Best pull down projector screens ...

[Osi Osgood]

I'm looking to buy an OK, pull down projector screens. Looking for around 200 inch. Any suggestions?

[Ed Gordon]

I suggest you look for a matte white screen with a gain of 1.0. Avoid glass beaded screens. Glass beaded screens damage easily and discolor with age. Be sure to get a tensioned screen to assure a flat surface. Without tensioning, a screen that size will develop an irregular surface witch will be painfully obvious when projecting panning shots. A 200 inch screen appears to be the largest you can get in pull-down.

Is a frame mounted screen not practical for your room? You can make your own and save hundreds (or thousands) of dollars.

[Steve Klare]

This is the screen we use for CineSea.

This is about the size you'd like, Osi. I did some math: based on it being about 8 feet from floor to ceiling and being 16:9, it's 195" in diagonal.
(Thank You, Pythagoras! If you ever come to town, stop by and I'll buy you a beer!)
.

It's actually a pull-UP screen. The roll lays on the floor and an upright support puts a hook 8 feet in the air for a strap on the screen to hook into.

It's a ponderous beast! It's absolutely a portable: you can move it without dragging the building behind, but it's immense! It's too big to fit inside any car or SUV, so CineSea rents a standard cargo van for the weekend and even at that has to carry it with the back doors opened and secured around it. We were lucky that a local friend is willing to give it a home between CineSeas, otherwise that van might travel hours like that. (Not so sure the New Jersey Highway Patrols would like it that way, either!)

It's too big to fit in the elevator. The CineSea Pall-Bearers (4 is the standard number) have to haul this thing up a series of disconnected staircases and then down the entire length of the hotel to get it into the screening room. This is all reversed a couple of days later!

This one needs a lot of lamp: Xenon actually. A couple of years ago Doug's GS Xenon was down for the count and his halogen GS had to step in. Super-8 was kind of gray that night. The 100W machines I use at home would be barely ghostly on a screen this big!

This would also be kind of pricey. My home screen ($200-ish when I bought it in 2005) is now a special order item at $800+. This one is about 4 times the area. It was also donated, and we are grateful for that!

[Osi Osgood]

That's closer to what I am looking for, Steve, but I would prefer pull down. Maybe slightly smaller. Light output is not an issue though. I actually have two places to put upa screen. One for the "Man Cave", which is a smaller, possibly a 125ft max, as there is less maximum distance for getting a big image ( enough for a good scope image from side to side ) and the Kitchen/ living room, as it has a great maximum distance for a large projection of any kind, scope or otherwise. It also depends on the projector as well, as, my Eumig 926 stereo "workhorse" has a smaller image, but my Eumig 940 digital stereo, has a much larger radius to the projected image, so large that I can't put it on the same shelf for projection, I have to bring in a separate chair/support to have the projection fit on the wall. The wall itself has a very light cyan/white color to it, and a glossy finish, which makes the overall effect quite nice, but I would still rather have a nice pull down screen, so I don't have to take down pictures from the wall, everytime I project.

[Steve Klare]

Hi Osi,

This is the screen selection web page at B&H in New York:

Projection Screens at B&H Photo

This may be useful for you just to fish-around and see what's out there. It's all sorts of sizes and surfaces and mounting schemes, plus things like motorized deployment! (I was so tempted, but it would have made it more expensive and heavier and more complex and conceivably shorter lived...-and who needs yet another remote to lose!)

I have a pull-down myself. It is a Da-Lite 52" by 92". We have a bay window that is framed in 2"x4" studs. I went to Home Depot and got some really heavy screw hooks (-easily 3/8" thick) and sunk them into very carefully spaced holes deep within that 2"x4" framing. The screen is about 8 feet long, so I hang one loop on one hook, move to the other end and place that loop. ( I can do this myself, but someone else helping makes it much easier.)

What's nice about it is it hides behind the living room curtains until we need it, yet it's just a quick pull downward when the moment comes.

Years ago, we used to do weekends for our camping group and I semi-foolishly brought this thing on the road! It fit inside a minivan all the way from the dashboard to the tailgate under several bench seats. I used two screen tripods to hang it at the place. We don't do the weekends any more, we have a smaller car and I don't feel like dragging along a sound system, so the screen has hung peacefully on its hooks easily ten years now!


As far as formats go, I'm all for 16:9 for our purposes. It's a good compromise between 'scope and Academy and just perfect for all the 16:9 formatted film that we run into all the time.

Square formatted is really meant for slides, but progressively worse for each movie format. It is absolutely terrible for 'scope. It is no longer "wide", but kind of "shallow"! (Very early-on I tried a 'scope print on a tripod slide screen: it was like a foot deep from top to bottom.)

4:3 format? Better, but we can do much better than that if we want to go wider. Up until The Robe came out, 4:3 would have been the perfect screen aspect ratio for motion pictures.

B&H has 2.35:1 and 2.40:1 formatted screens: perfect for 'scope, but an academy formatted film would look kind of tiny, hiding in the middle!

All this is why 16:9 works so well for me!

-best case, be Paul Adsett and have motorized masking! (-so hard to do with a roll-up!)

[Scot McCauley]

Use to have to carry those up 4 flights of stairs in Hotels setting up for events by myself. Called them Cradle Screens. Well, called them a lot of stuff but referred to them as cradle screen lol.

[Claus Harding]

Da-Lite has solid pull-down/return mechanisms, which is something to consider for the long run. Having the surface get wrinkled from uneven tension or motion is no fun.
They make big ones (like the CineSea one) for hanging; I specced one for our community room. Just make sure you have solid mounting points; these things are heavy.
Steward is another common brand used; most likely there are cheaper options, and, as usual, you get what you pay for.

C.

[Osi Osgood]

Thanks for the advice, fellows! 😀

[Paul Adsett]

Osi, you may want to take a look at the Elite screen product line. They make very good quality screens in a multitude of configurations and screen finishes, I have their VMAX power down screen with the cinewhite 1.1 gain finish, which I use for most super 8 screenings. Its still essentially a matt white screen. but with a very modest gain, which is welcome for super 8 projection. The good news is that Elite screen prices are a fraction of equivalent Draper or Stewart screen prices.

If your considering a fixed frame screen, I can highly recommend the very economical Silver Ticket screens. My grandson and I recently assembled and installed an 8ft wide 16/9 screen in his 4K home cinema, and it is a truly spectacular picture on this screen. Available on Amazon.