★Carried & Installed

Stewart Filmscreen · Kansas City.

IntegrateIT carries and installs Stewart Filmscreen across the Kansas City metro — material and frame chosen against the projector and the room, built to order, hung and aligned before the room is calibrated. One precision first, because the trade is sloppy about this word: Stewart Filmscreen is a line we carry and install under distribution, not one we hold our own dealer agreement on, so we do not call ourselves an authorized Stewart Filmscreen dealer. What we are is the people who measure the room, size the screen to the sight lines and then choose the projector to suit it. Phone: (913) 804-7575 or office@integrateit.tech.

What we carry and install from Stewart Filmscreen

Stewart sells two things that get confused with each other: the material, which is the surface the picture lands on, and the screen system, which is the frame or housing that holds it. You choose one of each. Everything is built to order in Stewart’s own California facility, so nothing here sits on a shelf.

Materials — the surface, and the decision most proposals skip

• StudioTek 130 G4 and StudioTek 100 — white materials. Stewart states a gain of 1.3 for the 130 G4 and 1.0 for the 100. These are what a dedicated room with real light control gets, and the 100 is the choice where the projector has light to spare and uniformity matters more than brightness.
• FireHawk G5 and Phantom HALR Plus — ambient-light-rejecting materials. For the room that cannot go fully dark, which in Kansas City is most walkout lower levels with a window well and a door to the yard. An ALR material rejects light arriving from off-axis so the picture holds contrast with a lamp on.
• Harmony G3 — acoustically transparent. Stated gain 0.7, and the default in a dedicated theater because it lets the centre channel sit directly behind the picture where the dialogue belongs. The light it passes through is the trade-off, which is why the screen and the projector are one decision.
• The rest of the current front-projection table. Stewart publishes gain for every material, and the ladder matters more than the name. Beyond the three above: SnoMatte 100 and Classic White for a neutral white surface, UltraMatte 130 and UltraMatte 150 where more gain is wanted, Neve and Estero 100 for ultra-short-throw work, and Silver 5D and Silver 3D at gains of 2.3 and 3.0 for polarised 3D. The ambient-light-rejecting family runs wider than FireHawk G5 as well — FireHawk LS, GrayHawk G4 and GrayHawk LS at a stated 0.9, GrayMatte 70 at 0.7, Tiburon G5 at 0.8 and BlackHawk UST at 0.55 for an ultra-short-throw projector in a lit room. Which one is right is a light measurement, not a preference.
• Rear projection, for the room with nothing in front. Where the projector has to live behind the screen — a broadcast set, a lobby feature, a simulator — Stewart lists AeroView 70, 90 and 100 and FilmScreen 100 and 150 as flexible rear materials, LumiFlex 130 beside them, and the rigid acrylic family as AeroPlex 70, 90 and 100 with Graphite 70. This is uncommon in a house and routine in commercial work.

Fixed frames — the simpler construction, whenever the wall will allow it

• WallScreen and Balón — fixed frames. WallScreen is the snap-frame family with a framing option chosen to the room; Balón is the borderless or minimally-bordered system for a design that wants no frame at all, including an ultra-short-throw version. A fixed tensioned screen is flatter and has fewer moving parts, which is why we specify one whenever the wall will allow it.
• AT 1.5 and AT 3.0 — lace-and-grommet frames. The two frames built for scale rather than for a living room. Stewart states the AT 1.5 on a 1.5-inch square aluminium tube for medium to large screens, with or without a masking border for projector overscan, and the AT 3.0 on a 3-inch tube, taking flexible front-projection fabric up to 40 by 90 feet. These are auditorium, stage and set pieces — the sizes where a snap frame stops being the sensible construction.
• CineCurve — the curved one. A curved fixed-frame system with optional independently controlled masking panels that matte the vertical edges continuously, so a scope screen curves toward the seats and still frames a 16:9 film properly. Curvature is a throw-and-lens decision as much as an aesthetic one; it has to be settled with the projector, not after it.
• WallMask — a fixed frame with masking built in. The two-piece answer for a room that wants a fixed screen and a real black border on more than one aspect ratio, without the full four-way system. Stewart configures the masking to the ratios you actually watch, which is a shorter list than most people expect.
• Cima FF. The fixed-frame snap screen in Stewart’s Cima line — preconfigured sizes, a low-profile frame and a choice of two surfaces. It is the sensible frame when the room is a good media room rather than a built-from-scratch theater.

Retractables — for the wall that has another job

• Luxus Grande, Cascade G2, Stealth and Gemini — retractable systems. Luxus Grande drops below the ceiling; Cascade G2 is plenum rated and lives above it; Stealth is a small-format screen with a trapdoor closure for a ceiling that has to look untouched; Gemini carries two different fabrics in one housing for a room that is genuinely two rooms.
• The size ladder inside each family. Stewart builds every retractable in more than one size, and the name tells you which. Below the ceiling: Luxus G2 for image widths up to about thirteen feet, then Luxus Medio on a six-inch roller tube, then Luxus Grande. Above it: Cascade Medio and Cascade Grande, both self-finishing so the fascia meets the ceiling with no separate trim. With a trapdoor: Stealth, then Stealth Medio up to about sixteen feet nine inches of image width, then Stealth Grande, which Stewart states reaches nearly twenty-four feet ceiling-mounted. Picking the family is the easy half; picking the size is what has to happen before framing.
• Cabaret and the Visionary Series — when the housing is visible. Cabaret is the below-ceiling retractable in a designer case, finished in hand-rubbed automotive lacquer and matched to a colour of your choosing, for a room where the case is going to be looked at whether or not the screen is down. Visionary is the above-ceiling self-finishing family in two-piece construction — the one that solves a ceiling you cannot open in a single pass.
• AllRise and RS1 — up from the floor, and out to the patio. AllRise rises from a floor-mounted housing, which is the answer when the ceiling cannot carry a screen and the wall cannot keep one. RS1 is the motorised retractable Stewart builds for indoor or outdoor use, in a compact 5.5-inch case with wall, ceiling and soffit mounting, sized to 180 inches in 16:9, with an RJ45 port for dry-contact and 12-volt trigger control so it joins a scene instead of needing its own remote. That is the one we specify for an outdoor space where a display would cook in July.
• Stealth VCS, Daily Dual and Cima BC. Stealth VCS is the Stealth housing with a camera pod that deploys in sequence behind the door, for a room that is a boardroom until it is a screening room. Daily Dual hangs an electric roll-down screen in front of a fixed frame so one room presents two surfaces — Stewart designed it for post-production and it is a practical answer to a 2D and 3D room. Cima BC is the below-ceiling retractable in the Cima line, in preconfigured sizes and HD, Scope or 16:10, with the control system built into the enclosure.

Masking — the black border that makes a room read as a cinema

• Director’s Choice — masking. Four individually motorised panels that close in around the picture so a wide film never sits inside grey bands. This is a detail that is often cut from a theater budget and often missed afterwards.
• VistaScope — constant height, vertical masking. Stewart’s two-way, continuously variable vertical masking system: the screen presents a native 2.40:1 image and mattes any narrower ratio exactly, which is the constant-height room most people mean when they say they want a cinema. It is built for genuinely large flat screens, so it belongs to a room designed around it.
• StreamPro — masking for what people actually watch. A two-way horizontal masking system with automatic aspect-ratio control, adjusting up to 200 inches diagonal in 16:9 and matting five further ratios, in a 4.5-inch border at 8 inches deep. Stewart built it for streaming, which is the honest description of most viewing in a finished theater — the film ratios and the television ratio in the same evening, without anybody reaching for a remote.
• Manual Masking Panels — the version that costs nothing to run. Panels cut to the screen that attach by hand and convert it from scope to 16:9. If motorised masking is out of scope but grey bands are not acceptable, this is the honest middle, and we will say so instead of quoting four motors.

Cima, custom work and coatings

• Cima by Stewart Filmscreen. Stewart’s own line for projects that want the build without the full custom program — a sensible landing place when the room is a good media room rather than a reference theater. Cima FF is the fixed frame, Cima BC the below-ceiling retractable, both in preconfigured sizes.
• Custom and Immersive, and Specialty Coatings. The two entries that are not products. Custom and Immersive is Stewart’s themed and immersive work — curved, multi-surface and shaped environments built to a drawing. Specialty Coatings is Stewart applying its optical surfaces to somebody else’s substrate, which is how a simulator dome or a shaped prototype ends up with a screen on it. If your room is genuinely unusual, this is where the conversation starts rather than where it fails.

The order the screen decision actually runs in

The room sets the largest screen the sight lines and the wall will carry. The screen sets the throw distance and how much light has to arrive. The material sets what the calibration is working against. Only then does a projector model make sense — and this is exactly the order most proposals get backwards.

• Size comes off the seats, not off the wall. The screen is sized to the viewing distance and to the sight line from the back row over the front one. A screen that fills the wall and forces the front row to scan is a worse room than a smaller one placed properly.
• Aspect ratio and masking are decided before framing. A wide cinema-ratio screen with masking needs the wall width and the electrical for the panels planned while the room is open.
• The centre channel’s position decides the material. Behind the picture means acoustically transparent. That decision changes the projector, so it cannot be made late.
• Lead time is a schedule item. Built to order means the screen is on the project plan at design stage. We have never regretted ordering early and we have watched other people regret ordering late.
• Install order: paint, then treatment, then screen, then projector alignment, then calibration. Every step out of order is a step that has to be redone.

Where Stewart sits beside the other lines we carry

We also carry Screen Innovations, and the two are not interchangeable. Stewart’s case is the built-to-order dedicated room: the acoustically transparent material with the centre behind the picture, the masking, the frame detailed to the architecture. Screen Innovations’ case is the room the light gets into — its ambient-light-rejecting materials and its levitating and retractable systems are aimed at a great room or a media room rather than at a blacked-out basement. Both are honest answers; they answer different rooms.

On the other side of the decision sit the projectors — we carry and install JVC D-ILA and Sony SXRD laser — and, where the lights are staying on and the image has to be enormous, a direct-view LED wall replaces the screen entirely. In a room that can genuinely go dark, though, a projector on a Stewart surface is still the reference answer and costs a fraction as much per square foot.

Common questions