Relative brightness of Projection Screens

Contrary to popular myth, the screens are not created equally.  Some are brighter than others, usually by significant margins. Since it seems that vendors use different equipment and procedures to determine their levels of profit, this is not possible to say what level of profit is in the road specifications and which are the most brilliant products.

Thus we have achieved our levels of profit and have met our own measures for the relative brightness of each product. To make this measurement of brightness of the screens all respect to the white standard in our lab which we define value of 1.00 or 100%. All screens were measured under identical conditions and procedures with the same team in a dark room using white as a constant. The screens and walls were illuminated with a pattern of white to 100 IRE. All measures were under a unit percentage of light that the display was layers to reflect over the white wall. The result was as follows:

White screens:

• Stewart Studiotek 130 130%
• Draper M1300 125%
• Da-lite CinemaVision 110%
• Goo Systems CRT White 100%
• Vutec BriteWhite 90%
• Carada Classic Cinema White 65%

Gray screens:

• Vutec SilverStar 240%
• Stewart Firehawk 115%
• Da-lite High Contrast CinemaVision 90%
• Goo Systems Digital Grey Lite 75
• Draper HiDef Gray 70%
• Carada High Contrast Gray 45%

The relative brightness is not the only factor to consider when choosing a screen.  Color, contrast, resolution and point spread is also very important to make the decision. Either way, this table can help dispel some myths that all screens are basically the same.