New screen is up

House MD in HD 720p and "low lamp" setting

Viks helped me install the new Da lite 106" screen this past weekend. The frame came unassembled and the screen was rolled up. Installation took about 30 min. The screen works as advertised. Wrinkle/wave free and I love the black velvet frame. Because of our family room dimensions, we sit about 13 ft back and you can see a tiny bit more of the pixels compared to the older 92". A 1080p projector would certainly help here but those are a bit out of reach for me at today's prices. What was nice was when Viks commented on how good the image is despite the larger size (she is much less nit picky than I am).

At the request of Kev, I took some shots at varying amounts of light to show how the picture is affected. The screen has a 1.1 gain and the projector is at low lamp setting and without calibration to the new screen (newer Mitsubishi HC3000 production units have better out of the box performance compared to the initial runs). There is a high lamp setting which makes the projector more watchable but with ambient or household lighting, the Mitsubishi projector will never be plasma-like bright. However, it was not designed for that purpose. With proper light control / lights off, that is when the picture quality really shines in terms of contrast, color, picture depth, image detail, etc. There are other much brighter projectors available but you trade off on contrast, color, etc. So with that said, it's understandable why many people would much rather get a plasma/LCD/DLP/SXRD RPTV. Let's face it, setting up a projector and screen takes quite a bit of effort ( our rear wall now has a good amount of spackle and touch up paint that proves this). And then there is the wife acceptance factor (I am very lucky in this regard)!! But the pay off at the end is a much more immersive and cinematic viewing experience, especially with hi-def sports and movies.

Hopefully, our next house will have a big enough wall so that we can mount the screen onto a wall as it was designed for.