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Screen Innovations HQ Tour Reveals Product Line Depth

I was recently given the opportunity to take a trip down to Austin, TX, and visit the headquarters of projection screens manufacturer Screen Innovations (SI) to review the company’s Black Diamond Zero Edge and Black Diamond Motorized screens. Once I got there, however, I found that there was so much more to SI than I had realized.

I was recently given the opportunity to take a trip down to Austin, Texas to visit the Screen Innovations facility and see all the new screens they have developed. Originally, the purpose of the trip was to write a review on the Black Diamond Zero Edge and Black Diamond Motorized screens only, but once I got there, I found that there was so much more to Screen Innovations than meets the eye that I felt compelled to share their entire story.

Ryan Gustafson, SI’s president and chief innovator, actually began building screens in his garage in the late hours of the night after working all day as a retail sales associate at Austin’s own A&B TV in 2004. This inspiration came after he purchased his first LCD projector, the Sony VPLVW10HT. In his efforts to maximize its abilities, he began building screens and testing them with the projector in order to achieve top quality results. His screen designs became so advanced that A&B actually picked up Ryan’s screens to sell in their store. Within a short time, Ryan branched out and opened a facility of his own facility in Austin, Texas, where he was able to expand and grow his business by roughly 40 percent every year since.

Factory Tour
As the grandson of an inventor, Gustafson is a naturally inventive person. He not only fashioned the screens himself, but he is also the brains behind much of the equipment that is used in manufacturing Screen Innovations products, many of which I’m told are unique to SI.

For instance, Gustafson and his team claim to be one of the few in the industry that design their own extrusions. In fact, they have developed the only 3.5-inch aluminum tube extrusion that has less than 1/16 inches of deflection over 16 feet, as well as the only 4-inch aluminum tube extrusion that has less than 1/16 inches of deflection over 22 feet. These capabilities not only allow for more versatility in the size of a screen, but also result in less weight and bulk, which lowers freight costs.

Blake Vackar (left), director of sales for Screen Innovations, with Todd Anthony Puma.

I was also shown how Screen Innovations uses movable snaps rather than screws to secure their screens in place, which is interesting because it allows SI screens to be uniquely interchangeable for those times when customer wants to upgrade the material on the screen. Only new material is needed, the frame remains. They also showed me how they utilize the very first automated snap machine to efficiently support this method. It was impressive to see they had built a 20×30-foot CNC robot that can be programmed to cut a screen to any size or shape that’s needed, which I can see being a benefit to the commercial market especially.

“We use the latest FEA [finite element analysis] software and spend countless hours of development time perfecting shapes that break the mold of what is possible in projection screens,” Gustafson stated.

Ryan’s brain is constantly churning out new ways to perfect their screens and advance the two-piece projection category. He even shared with me an awesome story that illustrates his ingenuity and explains how he came up with a solution to secure the Black Diamond Motorized projection screen to its housing. As the story goes, they spent three and a half years developing Black Diamond Motorized, and in particular, ways to get the screen to lay flat. The answer dawned on him one night while he was struggling to get rubber bands out of his daughter Taylor’s hair.

“We needed to solve a problem we were having with deflection when we were mounting the screen to the wing,” Gustafson explained. “You see, the wing has natural deflection, which was allowing the screen to get tight in the middle and soft at the edges. We tried more than 50 solutions, but they allowed the edges to get tight while the middle was soft; there was seemingly no way around the issue. One night, as I tried to extract a tangled band from Taylor’s hair, I had an inspiration. The next day, I brought a handful of her hair bands to the factory and went to into the lab. We laid out the screen, punched holes along the top of it and put the hair bands through the holes. The hair bands equalized the screen tension perfectly, which eliminated the need for 92-, 100-, 106-, 110-, 120-, or 133-inch screens to each require a unique wing that would counteract deflection.”

When the Black Diamond Motorized screen suffered from deflection issues when mounting the screen, Gustafson solved the issue with his daughter’s hair bands. Purpose-made bungees are now used.

With Taylor’s hair bands in place, the edges and middle of the screen were both tight, which solved the problem. Now, instead of Taylor’s hair bands, SI uses ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) bungees that are made for this purpose.

Screen Reviews
All of the Screen Innovations fixed projection screens use microfiber frames as opposed to velvet, because microfiber attracts less dust and is easier to maintain. Black Diamond screens are unique in that they feature a laminate screen that is water resistant and fingerprint proof, which allows dust and other contaminants to wipe right off. This is important to note, as other screens with sprayed-surfaces lose portions of their optical finish when they are touched or cleaned, which ultimately deteriorates the picture quality. In my experience, customers are always afraid to touch their screens, even if they know they can. From an integrators perspective, this provides a great opportunity to get back into a client’s home to clean their screens, while using the opportunity to update, upgrade, and upsell new technologies to a captive audience who already trusts you to provide the very best solutions for their particular situation. As integrators, we must always be selling or we’ll march ourselves into extinction.

As I reviewed the line, I wanted to keep as many constants as I could to get an accurate comparison between the screens. I used a non-calibrated Epson Powerlite Cinema 6010 projector, stationed 12 feet from the screen and in the “cinema” setting for each screen I reviewed. I also used the same scenes from Disney Pixar’s Wall-E and The Amazing Spiderman as my demo movies for each of the screens I reviewed.

Lunar 4K 0.85-Gain Projection Screen
The Lunar 4K 0.85-gain grey screen was developed to create deeper blacks and to work in an environment where there would be soft ambient light. I viewed it in complete darkness and also flanked by two 75-watt floor lamps. One of the most common misconceptions about the Lunar Grey screen is that it does not improve contrast, but instead improves the black levels at the expense of the white levels, for which our eyes will compensate. The black levels were deep and created a great contrast with most of the other colors. On the contrary, I noticed that there was noise around the white images, mostly around wording. While viewing Wall-E, one of the first scenes has a large blue screen with white writing and there was almost a haze around the wording, which distracted my eye. I, personally, would not choose this screen option for my clients.

Gamma Maestro
The Gamma Maestro is an acoustically transparent woven screen material that does not absorb ambient light the way a gray screen would. It is at its best in a darker environment, although it will still perform in very minimal light. It has a very warm, neutral and inviting hue that it adds to the image. While all of the color is rich and defined, I found that reds, grays, and blues were particularly heightened. The noise around white images were not present in this screen, the wording from the same scene in Wall-E was crisp and clear.

Solar 4K 1.3 Gain

Of all the white/grey screens that Screen Innovations offers, this one was by far my favorite. The image was flawless, with tight colors, deep black levels and crisp, noiseless white details. In a darker environment, I found that the quality of the image was comparable to the Black Diamond. In a particular scene from The Amazing Spiderman, there is a close up of Lizard’s face where he is transforming from Lizard to human and you can actually see the scales flaking away from his face. The picture was so pristine that you could even see the outline of the contact lenses the actor wore to create the Lizard’s eyes. It was an incredible visual. This would be the other screen outside of the Black Diamond that I would most often offer to my clients.

A demo from The Amazing Spiderman on SI’s Solar 4K 1.3 Gain screen.

Black Diamond Zero Edge 1.4 Gain
Prior to Black Diamond, two-piece projection was primarily used in dark environments, not because we wanted to, but because we had to. Now with Black Diamond, a screen can look just as good in ambient light as it does in a dark room. Unlike high-gain screens, however, Black Diamond rejects ambient light; therefore, the onscreen image is not diluted.

The technology behind Black Diamond allows it to reject ambient light coming from both the vertical and horizontal plane. The only time this doesn’t work is when a light source is coming from behind the projector. For example, if you have a west-facing window located directly behind the projector at 5:00 p.m., you’d probably want to cover that window, just as you would with any other display.

Black Diamond has been professionally measured to improve contrast 900 percent over a matte white 1.1 gain screen. In my opinion, the black levels in this screen provide a depth to the image like no other screen. Even 2D images seem to appear 3D. I thought that the scene from The Amazing Spiderman couldn’t look any better than it did on the Solar screen, but the colors provided by Black Diamond are even more vivid and bright, and the lines clean and distinct. Black Diamond Zero Edge is also the only screen that can incorporate an LED lighting kit for around the border of the screen. LED lighting enhances the color images on the screen and relaxes the viewer’s irises, allowing brighter content to be viewed in a darker room for longer periods of time without eyestrain.

A demo at the Republic Gastropub bar illustrating the difference between matte white and a Black Diamond screen.

Black Diamond Motorized

The Black Diamond Motorized screen allows you to reach a client base who just does not have the space or budget for a dedicated home theater room. It is the world’s first “rollable TV,” as the Screen Innovations team would call it. It provides integrators the ability to put a TV where it should go, not where it has to go. For instance, I have a number of clients in New York City whose walls are all windows. This screen can be installed right above the window and dropped down when they are ready to watch TV. The installation is simple because SI uses the same aluminum brackets for mounting all motorized screens in its line. It will likely take an integrator the same amount of time to install Black Diamond Motorized as it does to mount a flat-panel TV.

Before this trip I, like many others, only thought “Black Diamond” when I thought of Screen Innovations. They have shown me that they have a full line of screens that can meet any price point and any desire a client may have without stepping out of their line. Every screen manufacturer has screens to offer, but only Screen Innovations has Black Diamond. Much like Apple, other manufacturers can imitate, but not duplicate the Black Diamond.

The Future of SI
Screen Innovations has been consistently experiencing 40 percent growth each year in domestic and international sales. They have already become the “it” screen in the residential scene and are just beginning their passage into the commercial world. Their screens were featured in many of the leading projector manufacturer’s booths at CEDIA and Infocomm in 2012—Epson, Sony, DPI, Wolf, Panasonic, JVC, Optoma, and Sim2 all used Screen Innovations in their booths, and BenQ even had a mind-blowing circular 65’ Black Diamond screen that they used as their overhead sign that SI created for their exhibit.

After two years of R&D, the team at Screen Innovations just launched a new commercial technology called FlexGlass. FlexGlass is a new rear projection screen material that offers all of the benefits of rigid optical glass and acrylic panels with the added benefit of custom and curve capabilities that can only be achieved with flexible screen materials. FlexGlass eliminates projector hot-spotting 100 percent, and from what I saw, has zero sparkle. It seems this would be an ideal choice for multiple-projector, edge blending, and short throw projector applications that are often needed in commercial, digital signage and some higher-end residential settings. One other note FlexGlass is 20 times lighter than Glass and ships on a roll, and costs much less to ship than other solutions.

Ryan and the team at Screen Innovations are always striving for the next technology and accept feedback from not only their team, but from integrators too, as they are not only looking out for their own success, but for the success of their dealers. “Though the awards we have received are appreciated, our greatest reward is when our dealers are profitable and successful,” Ryan said to me.

Todd Anthony Puma is president of The Source Home Theater Installation in New York City. 

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