Masking Changes the Shape of Your Home Theater Screen
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Our projection experts assembled their recommended home cinema screens so you can achieve a truly immersive cinematic experience without leaving your front door. This incredible home movie room projector screen features a 2.5 inch black border, as compared to the 3 inch border of the Stewart WallScreen Deluxe line, giving it a sleek low profile modern look. Our projection experts chose this screen because it features the absolute best home cinema screen surface in the StudioTek 130. This screen was made for home theaters and features a 1.3 gain surface to allow for highly calibrated theater projectors with lower light output.
There’s a certain charm to doing all of that setup stuff ahead of time manually, or maybe I’m just nuts. I remember my first projector and screen from back in like 2006, and the 16x9 screen would auto lock at different spots so that I could only open it to 2.40 etc if I wanted and then just adjust the lens on the PJ. It reminds me of working at a very not state of the art movie theater when I was 14. I feel a certain satisfaction setting up the stuff by hand and it gets me in the mood for watching a film. The Kaleidescape System is claimed to be the first video source product to provide a solution for automating this process.
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As annoyed as I am when they leave the 3D lens over a 2D movie, that at least can be chalked up to laziness or cheapness. But now they're spending money to actively worsen the theater-going experience for their customers. Pretty much all the newer cinemas in Toronto have no masking of any kind. Even worse, they're all 1.85, so 'scope films are always smaller and letterboxed.
Lens memory is a very nice feature but be warned, it is not completely accurate. I have the basic features of my projector programmed into my tablet-based remote but find myself routinely grabbing my Epson physical remote to make micro adjustments after having used memorized lens positions. It's not a big deal but just something you should be aware of going in. I really wanted a motorized solution but it would have meant lowering the image to the bottom border. This resulted in a somewhat obstructed view for my rear row, which is why I went this route instead. It’s possible the matte adjustments required someone to push a button and it was easier to eliminate them rather than find a way to automate them with the computer.
Stewart Balon Edge with FireHawk Surface
With improvements to uniformity and off-axis viewing, FireHawk G4 is even closer to the reference quality and image fidelity that have long been synonymous with Stewart Filmscreen. Since I use an LCD projector the "black" bars above and below a widescreen image are really dark grey. Using the black masking and side bias lights improves the apparent contrast ratio of the picture. The plates are cut based on a test loop (RP-40) and the masking is adjusted according to those specs.
Motor control cards/ boxes and IR, 12V, and RS-232 control accessories and installation are extra. After completing my AT screen installation a while back I briefly entertained the thought of adding a masking solution of some sort for the frequent occasions I want to view widescreen content on my 16x9 screen. At that time, after some initial frustrations, I decided to abandon the idea and just live with the typical letterboxing we all know and love. As is often the case with me, however, I really just needed a break. You might think that any seemingly smooth surface would work as a projection display.
Type of Cinema Screen
While I was at it I also added some black floor tiles as the former beige was just too light for the room. Ft. training facility at their headquarters featuring a seven-zone Kaleidescape System and several of their ElectriMask systems. The demonstration facility will be open to trainees, dealers, and installers, as well as interested consumers. One of the AMCs in Burbank has been like that for a while, but they have about half of the screens fixed at 1.85 and the other half at 2.35, so you can at least plan accordingly once you figure out what's playing in which room. And I actually first noticed it at the Universal Citywalk back in March when a friend of mine rented out an auditorium for Godzilla vs Kong; I thought it might have been a fluke, as it was pretty early on in the "reopening."
I wish this didn't bother me so much, but it really is incredibly distracting; it's almost like setting the house lights to dim only part of the way down. And I can almost guarantee it bothers more people than just us, even if they're not sure how to articulate it. These screens are particularly useful when there is not enough space in the screening room to have the speakers placed on the side of the screen and one does not want to get a smaller screen in order to leave room for the speakers on the side. For a home theater screen you typically want to get a screen with a 1.0 gain or below. Note that since we are controlling curtains, in this case up and down actually mean open and close limits.
Home Theater Projector Screens on a Budget
Also leave about 4 or 5 inches on each side for the motor and idler pulleys. Lisa Montgomery has been a member of the Electronic House editorial team for nearly 20 years; most of that time as the Editor. Options include 2-way masking (side masking panels for constant height, or top/bottom panels for constant width) or 4-way independent masking. Image widths range from 160 inches to 350 with custom sizes available.
The Stewart StudioTek 130 is the best projector screen surface in the business. It offers a textureless display surface allowing not just good enough for 4K, not just good enough for 8K but smooth enough for 16K resolution. So not only do you get a perfectly flat surface for your 4K projector, but you futureproof your investment when 16k resolution projectors become the norm. Screens designed to reject ambient light can be effective at furnishing an image in even the brightest of rooms, but the trade-off is the presence of unwanted artifacts such as color-shift, hot-spotting, and poor off-axis viewing. Stewart Filmscreen is in the business of image fidelity, and FireHawk was designed to provide the best possible trade-off between image fidelity and ambient light resistance.
Bottom masking is velvet wrapped around a board and held in place with paracord and an rope adjustment clamp. I'm old enough to remember when the need for masking first came in - Cinemascope in the early 1950s. I remember the sound of the masking being adjusted as it ran along its track.
In this post I show you how I built my own automated masking system that can also be used for automating a full screen curtain, for fractions of the cost of retail systems. The design of ART allows the installer to build the screen on the wall, as opposed to the traditional method of assembling on the floor, then lifting and hanging. ART’s components are not required to be shipped in wooden crates.
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