Some that immediately came to mind were Lucy, The Revenant, Blade Runner 2049, and Moana. I made it a point to evaluate as many "reference" Ultra HD Blu-ray discs that I could, with a focus on titles that would make my "best of" list for fine detail. (That's why I mentioned earlier that the relationship between projector and the screen should always be considered, because both components contribute to image quality as a whole.) A screen such as the ST130 G4 can help to reverse that artifact since its corners have a slightly lower gain than the center. A good example would be the slight brightness increase in the corners of the image that I've seen with JVC projectors. This not only helps with contrast performance, but also with other issues related to specific projectors. The gain windowing of the material also helps a bit to reject any stray light coming toward the screen from the sides. Near-black to 100 percent white full-field images showed no obvious hot spotting on the ST130 G4, which is the level of performance I would expect from one of Stewart's reference screens. Since it has no gain, my reference ST100 is about 20-30 percent "dimmer" (if compared directly with the same light source reflecting off of it) than the ST130 G4, but it has greater brightness uniformity since it reflects light evenly across the entirety of its surface area. Gain is useful for bumping up overall image brightness, but can add its own visible signature as well, something referred to as "hot spotting." Since gain focuses the light coming from a specific angle and rejects a bit of light coming from other angles, it can create a brighter area in the screen's center compared with its outer edges. The next thing I wanted to test for was artifacts related to the gain of the screen itself. To say that I was pleasantly surprised by how much the new screen reduced such artifacts is an understate- ment-this material reminds me far more of the ST100 and its nearly imperceptible texture. I also noted some slight gain-related sheen on really bright white objects, but it didn't call attention to itself as with previous generations of the ST130 material. For some reason, scenes that featured a vertical tilt (camera moves up and down) seemed to reveal a bit of screen texture-mainly, a slight sheen-though I didn't see any "sparkle" regardless of how the camera was moving. The only time I thought the artifacts were an issue with the new ST130 G4, and by "issue" I mean where people would actually notice artifacts if they were actively looking for them, was on vertical tilt shots. I wasn't getting a nearly perfect absence of artifacts as I do with Stewart's ST100, but it was far closer than I expected given the performance of the third-generation ST130 material, which had displayed a fair number of artifacts with this disc. Screen texture was barely visible, even with pans across the beautiful snow-capped mountain peaks. Once I watched The Art of Flight on the ST130 G4, I was actually stunned with how well the new material performed. This is a brutal test for any screen, and even the ST100 will show a miniscule amount of texture on it if you know what to look for. The first video I wanted to view on the ST130 was one I use to quickly reveal any artifacts related to a gain screen's texture: The Art of Flight, a snowboarding documentary with lots of nearly pure white images with near-constant side to side and up and down camera moves. Next, I proceeded to calibrate the projector to take into account the new peak white point and any color shift that may have resulted from the change in material. I use a single-pixel on/off test pattern from the Spears and Munsil UHD Benchmark disc to set focus, and each of the pixels in the pattern were razor-sharp with no signs of compromise. The first good sign for the ST130 G4 material was when I checked my projector's focus after re-mounting the screen- it hadn't changed at all. This may also apply to solid-surface screens that use coatings to enhance gain or facilitate ambient light rejection since the coating itself has a texture that not just reduces resolution but can add its own "structure" to images. Such compromises are common with acoustically transparent "weaved" or "perforated" screens that are designed for speakers to be placed behind them-go close up to the screen and in most cases you'll have a difficult time seeing the pixel structure in 4K and even 1080p images. If the texture is larger than the pixels in the image, you will see a reduction in fine detail.
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