InFocus ScreenPlay 110 DLP video projector How Big the Screen? How Dark the Room?

How Big the Screen? How Dark the Room?

The high output of the InFocus Screenplay 110 might tempt you to use it with a very large screen and/or ignore the need for good light control. I don't recommend either, though you could probably safely go to a screen 8 feet wide. That alone, however, will drop the brightness of a StudioTek 130 screen (1.3 gain) from about the 23ft-L that I experienced with a 6.5-foot-wide screen to just below 15. But the issue with a large screen is not just one of brightness, but of resolution as well. There's a limit to how large you can blow up the picture from a DVD before it starts to look soft and 2-dimensional. Yes, you can move farther back to compensate, but unless you have a very large room, what would be the point of that?

As for light control, you can never overcome ambient room light with projector brightness. A bright projector will allow you to see what's going on even with some room lighting, but a front-projected image will always look far better in a dark room. There's a simple reason for this: Blacks in the image will never look darker than the room light falling on the screen. Remember, projectors don't "project" black; black depends on the absence of light on the screen.—TJN