Thoriated_Tiger Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 My HT is nearing completion. Painted the back wall a flat, deep, royal blue, this alone did more to improve the percieved or apparent contrast than any other change I did. Not to mention the deep blue really shows off the panny ae700 (which is all silver.) The screen went up Sunday, it is a 96" diag 16:9 Carada Precision. The frame construction is awesome, 2 inches wide by 3/4 inch deep, flocked in black velvet. The frame just screws together forming a very stiff structure. The black velvet sucks up any overspill you may encounter in framing your picture. The screen itself is Classic Cinema White. Attaches to the back of the frame via snaps. A fair bit of stretching is needed, but the end result is drum-tight and extremely smooth and wrinkle-free. The screen is under tension from all sides. The end result is quite stunning, far better than I had anticipated from an LCD. It may not do true crt-level black, but it sure fools the eye and mind into thinking there is deep black. Cartoons look spectacular. Even something as tough as Master and Commander, with most of it being locked up in a smokey, dark ship, looks pretty good, with enough shadow detail to satisfy. So, in short, for those looking for a reasonably, sanely priced fixed screen, Carada is a go. The 96" diagonal cost me $600 delivered, and I feel the build quality is better in the Carada than in the "entry-level" Drapers and Da-Lites I've seen. For a lot less cash. No affiliation to http://www.carada.com other than being a satisfied customer. Now all I need is drapes in that same deep royal blue... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rplace Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 I totally agree with you on the Carada screen. I was taking a spare no expense approach on my HT as I only wanted to do it once and have waited over 15 years to do it. I had all but ordered a screen form Stewart, but thought a lot of the comments on the Carada website made sense. I got samples from both Carada and Stewart and just did not see 3X the differencenot sure I really saw any difference. I also have a Panasonic 700 and based on reading about LCDs I thought I would need a gray screen. But I also ended up going the brilliant white route on the Carada. My screen has been up for about a month now and have watched a lot movies including several with lots of dark scenes. Either I dont have a very tough to please eye or Panasonic and Carada have made blacks a non-issue in my HT. David at Carada had several emails back and forth with me about aspect ratio, size, material and the like. Very friendly, very knowledgeable, very professional and the best company I have dealt with as far as customer service goes in a long time. I dont have any connection with Carada at alljust a happy customer like Thoriated_Tiger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfogg Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 Yup, I have been very happy with my 2.35 AR Carada screen as well. Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thoriated_Tiger Posted February 28, 2005 Author Share Posted February 28, 2005 ---------------- On 2/28/2005 10:52:00 AM rplace wrote: My screen has been up for about a month now and have watched a lot movies including several with lots of dark scenes. Either I don’t have a very tough to please eye or Panasonic and Carada have made blacks a non-issue in my HT. ---------------- It's interesting, to be sure. I have mine in Natural mode, lo-lamp, iris on, tweaked with thx optimizer for contrast and brightness, I had to eyeball the colors using Mahoromatic (anime) and a cel from said show. At an intellectual level, I know it can't produce black. Put it in shutter mode, and you'll see a dark charcoal -- LCD can't go black. Feh. Tell it to my eyes. Painting the back wall (opposite from the screen) is what really transformed the projector. I can't stress that enough. The screen helped, it does brighter and whiter whites than a bare wall -- but the big boost in percieved contrast and percieved black was painting that back wall. Cartoons are very tricky because the blacks are *truly* black, especially eye pupils.. and the whites are truly white, esp. eye highlights (in japanese animation.) The Panny 700 does 'em right, does 'em vibrantly and convincingly. Watching Mahoromatic (which is widescreen) on a 96" diag is spooky ^.^ And that's all I ask out of a display. Well, 2 things... can it do toons.. and can it do black and white. This one can! But it takes work. You *have* to cut out as much light from hitting the screen as you can -- and that includes the back wall, else light from the PJ will hit the screen, bounce back to the back wall, and from there back to the screen, washing out the picture -- just a little, but enough to destroy black perception and shadow detail. Put in fewer words, painting the back wall was like getting a whole new projector. No kiddin'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Adams Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 Thanks guys for this info. I too had that mindset that by going with Stewart I would be assured of super quality and a superior image. I mean, it's top-of-the-line and costs lots of money - it's got to be the best, right? Well, I ordered samples from Carada & Stewart and couldn't tell there was a 3 or 4x difference. Then I saw a Stewart Delux screen and was even less impressed. I'm sure for the tweak-o-phile and such, the Stewart is the cat's meow. But there's other things like acoustic treatments I can buy with that $1000 difference in price. I too will be ordering a Carada very soon. YIPPEE!! Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rplace Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 Two things As to the back wall maybe I just got lucky with my color choice. I painted the ceiling and front wall (screen wall) flat black. The other three walls I did with a sand wash paint (has a sand paper texture in it) in a very dark red. This gives the wall that old time movie house feel to me. Now it is not black, but very very dark redso not much light bouncing around. As for the price of Stewart. I really had no problem with the price when you factor in all the other things you have in a HT and the fact that you will be looking at the screen every time you watch anything. But I also did not want to spend money just for the sake of spending it. Dont get me wrong Stewart makes great screens, but at 3-4X the cost I figured I could get by with the Carada and get by I am! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBRichter Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 I to have a Carada Brilliant White screen 92". The brilliant white was recomended by a projector dealer. They said projectors will always get brighter so therefore spring for the bright one and live with a little grayer black for now. Sure enough, along comes the Sony VPL-HS51. Blacks on this projector are pretty much black. I used the Avia disc to set the colors and WOW, this is a pretty picture. One thing the Avia does is force you to lower the level of sharpness. It actually does bring out more detail. I also am not affiliated with Carada. As above, another satisfied customer. Interesting about painting the back wall. It does make sense. We already painted the wall with the screen a flat darkish green. I wonder if I can convince her to paint the back wall the same color......nah, probably not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkot Posted March 1, 2005 Share Posted March 1, 2005 ---------------- On 2/28/2005 3:11:09 PM JBRichter wrote: I to have a Carada Brilliant White screen 92". The brilliant white was recomended by a projector dealer. They said projectors will always get brighter so therefore spring for the bright one and live with a little grayer black for now. Sure enough, along comes the Sony VPL-HS51. Blacks on this projector are pretty much black. I used the Avia disc to set the colors and WOW, this is a pretty picture. One thing the Avia does is force you to lower the level of sharpness. It actually does bring out more detail. I also am not affiliated with Carada. As above, another satisfied customer. Interesting about painting the back wall. It does make sense. We already painted the wall with the screen a flat darkish green. I wonder if I can convince her to paint the back wall the same color......nah, probably not. ---------------- i use a stewart???who knew?? i agree that wall treatments are very important try black crushed velvet its a little wierd tho. with the rear curtain closed and the can lights all the way off the screen "floats in space" out in front of you!! the velvet works great and slows down some reflections from the speakers as well jay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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