Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Screen Innovations Black Diamond Screen

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Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 06-30-2010, 01:13 PM:

Have you guys seen this thing? It's pretty amazing. Our local Best Buy here has one setup. It's strange looking at a black screen, and it seems to have a narrow field of view, but the picture looks incredible when you're sitting in the right spot. I'm curious about whether it holds polarization or not.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 06-30-2010, 01:27 PM:

What is the brand, and is it a 3-D set, Mark?

-Claude

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 06-30-2010, 10:33 PM:

quote: Claude S. Ayakawa
What is the brand

Screen Inovations

http://www.screeninnovations.com/

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 06-30-2010, 10:40 PM:

Yes, Screen Innovations is the company, and it's not a set, it's a projection screen... that's BLACK. Apparently it does wonders for contrast, proper color balance and extraneous light bouncing around the room. There are a couple of demo videos on their site that show it off. The screen on display at Best Buy (which was 92" or 96" - I forget which) sells for $2,500. That's THE SCREEN - no projector. But it looks pretty cool.

Posted by Victor Liorentas (Member # 5272) on 06-30-2010, 10:56 PM:

I need to see it in person,close up but it do seem impressive!
I read about this black screen technology a while back but fear it has shiny glare or hot spotting issues!
I can't see any of that in the demos though!
Hmmm

Posted by Tom Bert (Member # 5719) on 07-01-2010, 09:02 AM:

I've seen stuff like this before: it's typically made of a material that only reflects from/to specific angles. This means that diffuse ambient light is not reflected to your eyes, leading to the dark color.

Tricky if a light source (door, window,...) is located at the "critical" angle

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 07-17-2010, 12:32 PM:

Seems to me it would be a hellofalot cheaper to just control your lights than to spend that kind of money on a screen. And, not for nuthin, but people shouldn't be watching movies with the damn lights on anyway, or worse, talking during a film!

Being able to have ambient light on in a screening room only encourages that freakin "discourse" crap. And yah, it's a screening room -- it's only a living room when the movie is OVER; when the movie is RUNNING, it's a theatre. Anyone who talks in my place while the movie is on gets their ass thrown out, and believe me, I've done it. Well, not exactly thrown them out, but I've stopped the show and said if she wanted to talk, we'd talk; but if she want to watch the movie, she'd have to freakin shut up. [thumbsup]

You can see why I am not very popular with the ladies.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 07-17-2010, 02:22 PM:

Personally, I think that even in the vid if a dark room (with small amount of ambient lighting) the expensive screen was pretty damn impressive over the white screen comparison.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 07-17-2010, 03:03 PM:

True, but I would still like to see a demo LIVE before I say it's all that (I am reminded of some of the stuff I bought from watching infomercial lies that looked spectacular).

I wonder if it is good enough to be adapted for commercial houses. Maybe the chains could put them in those new Ultra-XL-Titan-Gigantamungus-type rooms. They could hype them as not only having the BIGGEST screens in the universe, but the BLACKEST, although it would probably take a REALLY good ad agency to be able to turn that into a marketing plus. Big drawback of course would be that the screen would cost more than the digial projector....just like Stewart screens. [Wink]

Seriously, the problem with them, of course, is that so far, they are not offering an acoustically transparant version, or a more accurate analogy, acoustically "translucent." So for me, that's the deal breaker as I have no choice but to put speakers behind my screen because it goes nearly wall to wall, plus I want all three channels to have the same speaker configuration, not the center channel some weird wide/squat box that's totally different from the left and right channels just so it can fit under or over the screen.

I am going with the CenterStage XD screen -- very fine weave of the material to let sound thru, but no perfs, so no moire patterns to speak of, and even that cut is angled based on the projector type you are using.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 07-17-2010, 04:03 PM:

According to the OP, you can see live demos at some Best Buy locations.

Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 07-18-2010, 07:26 PM:

Very impressive.

Posted by John Lasher (Member # 968) on 07-20-2010, 08:34 AM:

Mark, was that Kirkwood Highway, Christiana, or Concord Pike?

Posted by Joe Tommassello (Member # 4632) on 07-20-2010, 09:40 AM:

Jumping in to answer that question. We saw it at Best Buy in King of Prussia, PA next to the IMAX theater. It was quite impressive and did hold up well with the lights on. The viewing angle (vertical) wasn't too bad but I didn't think to check it horizontally. With the lights dimmed it looked fantastic.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 07-20-2010, 03:39 PM:

I'd personally love to see a portable version of this screen, but after speaking to their folks it seems that is kind of out of the question at this point. There's something in the way they put the screen up and then coat it or put something on it or whatever that makes it not very happy to be rolled back up again. They're working on fixing that, but at the moment, it's only available installed in a static location.

And yes Joe and I saw it at the King of Prussia Best Buy. It was kind of low key, too. It was installed in one of the theater rooms in the back part of the store.