Screen Excellence TAM Screens Cover All Aspects

Screen Excellence’s TAM True Aspect Masking screen

Screen Excellence's new acoustically transparent screen option includes TAM -- True Aspect Masking -- for lateral masking on a 2.37:1 screen.

CinemaScope screen widths and motorized masking to accommodate other aspect ratios is certainly a hot trend these days when it comes to screens. Another is using acoustically transparent screens to hide your speakers and deliver realistic sound stage.

French manufacturer Screen Excellence has married these big trends for its TAM model of fixed screens—the TAM standing for True Aspect Masking.

These screens come in native aspect ratio of 2.37:1, so they are a good compromise between the varying 2.35:1 and 2.40:1 super-wide aspect ratios in which many films are released.

The TAM lets you automatically adjust for traditional high-definition widescreen aspect ratios of 1.85:1 and 1.78:1, or even down to NTSC standard of 4:3 (1.33:1) for SD picture and films of the 1940s and 1930s, for example, that are even making their way onto Blu-ray, like “Robin Hood,” “Casablanca” and others.

The masking provides for better immersion when you’re watching movies in this “constant height” setup that are narrower than 2.35:1 or 2.40:1, and would ordinarily produce vertical pillar bars in the unused projection screen space.

With Screen Excellence, the specialty is also acoustically transparent screens, so you can place your front channel speakers at the ideal height behind the screen, so dialogue and effects are truer to where they’re supposed to be originating from.

The TAM screens start at 70-inch wide viewable areas and are standard up to 160 inches wide, with custom sizes also available—pricing starts at $12,000. StJohn Group is the North American distributor for Screen Excellence.