Posted on February 25, 2008 By Art Feierman
As our regular visitors are aware, we do very few screen reviews, typically only two or four a year. We are much better set up for reviewing projectors, than we are for projector screens. In that, I mean, we have no accurate way of measuring screen gain, and even less ability, in this case, to determine how good an acoustic screen material is at passing low, medium, and high frequencies, from speakers placed behind the screen, through the screen to the viewers.
Because of all of the above, our screen reviews tend to be more subjective, than objective.
The review of this new Elite Screens acoustic surface motorized screen was doubly challenging for the reasons above.
That said, let’s get started.
The screen itself is a motorized screen, housed in a white case, with black end caps. A power cord attaches to the screen housing and can be plugged directly into a wall electrical outlet, or if you prefer, your favorite installer can run the power inside the wall, to a source (all the usual electrical codes apply).
To control this screen, it actually comes with three remote controls. One is the Infra-red remote control, the second remote control is an RF remote control (so you don’t need line of site), and the third one, is Elite’s novel, and quick way of allowing the screen to be controlled (up/down), by projectors with 12 volt triggers. Elite provides remote holders (so, for example you could mount a holder on your wall, or near your equipment), which you can see on two of the remotes below. The remote controls each have UP, DOWN, and STOP buttons.
What Elite Screens has done to accomplish the 12 volt trigger compatibility, is provide a second RF remote (seen on the left of the image above), but this one has two wires coming out of it (and Elite advises that the wires will shortly come with the traditional jack that 12 volt outputs on projectors expect). The idea here, is to simply plug the jack/wire into the 12 volt trigger on your projector, and leave the remote right there by the projector. The remote is small enough to easily hide on the shelf (if shelf mounting) or on the “top” of the projector (actually the bottom) when ceiling mounting.
When the projector sends out its 12 volt trigger “switch” it causes the remote to put out the RF command, which the screen then receives. The bottom line, is that it works. Funky, but it works. I should note, that the 12 volt trigger remote still has the usual up/down/stop manual buttons found on the regular remotes.
This Elite screen comes with wall mounting brackets, or it can be ceiling mounted.
In operation, the screen is moderately quiet, but hardly silent. The speed going up and down isn’t particularly impressive, but who really cares if one screen takes two or three more seconds than another?
More important, however, are the questions of, how good is it acoustically? And how good is it from an image standpoint?
© 2021 Projector Reviews
