Projector Screen Review: Elite CineTension Matte White Motorized Projector Screen, with remote controls: Overview 2

The important point to consider, is that if you are calibrating (even a basic calibration using a typical $40 - $50 disk like AVIA, or Video Essentials), you will be adjusting color based on the light reflected off of the projector screen surface. In other words, your adjustments will take into consideration any shift in color balance caused by the screen.

The  right side image  (and you can click to enlarge, was shot with a 1080p projector Optoma's HD81, with the source being the Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD player, and the disk, the HD-DVD of Phantom of the Opera:

I had the Elite screen mounted almost two months before I got around to doing this review. In that time frame, the projector screen was almost always in the closed (up) position. It was closed for the last 2 weeks before I started the review. Upon putting the projector screen down, I found the tensioning to be doing the job extremely well.  The screen appeared almost perfectly flat. I noticed only a slight bit of curvature in the lower right corner when I first rolled it down, but most of that was in the border fabric, not the surface. By the time I put a full white image on the screen, or watched some slow pans, I could not detect any unevenness in lighting or distortion on as would be created by a non flat surface. The bottom line, therefore is that the tensioning works great. How well this will hold up after a year or three of use, I have no way of telling, but their tensioning system sure seems to work reasonably well. In addition, the tensioning is adjustable, although the manual warns to check with Elite tech support first, that the intial setting is ideal...

Note, in the image above,  you can make out the tension control nob.

No problems here, either. As you would expect from a matte white surface, the viewing angle is extremely wide. Even moving way outside the the edges of the screen, the image remained bright, and evenly illuminated. Any unevenness that I could see, was if not completely, almost certainly due to the inherent inability of projectors to provide even illumination to begin with. (Note: most projectors drop off 15 to 25% in brightness in the extreme corners. You can detect a lighter bar on the left, that is actually a reflection off of the glass doors to the room, as is a faint difference about 1/3 from the right, and also on the Carada screen behind the Elite.

I don't do my own installations - been there, done that. But I can appreciate the different ways manufacturers set up their screens for mounting. The Elite, like some, but not all, other motorized screens does a nice job of making it easy. First of all the brackets are fully slidable. This easily allows you to find the studs in the wall that you will be using, and then simply sliding the bracket to where it needs to be. Some screens only have as little of 6 inches of adjustment side to side, which can make lining it up with the studs a real bitch.

In addition the Elite projector screen, comes ready to mount either to a wall or from the ceiling.