Projection Screen Reviews

Arriving around the same time as the SSE parcel were two sub-$2,000 DLP projectors lining up for review. Forty-five days (read: 250-plus run-hours) of toggling between the machines using the Ambient- Visionaire Black 1.2 gave me a solid reference for bright, finely detailed images with surprisingly deep, potent black levels. My success in further achieving an accurate color balance using the screen with one of the DLP candidates fully allayed any concerns about color shift or uniformity issues, so I moved on to my formal review.

To be consistent with my previous ALR screen review of the Elite Prime Vision DarkStar 9, I mounted up the same projector. This workaday Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 3500 ($1,500, May 2015 and our Website) was retained just for ALR screen assessments and commits but one real larceny to image fidelity: an inability to yield a starless, midnight black. Or so I thought. In the original review, it was used with a Stewart Filmscreen FireHawk G3 screen. That was an impressive pairing at the time, earning the projector a deserved recommendation, though its somewhat middling overall contrast held it just short of Top Pick territory.

When I fired up the Epson, I was expecting the same effervescent color brightness and overall vivid image this 3LCD thoroughbred delivered on the FireHawk, just minus the coal-like blacks I’d been enjoying the preceding six weeks on the SSE courtesy of the other DLP machines. But I was taken aback when, with the drapes pinned open, I happened upon a replay of the previous night’s game between the Boston Bruins and the Edmonton Oilers on the NHL Network. The Epson portrayed a black level in the same or better manner on the Ambient-Visionaire Black 1.2 with the room awash in light as the projector had on the FireHawk with the room light sealed. Ice showed true white, and Edmonton’s blue road sweaters were emblazoned on the screen in close-ups. These are things I know well, having spent 18 years as an off-ice official in NHL replay, with more than 1,000 live games under my belt. Yikes! Perhaps there’s something to this 12x improvement in contrast ratio, at least subjectively if not also under “laboratory” conditions.

Later that evening, with the lights out, my astonishment steeped further. On NBCSN the Chicago Blackhawks were facing a challenge at home by the Wild from Minnesota. The Hawks’ pants were black; helmets were black; gloves were black; refs and linesmen were black-panted and -striped. Had I unfairly castigated the Epson 3500 for a weakness it did not possess?

Well, yes and no. During the Epson’s evaluation, in addition to the FireHawk, I pointed the projector at another Stewart model, the StudioTek 130G3, my ongoing reference screen. The black level attained with that surface was medium dark gray at best. When I coupled the Epson with the Elite Prime Vision DarkStar 9, the gray darkened considerably, and I reported that a duo consisting of that excellent ALR screen and a reasonably well-engineered, sub-$2,000 projector could handily displace the largest flat panels and likely supersede them in many aspects of performance, especially glare elimination. Now, with the Ambient-Visionaire Black 1.2 under ideal conditions and the Epson going mano-a-nano (yup, that was weak), the projector seemed to have suddenly swallowed one of those little blue pills. On the SSE screen, performance ascended well beyond that of the default Epson, with the black level transitioning from acceptable to remarkable. Colorimetry, eye-catching before but perhaps mostly due to the color brightness level the 3LCD technology upholds, took on a level of fidelity that I can only describe as maturely saturated. The light-absorption layer of the Ambient-Visionaire Black 1.2 screen rendered color that was vivid, yet restrained; distinctly etched. Flat panels attempting similar saturation characteristics come across as cartoon-like and syrupy. And this was from satellite television!

Using the Oppo BDP-103 Blu-ray player, I cued 2001: A Space Odyssey to chapter 6, where the movie transitions from the “Dawn of Man” section to the iconic, ascending-bone-to-descending-spacecraft imagery. In previous viewings with the Epson, the black bars atop and below the active image on this 2.20:1 release were at best irritating to watch. When reflected off the Ambient-Visionaire Black 1.2, the bars were perceptible, but just barely so—what I can only declare as a remarkable achievement. Now, if there were other tradeoffs to image fidelity required in order to enjoy the deeper blacks and boosted contrast I observed, then prudent deliberation would be in order. But there weren’t any.

Unlike another excellent ALR screen, the Elite Prime Vision DarkStar 9, which rejects light in the vertical domain only (such as from recessed fixtures near the front of the screen), the Ambient-Visionaire Black 1.2 absorbs light from any direction. With any amount of ambient light present, I would estimate the viewing cone allowing full image fidelity to effectively be 140 to 160 degrees—about 70 to 80 degrees off axis to center in either direction. There can be a mild bit of washout at an incident angle of reflection from a reasonably copious source of light; after all, as much as this screen defies the laws of physics, they still are immutable. As mentioned above, I have windows in the wall to the left of the screen. With curtains for those windows open, and viewing from a generous angle to the right side of the screen (likely 70 to 80 degrees), the contrast ratio compressed a bit, though the image was eminently watchable even at that relatively radical angle.

If You Install It, Everyone Will Come
Seen from front-on or within the maximum viewing radius in my room of around 75 degrees, this is the best execution of light rejection and lumens utilization I have yet experienced, that being with lights on. In theater mode with lights off, the Ambient-Visionaire Black 1.2 may be the screen that makes you forget white screens are still being made. I even hauled out an old Runco CL-820 DLP projector just to make sure I can say this screen makes any projector pointed at it better than you’ve ever seen it look. “Game changer” severely understates it. Highly recommended—can’t exaggerate it enough.