

One of the biggest mistakes first-time buyers of LCD projectors make is to buy the projector without considering the screen. This mistake will most likely cost you more than money. It will also cost you in lost time, frustration, and disappointment in the clarity and resolution of your images.

One of the major challenges in selecting an LCD projector is choosing the correct brightness level for the room in which it is to be placed. If you are choosing a projector for home use, you can probably darken the room and then choose a less expensive projector saving your hundreds of dollars.

Sometimes darkening the room is not desirable or possible. Choosing to buy a projector with higher specs will give you the brightness you want, but it would be even less costly to buy a projector screen with higher gain. The higher quality LCD projector will cost you thousands of dollars more, but the quality projector screen will give you the brightness level you want for only a few hundred dollars more.

The brightness level of an LCD projector is measured in ansi lumens. Average values for home theatre and business use are 500 to 3000 ansi lumens. The higher the number, the brighter the picture will be. The lower the number, the darker the room must be. The current rating of home projectors is generally 1000 -1500 lumens.

Projector screen brightness is determined by the brightness of an image compared to a flat matte white screen. This measurement is given as a number; for example 1.0 to 1.5 to 2.0, etc. If there is a gain of 1.0, this means the image is as bright as on a flat matte surface. If the measurement is 2.0, then the image is twice as bright.

For example, if you determine that you need 1500 lm, then you could buy a projector with the rating that you need. However, if you would like to buy a cheaper projector, you could buy a projector with the rating of 1000 lm and purchase a screen with a rating of 1.5 lm. This plan would give you the 1500 lm rating that you need but for a reduced cost.

Cheaper projector screens usually have gains of between 1.0 and 1.2. If you choose a projector screen with gains of 1.5 to 1.8, you will have doubled the cost. Gains can be reached at up to 4.0 by matching projectors and screens together.

There are trade-offs in choosing to buy better projection screens and pairing them with lower-cost projectors. The trade-offs are the viewing angle, uneven brightness, and colour shifting.

The viewing angle is limited in high-gain projector screens. If your screen has a gain of one, the picture will appear high quality to about 50° from the projector. If the gain is over 2.0, the viewing angle goes down to 25°. This makes it much more difficult to lay out the seating in your room.

The projector screen with a high gain has a change in brightness from the centre of the screen to the edge of the screen. With a gain of over 2.0, there has been a 30% difference.

Colour shifting happens because of the surface properties of high gain screen. When the screen tries to manipulate the way the light is reflected, it can cause a shift in colours.

Treat Your Projector Screen as an Important Accessory

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