The 350's blacks aren't all that. I've calibrated a few. It's possible to get very black, but only at the expense of shadow detail and overall picture brightness.
Query on Projector..
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Soldato
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Even if I was loaded, I'd still get a fixed screen over pull down one and look at ways of disguising it when not in use if it's not in a dedicated home theater room, you avoid a load of issues and £ for £ you get better quality screen (even a giant Black Diamond screen costs less than some motorised ones!).
As I've said in several threads, you can DIY a high quality screen quite easily for a fraction of the cost of buying one from a manufacturer;
Sheet of thin MDF (up to a certain size!), prime one side, paint, border with black velvet tape. Specific paint depends on room conditions really. I don't have great ones so I'd be using AVForums Black Widow mix, which is a grey screen with aluminium flecks in, meaning you gain some of the contrast you lose from having grey over white, but keep the advantages of grey (less glare, better blacks) in non-optimal rooms.
Going bigger, you could make a frame and stretch a canvas (no slack!), then paint that. Border with black velvet tape.
Or if possible, you can just paint the wall and border it.
Hiding it... I've seen several techniques (again, depending on screen size):
Theater style curtains
Pull down blind (use own fabric)
Roman blind (as above)
Wall-hanging
Or, if your son is indifferent, just leave it 'out'.
As I've said in several threads, you can DIY a high quality screen quite easily for a fraction of the cost of buying one from a manufacturer;
Sheet of thin MDF (up to a certain size!), prime one side, paint, border with black velvet tape. Specific paint depends on room conditions really. I don't have great ones so I'd be using AVForums Black Widow mix, which is a grey screen with aluminium flecks in, meaning you gain some of the contrast you lose from having grey over white, but keep the advantages of grey (less glare, better blacks) in non-optimal rooms.
Going bigger, you could make a frame and stretch a canvas (no slack!), then paint that. Border with black velvet tape.
Or if possible, you can just paint the wall and border it.
Hiding it... I've seen several techniques (again, depending on screen size):
Theater style curtains
Pull down blind (use own fabric)
Roman blind (as above)
Wall-hanging
Or, if your son is indifferent, just leave it 'out'.
Yeah I don't think my son would want to hide it but I'm still a bit confused on what screen to buy as I rather not make it.. and what about a wireless sound system? what should I be looking for? and how much are the lamps for that projector which will need to get replaced yearly.
Soldato
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It depends on your room. Matte white screen and blacked out walls/ceiling = good. Most people don't have that luxury though. See the start of:
Also most people use a non-reflective black border as well, which helps frame the image.
As you can see from the vid, that's just with a matte white ceiling and light-ish wallls. If you have a painted ceilings and walls, it can get worse. A lot of people go for grey screens in non-blacked out rooms because it gives them better blacks (although at the cost of some whites). Painting a wall is a nice and cheap option, but I'd probably avoid white if the room has light walls/ceiling.
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Go on AVForums, the projector screen forum, and give them the details of your room conditions, intended screen size and budget. I'd still go for fixed because, especially under £1000 or whatever, you're going to get a better quality fixed screen than you are motorised. Wirless speakers are poo, better to get wired and spend some time working out how to hide the cables. Budget for surround speakers/receiver?
The lamps are about £100 upwards, some are over £200, depends on model.
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dp
Not at all. Set up the projector right, with a sensible size screen - not too big, not too small - and you'll be very happy with the performance. Put it this way, I'd rather have a projector & screen rather than 95% of the LCD TVs I see.
My "not all that" was directed towards those who go a bit OTT.
This comes back to the root of why I made the OTT comment. Think about it for a second.... If we all could get the best experience by painting a wall matte white then why would anyone buy a screen? Apart from the convenience of rolling the surface away no one would buy a screen, and there wouldn't be dozens of competing screen brands. Think about the savings cinemas could make... Ten's of thousands of pounds on a huge screen, or a couple of hundred quid for some Dulux. They'd be mad not to.... Unless of course the reality was somewhat different. Has your local cinema got a painted screen? No, and neither has mine.
A screen is a piece of optical engineering. It's job is to provide a surface for the image to focus upon, and to reflect the light back to the viewer without biasing colour or creating a hot-spot.
To be fair there are some shockingly poor screens on sale... mostly the cheap Chinese varieties... and I wouldn't be surprised if some paint was as bright as a really cheap screen. But with respect to the DIY'ers efforts I'd rather watch my image on a proper surface.
Not terrible just you can get better projectors that improves on the black. It really depends on how much you want to spend. Put it this way I'm more then happy with my HD20 (White version of the HD200) and have not regretted buying one full stop. It really is imo a step up from a LCD/Plasma.
My walls are white and you do notice the overbrightness of white in the projected image but im planning on painting the wall a steel grey to dampen this ultrabright effect. Apart from that its great surprised more folk dont get projecters tbh. If you think the screen can be too big its easy enuff to reduce the size as well as increase the size of the image depending on what you watch (tv:smaller and films:bigger)