Recently we replaced our standard white Screen Innovations (100”, 16:9, 1.0 gain) home theater screen with a Screen Innovations Black Diamond (BD3, 100”, 16:9,  0.8 gain).  The difference is amazing.  First I’ll explain a bit about our room layout and the light sources, and then provide photos of the BD in various situations.  FYI, this is not by any means meant to be a technical review – I’m not particularly into the geeky side of video specifications.  However, when we were shopping for the screen I found myself wishing there were more photos available from actual customer installations, so I’m posting mine in the hopes that they will be helpful to someone else.

Our family room (it’s not a dedicated HT) is open to the kitchen and breakfast nook on one side (opening is approx 11’x8’) with a 6” column in the middle’), and 5 windows (dimensions: 48”x60”, 24”x60”, 48”x60”, 24”x60”, and 48”x60”) in a U-shape at the back of the room.

There is a single 48”x24” arched window up high that is covered with blackout material with a fan shade on top, although there is a bit of leakage around the edges. The 5 rectangular windows have wood blinds with blackout drapes on top. 2 blackout roller shades have been installed (one is visible in the top left of the photo below) where the room opens up to the kitchen.  The kitchen/breakfast area that the room opens up into is completely lined in glass.

Here is a shot of the room looking back from the screen location:

We took these photos around 2 pm on a bright sunny day and with the following equipment configuration:

• The comparison screen is our old white 100” Screen Innovations 1.0 gain standard screen from 2005.  It is not directional – rotating it doesn’t visibly impact the image (you’ll notice it’s sitting up sideways in these photos).
• The projector is a Panasonic AE2000U from 2004 with a newly replaced bulb.
• The 0.8 gain Black Diamond is mounted normally on the wall, with the white screen propped in front of it on the right hand side.  The white screen isn’t perfectly flat, but I’m looking at image saturation and contrast here, not perfect focus
• The projector is mounted at the maximum recommended distance of 12” above the top of the screen.Moving it down 6-10” didn’t appear to produce any noticeable difference in the image.

The BD appears much brighter than the old white screen (despite the slightly lower gain), and shows a bit of blue shift, so we have decreased the brightness on the projector and slightly adjusted the color temperature.  The brightness adjustment was also needed to get proper black levels on the BD.  These modifications didn’t result in much noticeable difference on the old white screen, so all photographs have been taken with the BD projector settings.

One drawback to the BD is that during higher-ambient-light situations like watching football at 2 in the afternoon, there is some unevenness to the image as you move off-center. I wasn’t able to photograph this properly. It’s really only noticeable when you have an image (like a football field) that puts a single color on most of the screen; the effect was most notable in the bottom corners of the image in our setup. Even those bits look a ton better than the old white screen, however, so I don’t find this to be a problem.

In a darkened room, I occasionally notice some sparkling on portions of the image that are particularly bright.  I find this to be a minor effect, and completely tolerable, but if you’re bothered by this sort of thing, then this screen is possibly not for you.

In summary: If you have a light control problem, or you want better blacks in general, definitely consider the BD.  I’d recommend demoing it in person, though, so you can get a look at the evenness of the image and see if you are sensitive to the minor sparkle effect. Personally, I’m in love with this screen, and now that I’ve lived with it for a few weeks I can honestly say it has changed our home theater experience for the better.  We’re also using the theater room more, since we can now watch the projected image at any time of day.

For the record, I don’t work for Screen Innovations.  I’m just a happy customer.

There are 5 sets of photos (click here to see the full review and all pictures):

1. BD vs white screen: overhead lighting
2. BD vs white screen: ambient light/windows
3. BD vs white screen: completely darkened room
4. BD only, single image: varying light conditions
5. BD only: darkened room

The test images shown are from The Dark Knight Rises and Avengers Blu-Ray discs.  I have tried to avoid any spoilers in the images, just in case there’s somebody left in the world who hasn’t seen either movie.  The images were taken with a tripod-mounted camera on manual exposure; obviously we changed the exposure as the lighting in the room changed, but within any series of photos where the lighting is unchanged, the exposure is the same.  The photos were taken zoomed out a little bit so you can get idea of the brightness of the room and surroundings.  I’ve photographed some of the scenes in all 3 lighting conditions; other images are random.

1) BD vs white screen: overhead lighting

The first set of photos was taken under the following conditions:

• Blackout shades: down
• Overhead lighting (four in-ceiling recessed 65W BR30’s in 6-inch cans): on
• Back blinds: closed
• SIde blinds: closed
• Blackout drapes: open

The standard screen is nearly unwatchable in this lighting situation, but the Black Diamond looks darned good.  Notice the black levels and improved contrast on the Black Diamond side.  I didn’t even bother to take any Avengers photos here since TDKR was so washed out.

2) BD vs white screen: ambient light/windows

For this set of photos, the room is configured as follows:

• Blackout shades: up
• Overhead lighting (four in-ceiling recessed 65W BR30’s in 6-inch cans): off
• Back blinds: closed
• Side blinds: open
• Blackout drapes: open

There is a ton of light coming in from the right side where the room opens up into the kitchen, and quite a bit coming from the two side windows (plus some amount of leakage from the closed blinds on the back windows). The white screen is again on the right, and therefore getting a bit more ambient light from the kitchen side, but moving it to the left doesn’t have much impact on the image on the white screen, and the camera captured a spotty glare on the top right side of the BD that wasn’t particularly visible to the naked eye.  If the white screen is removed, the image on the BD gets slightly washed out closer to the top right edge; jump here for images of the entire BD (no white screen) in various lighting conditions.

3) BD vs white screen: completely darkened room

For the final BD-vs-white comparison, we took a set of photos with the room darkened as much as possible at 2:30 PM.  All shades/blinds are closed.

• Blackout shades: down
• Overhead lighting (four in-ceiling recessed 65W BR30’s in 6-inch cans): off
• Back blinds: closed
• SIde blinds: closed
• Blackout drapes: closed

Look carefully at the blacks on the left-hand side and you will see that the BD is still giving us better blacks as well as better detail in the dark areas.  TDKR is not 16:9, so you can see the difference the gray screen makes in how visible the bars on the top and bottom are.  If you’re sitting on the borderline about masking, the BD might be enough.

I’ll note some things to look at on a couple of the pictures.

The uniforms of the policemen are blacker on the BD:

The Joker’s black eye makeup is blacker on the BD on the left.  The photo may appear  slightly misleading depending on how your computer monitor is set up, but in person the purple jacket on the left is saturated and vivid, whereas it’s washed out and dusty-looking on the white screen on the right.

You have to look closely at this next image, but again the blacks on the left are slightly blacker:

The next images are from the Avengers, which is 16:9, so there are no more black bars on the BD; because the white screen is turned sideways you can see the edges of it if you look closely.

In this next shot, note the color of the back wall and the unlit portions of the floor:

Here, look at the color of Tom Hiddleston/Loki’s jacket on the left side of the division versus the right:

Notice how the monitor bezel is blacker in the left hand photo with the BD:

The background of Robert Downey Jr./Iron Man’s HUD (Dear Joss, that’s short for “Heads Up Display”) is blacker on the BD (still on the left):

Notice the difference in coloring of Jeremy Renner/Hawkeye’s chair and the Quinjet controls on the left, vs the gray you see on Scarlett Johansson/Black Widow’s side.

4) BD only, single image: varying light conditions

I also took a series of photos of the BD only, slowly varying the lighting from as dark as possible at noon in Texas to as bright as possible.  The starting setup is the same as above.  I have split the blackout shades into separate left/right since I will raise them one at a time in the photographic sequence.

• Left blackout shade: down
• Right blackout shade: down
• Overhead lighting (four in-ceiling recessed 65W BR30’s in 6-inch cans): off
• Back blinds: closed
• SIde blinds: closed
• Blackout drapes: closed

In the next photo, the overhead lights have been turned on.  There is very little degradation in the image on the BD even though there is quite a bit of light shining from overhead:

Next, we have opened the blackout shade covering the *right* half of the opening into the kitchen, meaning we’re now getting a lot of ambient light in from the back right hand side of the room:

In the next shot, we opened all the curtains, and opened the blinds on the side windows:

At this point, we turned the overhead lights back off, leaving everything else the same – i.e. there is no overhead light in the room, but quite a bit of natural light coming in the various windows and from the kitchen.  You will notice that the right hand side of the image is slightly more washed out due to the massive amount of natural light coming in from the kitchen windows:

Next, we have opened the blackout shade covering the *left* half of the opening into the kitchen, meaning that almost the entire right-hand wall is now completely open.  The screen is getting hammered with light, especially on the right-hand side.  The old white screen would present almost no discernable image at this point.

In the image below, we have now opened the back blinds so that the entire back side of the room is open to natural light from outside. This is pretty much the worst-case viewing scenario in the house, since we never watch movies with the overheads on due to the fact that the entire back side of the house is windows.

For completeness, here it is with the overheads turned on in addition to all of the windows/blinds/shades being open.  You can see that turning the overhead lights on doesn’t have much impact on the image:

5) BD only: darkened room

Here are some additional photos showing a full 16:9 image on the BD in a darkened room during the day (i.e. slightly imperfect light control, but all blinds and shades are closed/down).

All content and images are courtesy of B. Bruce | End User

R.Branson | End User

R.Branson | End User

M.Buquoi | End User

I have been to Best Buy stores in four different states looking for 3D projectors.  So far only the Sony is displayed with no 3D emitter or glasses.  The people at the stores are very knowledgable.  If people could see the black diamond, they would not settle for a 60 inch flat panel.  Thank you Screen Innovations for everything you do.

Kelly Sandlin | End User

Best,
Mark F. | End User

John S. | End User

Just wanted to let you know the screen is fine it was about a week later the line went away. Sorry I did not get back to you sooner had a few things going on here, but I just wanted to thank you for all of your help. I’m glad to have purchased the screen from your company the picture looks great and 3D is out of this world. Your service is unmatched you made everything easy thanks again have a Happy Holiday and new year I will send a few pics of theater.

Thanks again,

G.Tirre | End User

Just to give you some quick feedback now that I’ve installed my Black Diamond Zero Edge projection screen.

What else could I say than it’s just great!  After months of struggling to completely refurbishing my home (needless to say that installing my black diamond fixed screen was probably the easiest part of my works ), it’s such a pleasure to sit in front of the screen and … forget about it!  You enter into the world of 20^th century and you wonder why you have been waiting so long to go for front projection!

I want to thank you and the SI team for the support provided, for the amazing packaging protecting the screen which traveled safely above the Atlantic and secured  that I can now enjoy it!

Great team and a great product!

Greetings from Brussels, Belgium

André | End User