GreatGetsby
Member
Good thread over on the home theater side. Someone finished rebuilding their room, sat down, and realised the white French doors were now the brightest thing in it. Under a hundred dollars of black velvet and Dacron from Amazon, a staple gun, a brad nailer and some door trim from a hardware run, and a few hours later the doors more or less vanish once the lights come down. Their setup is a 7.2.4 with an Aetherion Max throwing at a 132-inch seamless ALR screen, so this is not someone who needed to save money. They just spotted the thing that was actually hurting the picture.
That is the part worth taking away. People spend thousands chasing contrast in a projector and then leave three white walls, a white ceiling and a white door bouncing every bright frame straight back at the screen. An ALR screen buys back some of that, but it is aimed at light coming from above and off-axis, and it does nothing about a big pale surface sitting off to the side reflecting the image back into itself. Darkening the room is still the single cheapest contrast upgrade available and nobody photographs it for a build thread.
One thing to keep straight though: velvet on a door is light absorption, not acoustic treatment. It is thin, and it will do close to nothing for slap echo or the reflection off a hard door surface. Worth knowing before someone assumes their room is treated because it looks the part. Velvet also holds dust and shows every hand mark near the handle, so the handle swap they are planning is not just cosmetic.
What is the highest-value cheap fix people have done in a projector room? I would put door and ceiling above almost any gear purchase.
That is the part worth taking away. People spend thousands chasing contrast in a projector and then leave three white walls, a white ceiling and a white door bouncing every bright frame straight back at the screen. An ALR screen buys back some of that, but it is aimed at light coming from above and off-axis, and it does nothing about a big pale surface sitting off to the side reflecting the image back into itself. Darkening the room is still the single cheapest contrast upgrade available and nobody photographs it for a build thread.
One thing to keep straight though: velvet on a door is light absorption, not acoustic treatment. It is thin, and it will do close to nothing for slap echo or the reflection off a hard door surface. Worth knowing before someone assumes their room is treated because it looks the part. Velvet also holds dust and shows every hand mark near the handle, so the handle swap they are planning is not just cosmetic.
What is the highest-value cheap fix people have done in a projector room? I would put door and ceiling above almost any gear purchase.
