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Da-Lite Tensioned Cosmopolitan Electrol HCCV with IR Remote Screen Review

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Reliable
• Easy to install
• Looks good

Cons

• More expensive than Draper Premier equivalent
• Incredibly difficult to re-tension older screens

Screen Review

We have had our Dalite Tensioned Cosmopolitan Electrol for about 6 years now. Our screen has the best fabric Dalite offers for home theater, their High Contrast Cinema Vision. The screen itself is opened several times a day, and has worked reliably through the years.

Our screen has an external low voltage control, connected to an IR receiver. The remote is attached to the wall at the other end of the room by the light switch. Typically, we never remove the remote from the wall to operate the screen, given the wide angle of acceptance on the IR receiver.

The remote is simple – three buttons, one for open, one for close, and one for stop. As mentioned, it works from pretty much anywhere in our boardroom, but don’t expect similar performance in your location – ours is a relatively small room with light coloured walls, perfect for bouncing IR signals all over the place. Larger or darker menus should go with a radio frequency remote set-up.

Image quality is good, in fact Dalite’s HCCV was the fabric to beat for many years. It’s since been eclipsed by Draper’s improved High Def Grey, which for most applications, gives you better color and black levels with small to medium sized screens. Blacks can appear a little grayed out with the HCCV, given that it has a 1.1 gain.

It’s an older screen and is exhibiting a little droop in the corners. Given that these screens are designed to be adjusted over the years, I felt this would be a good opportunity to re-tension the screen – ours is showing a little sag in the bottom corners, as the fabric has stretched a little over the years. A quick call to Dalite resulted in an incredibly complicated 32 step manual being emailed out. 32 steps to re-tension a screen seems like a lot. I’ll let you know how that one plays out.

Bottom line? The screen has been reliable over the long haul. It’s well built and looks impressive. I can’t really complain about the re-tensioning process given the age of the screen, but it would have been nice if they had anticipated the screen lasting this long and engineered an easier process to compensate for fabric stretch. Not everyone wants to replace these outright every 5 years or so.

Manufacturer: www.dalite.com

Review By Mike English