Silver screen

The term silver screen derives from the type of projection screen used at the start of the motion picture industry and specifically refers to the actual silver (Ag) content embedded in the material (a tightly woven fabric, either natural, such as silk, or a synthetic fiber) that made up the screen's highly reflective surface.

Related Topics:
Motion picture - Silver (Ag) - Silk - Synthetic fiber

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Excellent for use with low-power projectors and the early projected monochromatic images, the silver screen, or silver lenticular (vertically ridged) screen, however, provides narrower horizontal/vertical viewing angles in comparison to its more modern counterparts and tends to color-shift to blue when color images are used, in addition to hot-spotting (the tendency of single source projection to over saturate the screen's center, leaving the peripheries darker). Due to these limitations and the continued innovation of screen materials, the manufacture of silver projection screens was generally phased out, though never fully discontinued, while the term "silver screen" itself continues to be used to refer to projection screens in general and motion picture projection screens in particular.

Related Topics:
Projector - Monochromatic

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Other projection screen types to come after the silver lenticular screen are the pearlescent screen (which has narrow viewing angles and a higher gain--the measure of reflected light--color shifts to red and tends to hot spot), the glass-beaded screen (which also has a higher gain, though due to the nature of its structure, suffers a significant loss of viewing angles and a marked loss of resolution since glass beaded screens are retro reflective, that is, their reflection is directed back to the light source; in addition, the glass beaded screen is physically unstable since the beads can shift, break or break off, resulting in noticeable dark spots), the gray screen (which design, while improving contrast with front projection and possessing a high gain, results in a color shift to the blue end of the spectrum much as the silver lenticular--ideal for black and white projections but noticeably distorted with color and rendering whites off-white) and the matte white screen (which is generally regarded by those in the screen manufacturing industry to be the finest development in screen technology, providing true color reproduction, the highest resolution capacity, the widest viewing angles, no glare and no hot spotting).

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It is the matte white screen which has become the entertainment industry standard.

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Silver lenticular screens, however, while no longer employed as the standard for motion picture projection, remain in use as they are ideally suited for modern 3D projection.

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