Sony sheds new “Dark” on Projector Screens

Good news on the those who are looking for watching a projector in the lounge room (I know the article is a little old but thought it was still worth listing) and are having trouble with ambient light. "Sony has developed a new projector that can give a bright, unfaded picture without the need to eliminate ambient light. The secret is that they project onto a black screen instead of a white one.

Their screen uses species filters so that white ambient light is absorbed, but the red, green, and blue light from the projector is reflected. Sony sees a possible use in home entertainment systems because of the ability to have a much bigger picture than conventional TVs as well as businesses adopting the projectors for presentations."
No word yet on when Sony will have the technology in production but it will put projectors firmly on the map as a TV set replacement.

Sony's Screen Technology

Quoted From the Wall Street Journal

In TV technology, everything is changing fast. Fat tubes are being replaced by flat screens, square screens by movie-style rectangles and standard pictures by high definition.
And now, white projection screens are being challenged by dark ones.

In apparent defiance of color theory -- that dark surfaces absorb light and white surfaces reflect it -- Sony Corp. has unveiled a black screen that allows a regular digital projector to vividly display TV images and business presentations in a brightly lit room. It continues a trend that began two years ago when Stewart Filmscreen Corp., a leading U.S. maker of screens, began selling a light-gray screen that enhanced the images from projectors using digital chips.
Tokyo-based Sony showed a 160-inch-diagonal version of the screen last week at the Infocomm trade show in Atlanta, after showing 80- and 100-inch versions in a living-room mockup at an industry conference in Seattle three weeks ago. At both events, it made a splash.

"No other technology attracted so many people to stand around and look at it and say 'Wow,' " Richard Doherty of Seaford, N.Y., consultants Envisioneering Group, says of the Seattle demonstration.

Sony hasn't decided when to begin selling the screen, how to price it, where to sell it first or whether to let other manufacturers use the technology. Sony has both commercial and consumer versions of the screen in the works.

Read the full article here.