EluneVision User Review #2
Review Source: AV Science Forum – user “darealgerk”
I’ve used my new screen long enough that I think it’s time I did a bit of a review on it.
I purchased the 100″ reference screen, knowing that I would have to do some ambient light control in my room. The room lighting is 100% controlled (meaning that I watch movies in the dark with no lighting on and no light from external sources leaking in) but … if you don’t have dark walls, floors and ceiling with the reference screen you WILL see a difference. Any amount of ambient light will result in your image washing out to some degree. This is not a problem with this type of screen, this is exactly how it’s supposed to work, it’s just something that people wanting to go this route need to know.
I have now installed a bunch of black velveteen on the main wall and back about 4 feet from the screen and a dark throw rug in my HT room. It made the world of difference for my setup as my white ceiling and light grey rug reflected quite a lot of ambient light back into the room. Now, unless you’re in a very bright scene in the video, the room stays very very dark. I may end up doing some more blackout stuff in the room (thinking black curtains all along one side of the room, which is open to the rest of my basement).
Resolution:
The resolution of this screen is awesome. I have never used or seen another screen in this class to compare it to (like a Stewart) but I have seen some of the “better” DaLite screens in a similar price range and this screen blows them away. Zero hotspotting with my setup, no sparklies, nothing to distract you from the video at all. It shows you pretty much exactly what you project at it. This is a good and bad thing. Good in the fact that you get exactly what you give it, but bad in the sense that if you don’t have a good projector the screen is not going to give it any “help” (by help I mean additional contrast, nicer blacks, higher gain, etc). Again in my books this is good … but only if you’re happy with what your PJ can give you. I have an Epson 8350 and am pretty happy with the results. The black’s aren’t “inky” but that’s no fault of the screen … it’s the lower cost PJ. While testing with a bunch of different resolution type charts and video the performance was outstanding. At full 1080p you see things very crisply right down to the pixel. In less stringent testing (i.e. just watching a good BD movie transfer) it’s wonderful, you see all of the detail, the film grain, and anything else you need to see in the video itself.
Color:
The color the screen gives is very even with no obvious spikes anywhere in the spectrum. While I haven’t done any serious calibration of my setup yet I’m very happy with the way things look here. Very even and very natural. This said I will tell you that I do work with pro photography and video on a mostly daily basis and would like to think that I trust my eye when it comes to color. My main computer monitors are all calibrated (with Eye-one Display 2 hardware) and are of good quality. The screen is very comparable color wise with the results I’m used to seeing on material that I’m very familiar with.
Build Quality:
This is one place that I can’t give the screen full marks. The frame is great but as another person pointed out in this thread there were a couple of “dings” in the black velvet on the frame on my setup, as well as the EluneVision logo being damaged (the moon portion of it was bent coming out of the box and ended up falling off). The logo plate looks and feels pretty cheap, as do the corner braces of the screen (the internal L brackets). They are moulded plastic components and the first set of them that came with my screen had some manufacturing issues. I wasn’t really worried about the small dings in the black velvet of the frame. They were very tiny and not super noticeable and by that point I had it mostly assembled and didn’t want to further backtrack by asking for a replacement.
Given the price of the screen I would have expected a little more attention to detail. Not a show stopper but these things did lessen the whole experience. The plastic logo plate and the small added (and then fallen off) piece of the logo were a bit reminiscent of a much cheaper piece of gear in my eyes. Not the end of the world and not a show stopper (well aside from the non-functional L braces for which I had to get replacements) but something that the Elune folks might consider on the next incarnation of the screen.
Setup:
As stated before the instructions were not fantastic, but enough to get you going if you have any sort of common sense. Some things were left fairly vague and required a bit of guesswork (like exactly which way to insert the L braces), but not the end of the world. The screen took me around an hour to get fully setup (not counting the waiting time for replacement L braces). I did it myself and only really needed a second person to help hang the screen. It’s very light, it’s solid enough for what it is and hung very nicely. The screen tensioning worked out well (but did require considerable force, which they tell you about in the instructions). They don’t give advice on which method to take in attaching the screen to the tensioning tabs. I did it length wise and it worked out fine — meaning that I started at the right side of the screen and then attached it all along until the last bits were at the left side. It might be helpful to have 2 people during this portion. I managed it by myself but it would have been much easier with 2 people as attaching the last row and the required stretching force is considerable. There were no wrinkles or any other issues during this process, it worked exactly as advertised. I’ve also taken the screen back down twice and remounted it while installing all of my velvet and the like with no issues.
Overall:
All-in-all I’m very happy with the screen. I like to think I have a fairly discerning eye when it comes to things like clarity and color (people do pay me to do post processing and color correction on video) and it lived up to my expectations. If you have a controlled lighting room and are willing to go the extra distance to control ambient light this is a great choice for you, especially when you compare it dollar wise to other offerings. At least from what I’ve seen that’s readily available for me in the Toronto area it was the hands down winner. This is a great screen for cinemaphiles and others that want a true cinematic experience. On the other hand, this is not the screen you want to install in a place with ambient light or non-controlled lighting, or with projectors that need a lot of helps with their contrast levels or black levels. This screen gives you back pretty much exactly what you projector on it.
I do have a few images to post, which I will do shortly. While I do personally think it’s a big waste of time to try and properly demonstrate how it “looks” and what it’s color reproduction is (too much of that is left up to the skill of the photographer, the camera, and the “developing” of the image once you download it) some of the shots I’ve taken do definitely show off the resolution this screen is capable of. I’m sure that this screen will hold up long enough and be able to pull off the resolution for when we progress beyond 1080p and into the realm of 4k and above.
