Video Projectors

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