Minimal cost/effort projector screen

[Richard Treen]

I've been looking at various commercial and homebuilt projector screens. Some are expensive, some have very bad reviews and some require quite a bit of work.

I have an old brick and plaster internal cottage wall. It doesn't seem too bad for smoothness but there is some heavily embossed anaglypta paper on there.

I'm thinking of cutting the required rectagular size out of the existing wallpaper and replacing it with a smooth paper, perhaps lining paper, then painting the screen area with some appropriate paint.

I'm not a home cinema geek. I bought my used projector for 20 quid from a local website. This I mention just to give some context to my expected cost level.

Any helpfull hints and tips would be most appreciated.

[FMurtz]

Any flat white area will work but the brightest screens used to be glass beaded.

[tabbypurr]

You can use aluminium flake but white is fine. Don't expect the projector to last though, the less you use it the better really.

NT

[Martin Brown]

That stuff can cover a multitude of sins (and very probably does).

Even magnolia will work OK since the eye has an automatic white balance.

Dulux does a superwhite paint that might be suitable, but it might look a bit out of place in a living space. How big will the screen be?

You can get 3mm and 5mm foamed PVC sheet in large sizes and it is flat.

8'x4' is about £30. Otherwise I'd use plasterboard and white paint.

Expect to need a second mortgage when the projector bulb expires - it is often cheaper to buy a next generation projector than a new replacement bulb for an older model! I'm not kidding!

[damduck-egg]

You can get paint intended for the purpose .

Or you can actually get screen material loose like wallpaper, or if you find one big enough a second hand screen and remove the material from the mounts and stick it on the wall.

The tins of paint mentioned above are about 3 times that and I have no idea how effective they really are. Without knowing if your projector was originally only £300 and unlikely to benefit from a really good surface or one that was once £3000 a few years back and has been replaced by an enthusiast upgrading for fashion (do Apple make projectors ?) and still delivers a really high definition picture that a coat of Dulux white won't do justice to is only something you can decide.

Nothing to stop you doing that and putting more expensive stuff over later if it isn't good enough.

G.Harman

[spuorgelgoog]

If you can live without widescreen you can pick up old slide projector screens on tripods for little or no money.

Cut them down to make a smaller widescreen.

You can also buy PVC coated off-white blackout blinds from eg Argos for very little.

If you want beaded glass, you can get the glass beads from road white-lining suppliers and dash them on to wet paint.

Owain

[harry]

Projector screens have glass microbeads on the surface. Makes a brighter picture.

[Richard Treen]

Thanks for all the good advice. I'll look into the alternative methods suggested.

The projector is an Optoma EP7150. I can buy a bulb from China for under 20 quid. There are combination bulbs and housings available elsewhere for about 140 quid.

I told my missus that we'd probably be better off buying a big telly in the long run but she's very much a bird in the hand girl. And it is quite an interesting toy.

I recently took it to Canada in my suitcase. it saved us many, many hours of thumb twiddling in our rented apartment. Not that I couldn't read a book, which I happily did.

[Richard Treen]

92" diagonal. About 45 by 80 inches

That sounds like good stuff maybe a bit thin to hang on the wall but maybe it would stick on and be more effective than paper.

[Richard Treen]

I'm not terribly fussy. I've seen the ultra expensive paint in my searches and I think it's probably wonderful stuff for the connoisseur.

That makes sense, thanks.

[Richard Treen]

Sounds like a great idea. Even distribution might be tricky. Maybe totally smother the surface then shake off the excess?

[Richard Treen]

I'm definitely warming to that idea.

[Richard Treen]

One of several flies in the ointment.

[Richard Treen]

I checked and see that many still are. It's quite a game isn't it?

[Martin Brown]

Try it with one of the better brilliant white emulsion formulations before you splash out on anything too exotic. You pay dearly for that last 5% improvement and in a darkened room it doesn't much matter.

Projecting in a less than dark room the microbeads make the picture look brighter and contrasty for the audience on axis with the projector.

Basically light goes back along a broader path that it came in along. Flat white and any light hitting at shallow angles kills the blacks.

[tabbypurr]

You _don't_ want brilliant white, they are darker than plain white. Brilliant has a very tiny bit of blue added.

How you would ever get even distribution of microbeads on a wall I can't imagine, it's not remotely worth considering unless you find you just can't get enough brightness.

NT

[Max Demian]

My dad used to pin a white sheet to the curtain for our magic lantern shows. I remember Little Black Sambo and the twinkling star at the end of the show.

[spuorgelgoog]

I (hope I) still have the Little Black Sambo book from childhood.

At school we got Film Strips projected on to the grey steel skirting-to-ceiling radiator covers.

Owain

[Brian Gaff]

Most tv projectors need slightly curved screens and need them coated with special paint to reflect and keep the colours neutral.

You often find the picture is too dark and hard to focus if you just paint a surface white.

Is this projector a three crt one, as the tubes only have a limited life span and are hard to get nowadays. I know this as a Friend bought one second hand from a shop in the west end who went over to a plasma screen

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Yes but tended to be very narrow on their viewing angle which I suspect was helped a bit by the curvature. Brian