For many years, California-based manufacturer Stewart set the reference standard for home-cinema projector screens, but the arrival of the 2,300-GBP Da-Lite JKP Affinity signalled an end to that era. Find out here what makes this screen so special.

Reviewed by Florian Friedrich on March 22, 2010

100% natural colours.
Not even the slightest visible hotspot.
Reproduces video signals with total accuracy.

Only suitable for fully dark rooms.

Say hello to our new home-cinema reference screen! On the JKP Affinity, Full HD images display with no irritating pattern formation and remain colour-neutral in all situations. In a pitch-dark room, the Affinity is simply unbeatable. If, on the other hand, you’re planning to watch in a room with some ambient lighting, you should opt for a different model — such as the FireHawk from Stewart.

Features

Finally Available in Europe

Any talk about perfect picture quality invariably involves the name Joe Kane. Known by many as the “pope of video”, this American expert has a loyal group of fans that hang on his every technological word. Kane enjoys an outstanding reputation and has released a test disc called “Digital Video Essentials” on DVD and Blu-ray — this has turned out to be highly popular with home-cinema experts.

He also optimises products for various electronics manufacturers (especially Samsung’s projectors); optimised devices can then proudly wear the JKP (“Joe Kane Productions”) logo. Kane also optimises projector screens — mostly, in the past, for the American manufacturer Stewart. But this time Kane has teamed up with Da-Lite to optimise their Affinity screen. And he’s done a great job: The Da-Lite JKP Affinity is the best projector screen we’ve ever tested.

Joe Kane personally fine-tuned the Affinity screen.

We’ve been in love with this screen for a few months now, and the reason we’re only mentioning it now (in late 2009) is very simple: Until now, the 2,300-GBP screen wasn’t available in Europe. And what’s the point of whetting your appetite for a product that you can’t buy?

Technical Details and Build Quality

The screen’s full name is “Da-Lite Cinema Contour 16:9”. The version we describe here is 2.8 meters wide and costs 2,300 GBP. The screen fabric is made of vinyl — the same material as an LP, but with a slightly different chemical composition that’s optimised for displaying images. Vinyl’s advantage over coated screens is that you can clean it with a moist microfiber cloth — there’s no risk of stripping the screen’s surface.

Setting up the screen is also easy: Snap fasteners attach the tensioned vinyl screen to a frame, which hangs like a picture on the wall. This elegant black frame is eight centimetres wide and absorbs scattered light (and undesired edges of the picture) effectively.

Still, the materials and build quality don’t fully match those of Stewart’s screens: The screen contorts slightly around the fasteners, and the frame’s coating isn’t absolutely jet-black.

Picture-Distorting Structures

To produce perfect picture quality in the home cinema, it’s important for projector screens to have no visible structure of their own. Visible patterns can sometimes compete with the projector’s pixel raster, as well as looking unattractive during camera pans, during which the static pattern becomes more obvious. This is why white walls are inappropriate for projection — they never offer a perfectly flat and uniform surface. And the same applies to technically advanced screens with structures intended to improve the picture’s brilliance.

This is precisely where the new Da-Lite screen’s biggest strength lies: It has no structure whatsoever and offers an absolutely homogenous, flat surface. There are no bumps to interfere with the pixel raster, so the picture appears exactly the way the projector produces it, without the screen trying to add artificial brilliance.

But there’s one important thing to keep in mind: This screen was optimised for use in a pitch-black home cinema with similarly dark walls. Since this is a diffuse screen, every bit of light that falls on it will cost the picture contrast. Our measurements showed a gain factor of 0.9, which matches the value given by the manufacturer.

The Viewing Test

For our viewing test, we selected only tried-and-tested devices and films that we know inside and out — this is the only way to evaluate a screen’s neutrality. The test setup included our Samsung reference projector, the Samsung SP-A 800 B, with its neutral colours and outstanding detail clarity.

As a picture source, we used a Sony PlayStation 3, which delivers a first-class Blu-ray picture — in this case from the James Bond Blu-ray “Casino Royale”, which is particularly suited to viewing tests because the varied scenes place a range of different demands on the equipment. Of course, we also used the test disc “DVE HD Basics”.

We evaluate screens’ quality in our pitch-dark test cinema.

Testing took place in a completely darkened measurements lab with black walls, in order to eliminate the effect of external factors. The result: The Affinity delivered excellent results in these conditions. Colours reproduced so neutrally that our technicians can now use the screen to check the colour fidelity of projectors. Black-and-white films looked just as good as brightly coloured animation, and both continued to look superb when viewed side-on. Throughout several months of use in our lab, the screen hasn’t once given us cause for criticism — a remarkable feat!