Screen manufacturers are also making it easier on consumers by creating home theater packages. Stewart Filmscreen is one of the first screen makers to develop a product specifically for a certain make of video projector. Its FireHawk SST (short for Sony/Stewart Theater) was designed to optimize the performance of Sony’s new VPL-VW50 SXRD, a 1080p projector that retails for $4,999. It’s a sweet setup, considering that the projector is also equipped with HDMI inputs. A Blu-ray high-definition DVD player can plug directly into an HDMI input, giving you the best possible presentation of high-def DVDs. And Stewart Filmscreen isn’t the only manufacturer responding by developing a 1080p-friendly screen. You’ll see a variety of screens from a number of manufacturers this year designed to maximize the performance of those super-high-resolution projectors.

CinemaScope: Wider than Widescreen

Also increasing is the availability of projectors capable of displaying movies shot in the super-widescreen format called CinemaScope. These movies are wider than the widest widescreen TV, so manufacturers of stand-alone screens are capitalizing on the opportunity to build superwide screens shaped perfectly for CinemaScope movies. These aren’t only wider; some of them are also slightly curved to make the picture look even better. A screen with a concave shape, unlike a flat screen, is able to focus light coming from the image back toward the seating area, making the image appear brighter. The curvature also limits the amount of light that is reflected onto the side walls. This light can reflect back onto the screen and compromise the image quality.

Home Theater Goes Outdoors

Outdoor entertaining is hot, and homeowners have already started to bring their big screens outside with them. Protecting the delicate displays from the elements has required that the screens be housed inside

special weatherproof cabinetry or placed underneath roofs.

This may soon change, thanks to a new crop of outdoor-ready displays and premade housings. Nippura, a company that specializes in making optical-quality acrylic for large commercial aquariums, has adapted its technology to create a rear-projection home theater screen, aptly called Blue Ocean. It’s composed of a diffusion plane (the part that turns light from a projector into a picture) situated between two pieces of water-tight acrylic.

Another outdoor rear-projection screen comes from Stewart Filmscreen. Its StarGlas is a screen laminated between two pieces of glass, which makes it highly durable in outdoor environments. Like regular glass, it isn’t harmed if it gets wet or is exposed to sunlight. While the Blue Ocean screen and the StarGlas screen are both great ideas, they aren’t the complete solution. Both require that a video projector be positioned behind them, and that piece of electronics, unfortunately, will need to be kept inside somehow.

Unique weatherproof storage solutions for screens give consumers the option of selecting a flat-panel TV for their outdoor entertainment areas. Peerless Industries, for example, is one of the first manufacturers to offer a weatherproof enclosure specifically for large plasma and LCD TVs. The TV simply sits inside the Outdoor Flat Panel Environmental Enclosure (EEO), which features a dual filter fan system to prevent the screen from overheating. Don’t expect these new outdoor-ready screens and mounts to come cheap. The EEO will start at around $4,000, for example. Add a flat-panel TV, and you’re talking close to $10,000 for outdoor movie viewing.—By Steven Castle and Lisa Montgomery

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