Planar's Xscreen: Use your front projector, keep the lights on

When you want the biggest screen possible, you soon realize that a front projector with a separate screen is the way to go. Problem: you've got to make some compromises, one of them being resigning yourself to watching with the lights off, or ambient light will turn the image into a ghost of its true self (like the left side of the leopard in the pic).

Then again, you could get yourself a Planar Xscreen, whose surface is coated with a special material that's made to absorb ambient light, letting you keep those room lights on and have a relatively solid picture. It works by taking light that hits it at an angle and bouncing it off to the side rather than right at you, while reflecting light from head-on (light from the projector) normally. One downside is that the screen has to be mounted on a piece of glass, so it can't be rolled up. Planar's done a pretty good job of spinning this into an advantage, though, by putting the glass in a gloss-black frame that makes it look like a plasma TV (but is a lot lighter).

I got a chance to check out the Xscreen in action yesterday — first impressions after the jump.