flex-theater guide

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Guide to the

Flex-TheaterEntertainment in the luxury living room

Jennifer Davis

Vice President of Marketing, Runco

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• Introduction to Projection in the Home

• The Benefits of Front Projection

• An Unfair Fight

• The Flex-Theater Solution

• Flex-Theater Design and Room Adjustments

• Summary

Table of Contents

Flex-Theater Guide from Runco International

Photo courtesy of Stewart Filmscreen. Room features the new Couture Collection.

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“It’s a unfair fight against the sun,

but it can be won with

smart design.”

-Jennifer Davis

Projection Possibilities

In this eBook, we explore the possibilities for front

projection in rooms throughout the home, not just in

dedicated “home theaters.” The concept of using one

room for a variety of purposes and then having it

transformed into a Flex-Theater will be discussed.

Front projection is no longer just limited to dark “caves,”

but can be brought to light.

As the Vice President of Marketing for Runco

International, a leader in home theater and video

technologies, Ms. Jennifer Davis has unique insights to

what luxury homeowners should be looking for and

what can be accomplished with video technology in the

luxury home. You will find more information about

Jennifer at the Author page toward the end of this book.

Introduction

Photo courtesy of Gramophone


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It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s a projector.

Home theater enthusiasts have known for decades how

impressive front projection entertainment systems can be.

They are the dominant technology in commercial cinemas for

good reasons and many of these translate into residential

applications.

So, why consider projection for your home?

The first benefit is that you can create a big screen

experience at home. While plasma displays top out at

around 150” and single LCD TVs over 70” are rare, projection

systems are virtually unlimited in size and at a lower cost per

square foot of display. You can create screens measured not

in inches diagonal, but in feet or meters wide, which

translates into more compelling entertainment.

The Benefits of Front Projection #1: The Big Screen Experience


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Now you see it. Now you don’t.

The second reason to consider front projection in the home is

that it fits your lifestyle and blends seamlessly with your

décor.

You can hide the electronics away and with a touch of a

button bring a home theater to life, without having to leave

the room.

Plus, there is no thinner flat panel display than a front

projection screen.

Projectors are available in a wide range of sizes, industrial

design styles, and personalization that allow the product to be

customized to the homeowner’s personality and passions.

The Benefits of Front Projection #2: Design Flexibility


Photo by Audio Video Planners

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Image Performance Like No Other

Runco offers both flat panels and projection, yet our

projection line-up offers performance beyond what is possible

with flat panel displays.

From color performance to black levels, in the right

environment, projection dominates.

Plus, you are not limited to a fixed aspect ratio of 16:9 high

definition (which is a 1.781 aspect ratio). You can watch

CinemaScope 2.35:1 content without black bars using

Runco’s CineWide® and CineGlide™ technology.

All things you can not do on a flat panel.

The Benefits of Front Projection #3: Unmatched Image Performance


1.78:1 HD content on a

1.78:1 Screen

2.35:1 scope content

on a 1.78:1 HD screen

1.78:1 HD content on a

21:9 screen

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3D done right

The market excitement around 3D in the home is palpable

and there is no better way to watch 3D than with projection.

The big screen experience is more immersive and it enables

Runco’s Constant Stereoscopic Video™ (CSV) with battery-

free passive glasses for the best-in-class 3D performance.

The Benefits of Front Projection #4: 3D Done Right


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It’s Not Easy Being Green

Using power-consumption-per-square-inch calculations,

projectors use a fraction of the energy of large flat panel displays.

This is especially true of Runco’s InfiniLight™ lampless LED

illumination (available on the QuantumColor™ series and the

3Dimension™ D-73d).

The Benefits of Front Projection #5: Energy Efficient


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Why doesn’t everyone have a theater?

With all the style, performance, and cost benefits of front projection, why doesn’t

every home in the world have a theater as their primary entertainment display?

First off, projection is seen as relatively complicated (as opposed to a buy-and-hang

flat panel display, which is often a do-it-yourself project for the homeowner). This

leads to people believing it to be wildly expensive, overly complex, or not even

considering it as a possibility at all. Indeed, most people simply don’t think of front

projection as a viable option when shopping for a “television.”

The second reason is people associate projectors with dark, cave-like rooms that

can only be used for movie watching. Sometimes space, room size, or ceiling height

limitations can make homeowners believe that projection will never work for them.

Once the homeowner considers projection, then the real work begins of making it

work for their room.

The Drawbacks to Front Projection


An Unfair Fight

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Just Look What We’re Up Against

Projection only works when the light on the screen is brighter than the brightness of the

room. In other words, the “blackest” blacks of the scenes you show, will only be as dark as

the screen before you turn on the projector and in many bright rooms that is simply not dark

enough for acceptable viewing. Make no mistake, projection is not the best solution for

every room.

You see, fighting the sun is an unfair fight. While projectors may be 200-400 watts, the sun

has the equivalent of 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts (yes, that is 25 zeros).

The industry standards for theater brightness call for approximately 14 foot lamberts (fL) of

luminance off the screen, the sun delivers a whopping 10,000 fL! Exactly the kind of power

you’d expect from a light source that sustains life on Earth. And there is no projector in the

world, at any price, that can do that!

LS-10i shown with an optional FinishPalette™

NCAA® team logo design. Subject to approvals.


Guerilla Warfare

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Outsmarting the Sun

Although we can’t beat the sun, but we can outsmart it

with intelligent choices and exceptional room designs.

Projection is a solution more should seriously consider.

A design starts with an understanding that the projector

plus the screen you choose to shine it on (and we

highly recommend a professional screen over just

shining the projector on a wall) can achieve radically

different performance in different room conditions. In

the coming pages, we’ll discuss this in more detail.

Projector

Screen

Room Condition

Sun


The Flex-Theater

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Flexible, Fashionable, and Impressive

One of the ways to beat the sun and create incredible

visual experiences in the home is with a flex-theater.

When you can’t dedicate the space or the budget for a

dedicated home theater, a flexible design that

accommodates multiple uses of a single space can be a

perfect compromise. A projection system combined with

modular furniture and lighting control can transform a

living room into a theater back into an entertainment

space with a simple tap on a touchscreen.

We recommend a flex-theater that contemplates the

viewing patterns, needs, decorating sensibilities, and

budget of the homeowner and is tuned especially to their

needs. One size does not have to fit all, as each

projection solution can be unique. In order to do this, the

room designer or installer must start with an assessment

of the room itself.


Photo courtesy of Stewart Filmscreen

Assessing the Room

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Contrast Ratios Rule

Before we dive into room design principles, we would be

remiss not to mention the importance of working with an

experienced partner to design and install your room.

Everything we will discuss here is a fraction of the

resources and expertise one of our authorized Runco

dealers will bring to your project. We explain it here only to

give you a framework to discuss with your audio/video

partner.

In designing for front projection, contrast ratio is one of the

most important measurements. And the best possible

contrast ratio achieved in any room is when the projector is

off (the blacks are at their darkest) as compared to the

projector is full-on with a white image (when the whites are

at their brightest). This calculation forms the parameters

for product selection. And, if the estimated results are still

not acceptable, there are a host of things you can do to

adjust the room for better performance, repeating the

calculation until the optimum results are achieved.

Step 1: Measure

blank screen

Step 2: Estimate

white image

Step 3: Calculate best case contrast

ratio

Step 4: Adjust room


Designing for Day Parts

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When Do You Watch

The same room can perform very differently at different times of the

day. In the morning, while you are drinking coffee and watching the

news, the sun might be off-angle and the ambient light manageable,

but by lunchtime the sun glare is making your display of any type

nearly unreadable.

Fast forward to dusk or night and the sky is dark and the curtains are

drawn and your room is perfectly suited for a traditional home theater

projection solution.

This is why is important to consider your viewing habits and when you

want to use your new system. Once you do that, you can do the

previous calculation on “best case” contrast ratio and if you don’t like

the results you can adjust the room and repeat the calculation.

Morning

Noon

Dusk

Night


Adjustment Possibilities #1: Screens

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The Screen is What You See

There are so many things one can do to improve

the fundamentals of a flex-theater for better

performance. The first place to look is the

screen.

As a rule of thumb, the smaller the screen, the

more concentrated the light, and the brighter the

resulting image. So, generally you want a smaller

screen in a flex-theater than you might enjoy in a

dedicated theater. But never fear, it will still be

larger than the equivalently priced flat panel

display.

The second thing to consider is screen materials.

Some are designed to preserve contrast in bright

environments (typically they have a gray tint) or to

reject ambient light. This is another area, where

a trusted installer and system designer can help

with material selection.

“Screen size calculations are like

spreading peanut butter on bread.

The bigger the sandwich,

the thinner the peanut butter.”

-Jeremy Sternhagen


Adjustment Possibilities #2: Window Coverings

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Block the Enemy Out

If you are fighting with the sun, one way to win is to block out the light with

curtains or window coverings. Even a partial window covering can make a

big difference.

Depending on the screen material, you might close a curtain close to the screen (while

keeping all others open) to create enough of a shadow on the screen surface to

protect your contrast.

When using a screen with gain (which focuses and reflects best the light coming from

the particular direction of the projector while rejecting all others), sometimes you need

to block the light coming from the window closest to the projector.

Plus, there are fantastic window covering products available that can be triggered by

remote control (the same control system that turns on your projector) to make these

adjustments automatic.

In any case, the projection doesn’t necessarily require an entirely dark room.

Thoughtful room design and screen and projector placement can make a

big difference.


Photo courtesy of Stewart Filmscreen

Adjustment Possibilities #3: Wall and Ceiling Color

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Beware the Reflections

Light can bounce off ceilings and walls to brighten the room overall.

This is why ceilings are most often white, as people want to reflect

and retain as much natural light as possible.

However, interior designers advise you to use that fifth wall (your

ceiling) to help create a mood. In a room intended primarily for

entertainment purposes, a dark ceiling can create a feeling of

intimacy and also cut down on light reflections that might compete

with your projection system.

Judicious use of wall color or wall coverings can also make a big

difference. Even a single wall painted a darker shade can add

instant pizzazz to your décor and dramatically improve the contrast

of your projector. Today’s modern wall coverings that use light-

absorbing velvet designs can also be useful in this regard.


Adjustment Possibilities #4: Lighting Design

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Beyond the Switch

Today’s home has so many lighting options and the use of dimmer switches alone saves

homeowner’s hundreds a year in energy costs. But, those dimmer switches play another

important role and help you manage the ambient light in your flex-theater.

It is not uncommon for a family room or media room to be adjacent to other spaces in the

home, like the kitchen. Instead of all overhead lighting in the kitchen, you might consider

downward-facing task lighting or pendant lighting to reduce the glare coming from one room

into another. This type of task lighting is recommended by kitchen designers for aesthetic

appeal and safety as well.


Adjustment Possibilities #5: Senses and Settings

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Smart Control

When designing for a mixed use scenario when the projector can be

used in different lighting environments and different times of day, there

are lots of way to integrate home automation systems to assist with

optimizing the picture.

Runco projectors, for instance, come pre-programmed with ISF™ Day

and ISF Night settings, which can be triggered either by the

homeowner, or a clock, or an ambient light sensor set up in the room to

adjust automatically.


Adjustment Possibilities #6: Content and Use Models

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Not Only When You Watch, But What You Watch

We started this section talking about day parts and that the needs of the homeowner at

different times of the day having a huge impact on room design. The same is true of the

content you watch.

Brighter content performs better in brighter rooms, as there is less of the images on the

screen that approach the “black” of the ambient environment. So, as a result watching

bright sports footage (typically shot outside in the day time or under bright stadium lights)

is a great choice for a flex-theater. The same is true of most broadcast content and news

footage.

In contrast, watching “The Dark Knight” or other cinema content, which was designed for

viewing in dark theaters, typically requires more lighting control.

So, again, if your usage model is the morning news, followed by night movie watching, a

flex-theater will be an exceptional choice. Even if you want to slip a mid-day Super Bowl

party into the mix every year, the performance can be great.


Images courtesy of The Weather Channel, Fox, and James Cameron and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Paramount Pictures

The Flex-Theater (Combination Systems)

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Best of Both Worlds

We have seen the growth of combination systems, where a high-quality flat panel display, like

a Runco display with OPAL™ technology is used for daytime viewing and a drop-down screen

and projector come to life in the evening for movie watching. This can be a great combination

of technologies that achieves optimum performance throughout the day and with a mix of

content options.


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In conclusion, there are many different factors that

combine to create a great flex-theater. In short, there are

many levers to pull that create the optimum mix. Like the

faders on your stereo equalizer or a professional studio

mixing board, the choices are endless and the results can

be incredible.

Now that you see how projection might be a possibility in

your home, we highly recommend you contact a Runco

authorized dealer in your community to assess your room

and create a plan. Your room is different from any other

and the dealer can tailor a solution to your viewing

preferences, decorating style, and budget to create a

system unlike anything you thought was possible –

A flexible entertainment and entertaining space that

is magical!

Summary


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Jennifer Davis

Vice President, Marketing

Ms. Davis is an experienced executive with more than 16 years of experience in display technologies,

software, and Internet services. She has held leadership positions at companies ranging from a small

software start up to Intel, a Fortune 50 technology firm. She joined Planar Systems in 1998 and has held

operational, marketing, and strategic roles.

Jennifer graduated summa cum laude from Warner Pacific College with degrees in business and history and

holds a Master’s of Business Administration from Pepperdine University.

A self-described geek with a belief that technology “with a point” can be a powerful part of people’s lives, she

is proud to provide leadership to Runco’s product planning and marketing efforts.

For further information on Runco’s industry-leading video technology, please visit www.runco.com.

Special thanks to Bob Williams, Runco’s chief architect and Ben Clifton, Runco’s VP of technology who

contributed to this effort.

About the Author


http://www.runco.com/

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Runco is a leading provider of premium video

products for home theater and entertainment.

Our expansive product line includes award-winning

projection solutions, plasma and LCD flat-panel

displays, as well as innovative product categories

such as display walls and video processors.

Please visit us at www.runco.com where you can

learn more about Runco’s video solutions that

create an incomparable video experiences in 2D

and 3D, as well as to locate an authorized dealer

near you, read our blog, and see a gallery of

installations that might be useful to your own

planning and design efforts.

Additional Information


http://www.runco.com/

25Flex-Theater Guide from Runco International

Authorized Dealer Profile: Rolling Thunder Group Inc.

Rolling Thunder has been creating custom lifestyle

and dedicated home theater systems since 1986. With

a long history of high end audio and video integration,

Rolling Thunder high performance systems are

recognized for their artful design and integration with

outstanding attention to detail.

Honors:

- Gold Medal Winner 2009 Electronic Home Magazine

Best Media Room

- 4x nominated 2010 Project of the Year including Best

Theater and Best Green Home

- Voted Best Home Theater by local residents in the

SF Bay Area's Marin County

Rolling Thunder Group, Inc.

3241 Kerner Blvd

San Rafael, CA 94901

415.456.1681

www.rollingthundergroup.com

Jeff Symonds

[email protected]

http://www.rollingthundergroup.com/

mailto:[email protected]

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