Curved, acoustically transparent projection screens

[garyrc]

"What Aristotle meant by the object of sight was the oval of vision," --- Paul Goodman

Who has a large, curved (concave) acoustically transparent projection screen?

What do you think of it? If you don't mind, about how much did it cost?

Do you have any comments about the screens of close competitors?

We have about 140" to 144" of width between our Klipschorns, and I'm considering putting a curved screen in that space. It needs to be acoustically transparent (more or less), because our Belle Klipsch will be behind it, serving as a center channel.

I have always preferred curved screens in commercial movie theaters because they seem to increase the sense of involvement, they suggest the arc of vision, and they lessen the extreme shape of the widest aspect ratios. The 2.35:1 aspect ratio (of both CinemaScope and 35mm Panavision) was intended for a moderately curved screen. Even the 2.20:1 of most 70 mm processes looks better when a curve bends it down to more like 2:1 (head on).

I'd be grateful for your experiences.

[IndyKlipschFan]

This is what u need!

http://www.stewartfilmscreen.com/CineCurve.htm

And have seen it too...VERY NICE!!!!

[JJkizak]

What bothers me about the curved screen is this. Is the lens designed to focus on a curved screen or flat screen? The focus would bother me a lot, in fact more than a lot. We did use an anamorphic projection lens on our 16mm movies (2.66 x 1) with a curved screen with the curve created by setting the projector in its normal position and drawing an arc with a long string between the anamorphic lens and the wall scribing the arc on a long piece of wood at a distance of approximately 25 ft. The resultant curve on the 10 ft screen was not very much but it worked fine. It also worked fine on a flat screen. I guess you could call this an automatic anticipitory focus changing projection lens. Maybe someone can explain how the physical laws and constants that exist in our Milky Way Galaxy relate to this.

JJK

[garyrc]

I'm not sure about the focus thing either.

Who knows?

The original CinemaScope (as well as 35 mm Panavision which was usually shown on screens installed for CinemaScope) screens "curved at the approximate rate of 1 inch per foot," according to Belton in Widesreen Cinema (page 170, paperback version). I'm not sure what Belton meant by "1 inch per foot," but I'm assuming he meant that the extreme right and left edges of the screen were each 1 inch farther out toward the theater seats for every 1 foot of overall width of the screen.

For a 12 wide screen in a Home Theater, an approximately equivalent curve would be 1 foot in at each edge. I once had a homemade screen curved about this much, for screening Super 8 movies and 35 mm slides. We had edge to edge sharp focus, perhaps due to our long throw.

Some 70 mm processes, such as Todd-AO, called for a much deeper curve of 3 inches for every foot, but Todd-AO employed some optical correction for this.