Whether you’re designing a dedicated home theater or a media room with multiple uses, it’s important to choose a projection screen designed for that type of space. Draper At Home recently chatted about this topic.
For a home theater space where the only light source will be the projector, a 1.0 gain white surface is the perfect choice.
If you’re going to want a few dim lights on then there are higher gain whites for a boost in brightness, and gray surfaces that can increase contrast as long as the light is controlled.
For multi-use media rooms, though, the best solution is an ambient light rejecting (ALR) surface. While these surfaces are typically a darker gray, don’t make the mistake of thinking a gray surface rejects ambient light.
Diffusive gray surfaces treat all light more or less the same. Only viewing surfaces with ALR properties will avoid washing out in ambient light. ALR surfaces reflect non-projected light away from the viewers’ eyes, and only reflect projected light to them.
Different ALR surfaces also have different viewing characteristics. Some of them sacrifice wider viewing angles in the effort to reject as much ambient light as possible.
Draper At Home TecVision Solves ALR Issues
For premium projection screens, Draper At Home has its TecVision line of 8K-rated, ISF-certified screen material, which has 11 choices of material within the line.
“We like to say that you have a screen for every room application that you might have in a home,” Tabi Quick – national manager of CI at Draper At Home, tells CE Pro.
Specifically for ambient-light rejection, Draper At Home offers four choices with gains from .8 to 1.1, she adds. The most popular of the options is the company’s XH900X ALR, with a .9 gain.
“It gives you really nice contrast while also giving you really nice off-axis viewing,” Quick says. “It’s a well-rounded material.
“What you’re looking for in a room with a lot of light is a lot of contrast so you’ll see that image pop on the screen.”
Draper At Home also launched a new TecVision service for ALR, the CS1100X, which provides a 1.1 gain.
Hear more about Draper At Home’s ALR solutions, features, and applications by watching Quick’s interview with CE Pro above.
