“Craig, why did you opt for a grey screen initially and what made you change to a white screen ? “
This is an excellent question. When I first got into home theater over 10 years ago, not only were projectors not that great contrast wise, I also never had a dedicated theater space. It was always a " media room ". Compromises had to be made. The décor wasn't dark, there was occasionally light in the room. The picture suffered. I started using grey screens pretty early on. Overall they just looked better. DLP projectors at least looked like they had better contrast, and what little on / off contrast they had was preserved by the screen, rather than washing out due to reflections from white walls etc. The picture looked pretty good. I was happy.
Then, when I came back to work for AV Science I decided to see what I could do to improve my home theater. I have a dedicated theater, but it was setup more like a media room. My SIM Lumis throws an outstanding picture. Could I make it look even better? I owe a lot of this to Rich Harkness. I read his theater build thread and realized I'd become complacent regarding my theater. Rich explained how and why he had picked the Stewart StudioTek 130 G3 screen over the Firehawk G3 screen. I was using a Firehawk screen myself. So I got a sample of StudioTek 130 and devised a screen sample holder that would allow me to put the sample in front of my Firehawk. The blacks / contrast on the StudioTek looked terrible compared to my Firehawk. I grabbed a big " police " type flashlight ( lots of D cells - bright ) and stood at the screen. I did the " flashlight test ". Lots of things in the room reflected back onto the screen. First I decided to cover the beige carpet with black carpet rugs from Walmart. That worked well, but the ST 130 still didn't look as good as the FH. Then I had a giant rug made that covered the entire front 2/3's of the theater. Better. Next, I re-painted the ceiling and the side walls darker grey. Now the ST was starting to look as good or better overall than the FH. I then painted the back walls much darker, put a black MDF board in front of the popcorn machines glass case, hung black curtains and Protostar material on part of the back wall, and hung another red velvet curtain over a white closet door. Now the blacks on space movies etc. looked as good on the StudioTek 130 sample as they did on the Firehawk. I then switched screens. I first replaced my 2.35:1 Firehawk with a 2.35:1 StudioTek, and I also replaced my 16:9 High Contrast Cinema Vision screen with a 16:9 Neve 1.1. The Lumis looks totally awesome on these screens ! Making my room décor and walls dark and switching to white screens was one of the best things I've done to improve my picture in my theater.
Update – the Lumis has been replaced by a JVC RS600. Now the black levels and contrast are really outstanding looking !!
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