Doug Hatton
02-05-2008, 10:53 AM
I know this has been beaten to death, but I haven't got a real good answer yet.... I just bought a projector and need to buy a pull down screen. It's an Epson 77c and has a brightness rating of 2200 lumens and a contrast ratio of 400:1. It will be ceiling mounted and I'm thinking of projecting it on a 96x54 16:9 screen (actually, I'm looking at a 96x96 and I can just not pull it down all the way, giving me some flexibility on image placement, etc.). I looked at some of the calculators online and it seems this is doable, but I wasn't sure if I should go w/ a screen that has a higher gain than 1.0. I think the fact that I'm going to ceiling mount it determines that I shouldn't go w/ anything over about a 1.5 gain. Is this true? The room isn't very bright, but I'm more concerned about the viewing angle limitations with going w/ a higher gain. I don't want to have to sit in a totally dark room directly in front of the screen to be able to see it well. I've played with the projector a bit in the last few days and with it hooked up the my Directv HD box, the image is decent even on a blank wall, but probably could stand to be a little brighter. Not sure if the white screen, just by virtue of the color, as opposed to my darker walls will be enough. I haven't even tried it w/ the component video (RGB) hookups yet (used S-Video) since I need to buy the correct cables to convert it to the VGA plug on the projector. Additionally, I don't want to paint a wall or make any home made stuff. I'd like to mount a ceiling mounted screen that will allow me to pull it over (cover up) the 50" plasma that's on the same wall when I want to. Any advice????