Choosing a projector screen for business use

There’s more to projector screens than having a piece of white wall to project your image on to. A projector screen has to reflect back the image from the projector to the viewers, whilst trying to maintain the broadest possible angle of viewing.

This hub will focus on projector screens for business use, choosing a projector screen for business use is far more straightforward than a home cinema. The reason for this is that when used in a home cinema application, the size and material of the screen will greatly affect the acoustics of your room. Your $3000 speaker may suddenly sound rubbish… but you have cracking picture quality. It is this factor that to a certain extent can be ignored when looking for a screen to display presentations on, depending upon your business of course. 

There are vast array of projector screens available and I will attempt to break them down in to categories:

Now there’s portable (you can take on the train) and there’s portable (you can move it… but will need a long vehicle) screens. If you’re already looking for a screen you will probably have in mind the sort of screen you are looking for.

There are three main types of portable screen; the traditional tripod type, a pull-up type, and a table top type. The size of your screen will be determined by the size of your audience – a bigger audience = bigger screen.

• Table top projector screens
  Table top screens are suitable for smaller meeting where you don’t want to be huddled around a laptop screen and as the name suggests they literally stand on the table, this sort of screen is can be the up to the equivalent of a 50” TV screen.
• Pull up screens
  The pull-up type screens will do for around 15 – 20 viewers, the smallest pull up screens are about 4’ wide and the largest portable sort are approximately 6’ wide.

• Tripod Screens
  For audiences over 20 people you will want the more traditional tripod type screens that come in much larger formats – typically 4’ up to 12’ in width.

One point to bear in mind when you are looking for a portable projector screen is that you will not find many - if any - that fold in half, for this reason no matter how portable your screen is, the length of the tube when rolled up will always be the same as the width of the screen. That said, carrying round a 4’ long tube is a lot easier than a 42” LCD.

If you have a meeting room that you want to install a screen in to you have a lot more options. You can obviously have all the portable type screens that you can use, but you also have permanent fixed screens to choose from. So, you could for example, fix a rollup screen to you wall or ceiling. These are a great choice if you have a lot of windows in your room and you physically do not have the wall space, when not in use they’re rolled up and out of the way. If you really want to wow your clients why not get an electric projector screen that is remote operated. An electric screen would save you the hassle of untangling the cord when someone enthusiastically decided to retract the screen! If you don’t like the sound of a temporary screen and you have the wall space in your room you could have a permanently fixed screen installed. The surface quality will be slightly better than the retractable sort of screen as it doesn’t need to be rolled up.

There is another very important point to consider, What proportion do you want your screen to be? If you’re projectors information source is being powered by a notebook of fixed computer then in an ideal world you will get a screen that is a similar resolution. If you have you notebook outputting a widescreen resolution but you have the more traditional 4:3 format screen you are going to have a space top and bottom. Conversely if you’re outputting a 4:3 signal and the projector screen is a widescreen format then you’re going to get space either side.

Hopefully this hub has helped you to make some decisions about which screen is best for your needs.