Re: Projector and Screen recommendation
Thanks for the mostly useful information. Macadamia? Please describe in layman's terms what color this is. We can be more helpful to you if we don't have to guess. It sounds like your ceiling needs to be much darker. Black is highly recommended, but this sounds like a multi-purpose room where this option likely won't be desireable. Without sufficiently dark room surfaces, you will NEVER get satisfactory black levels on the screen nor the contrast and color saturation performance your projector is fully capable of. Room surfaces reflect the light from the screen back onto it, contaminating the image.
Seating distance- 16'- 130" dia. or 114" wide is the maximum 16x9 screen size I would recommend for that seating distance when viewing 1920x1080p native programs. The screen image will start to separate into its component parts for someone with decent vision who sits much closer than that. Another consequence of too large of a screen will be the image starts to soften. I can see 1080p DLP front projector pixel structure in the image at 3 screen heights distance away, wearing eyeglasses. If you don't care that your sky, clouds and faces have a woven texture in movies, sit as close as you like. Even LCD projectors, like the Panasonics, with softened pixel structure, produce too soft of an image for my liking. Reality has a sharpness and visual snap to it that will be lost with too large of an image. The cheaper projectors lose large amounts of their rated lumen output when calibrated for accurate pictures. As their lamps age, light is also substantially diminished. Choosing a slightly smaller screen than theoretically might seem to be appropriate will give you brightness reserves you will appreciate later. Therefore, don't get too large of a screen.
Good lighting in the night- how about in the Summer when the sun doesn't set till about 9:00 PM? Are there any open doorways, etc., where light comes in from adjoining rooms? Does that happen regularly?
Viewing habits- SuperBowl parties, etc., with some room lighting on (%), standard TV programs (%), NTSC DVD (%), computer images (%), games (%), HD progams (%)? Any progams that originate in less than 1080P, even if upconverted, will look softer in a larger format. This pertains to screen size/viewing distance. A 1080P projector does not make all material look like a 1080P native program, such as BD/HD DVD. Lower resolution native programs will make you want to move further away from the image.
