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Projection screen

white screen for projecting

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ1152429
Source-derived summary

A projection screen is an installation consisting of a surface and a support structure used for displaying a projected image for the view of an audience. Projection screens may be permanently installed on a wall, as in a movie theater, mounted to or placed in a ceiling using a rollable projection surface that retracts into a casing (these can be motorized or manually operated), painted on a wall, or portable with tripod or floor rising models as in a conference room or other non-dedicated viewing space. Another popular type of portable screens are inflatable screens for outdoor movie screening (open-air cinema).

Uniformly white or grey screens are used almost exclusively as to avoid any discoloration to the image, while the most desired brightness of the screen depends on a number of variables, such as the ambient light level and the luminous power of the image source. Flat or curved screens may be used depending on the optics used to project the image and the desired geometrical accuracy of the image production, flat screens being the more common of the two. Screens can be further designed for front or back projection, the more common being front projection systems, which have the image source situated on the same side of the screen as the audience.

Different markets exist for screens targeted for use with digital projectors, movie projectors, overhead projectors and slide projectors, although the basic idea for each of them is very much the same: front projection screens work on diffusely reflecting the light projected on to them, whereas back-projection screens work by diffusely transmitting the light through them.

Screens by installation type in different settings

In the commercial movie theaters, the screen is a reflective surface that may be either aluminized (for high contrast in moderate ambient light) or a white surface with small glass beads (for high brilliance under dark conditions). The screen also has hundreds of small, evenly spaced holes to allow air to and from the speakers and subwoofer, which often are directly behind it.

Rigid wall-mounted screens maintain their geometry perfectly which makes them suitable for applications that demand exact reproduction of image geometry.

Editorial summary

“Projection screen” enters the record as white screen for projecting. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Projection, screen and white can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current 358-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Projection, screen and white.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Projection screen” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Projection, screen and white provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1152429. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Projection screen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.