★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.

• 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.
• 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 nothing to fail, which is why we specify one whenever the wall will allow it.
• 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.
• 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 the detail most often cut from a theater budget and most often missed afterwards.
• 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.

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