We’ve recently had some more good news about our TecVision line of projection screen viewing surfaces. Bob Mathes, Draper’s AV/Video Sales & Marketing Manager, shares the news in the guest post below:
Earlier this year, when we first introduced TecVision Engineered Screen Technology, one of our top priorities was to have as many of the surfaces as possible certified by the Imaging Science Foundation for color reproduction and fidelity.
To be certified by the ISF, a screen has to have a flat spectral response—or color fidelity. In other words, the screen cannot affect the color of the image enough for the human eye to perceive. We expected it to be an extended process, with some back and forth as we “dialed in” the surface formulations to meet the high standards of the ISF. Imagine our surprise, however, when news came back that five of the six submitted TecVision surfaces had achieved ISF certification!
The only TecVision surface that didn’t make it was XH900X Grey—and it was very close. Because of the excellent response to our TecVision launch, we had to wait a bit before we could return to the issue of getting this surface certified, but we have now been able to do it and I’m pleased to announce that XH900X Grey has also now been ISF certified. XH900X Grey performs very well in moderate ambient light, is well suited for high resolution content, and is 4K ready.
This means the entire TecVision Engineered Surface Technology line is now ISF certified.
You might be asking why we are always making such a big deal over ISF certification. Traditionally, projection screens have fooled the eye that things are brighter by using blue tints. That leads to problems. To quote ISF President and founder Joel Silver: “If you accentuate the blue that means you aren’t getting the greens or reds you need to build a color-accurate image. We want to take whatever the artist created and bring it to the screen with fidelity.”
“We basically tie ourselves into something called a pure white matte screen –a screen that is a reference color,” Silver says of testing projection screens for color performance. “Neutral white … not a hint of tint to it. The picture you get is what was it was meant to look like from the factory … not tinted.”
Less than a year in, we have six TecVision formulations, including white surfaces with gains ranging from 1.0 to 1.9 over remarkably wide viewing cones, and grey surfaces with excellent performance under higher room light levels. All of the TecVision surfaces are 4K ready, but Silver told us that what most impressed him when certifying TecVision was the ability of some of the higher gain surfaces to deal with ambient light while preserving color fidelity.
Again to quote him: “Finding the color fidelity of high gain materials close to that of no gain materials was wonderful! Gain without a price to pay is a wonderful thing. I knew from measuring luminance even without the specifications that these screens were high gain, but I wasn’t seeing the penalty of color shift. It’s a great challenge, adding gain without paying a penalty in color fidelity requires careful engineering. Compliments to the engineer!”
For more information on TecVision, click here.
