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Author Topic: Whats Happened To Hurley Screen? Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-06-2010 09:56 PM                     This post is to serve as a warning as well as a request by my customer who reads these forums for your opinions regarding the screen in the picture in this post.. What the heck has happened to the quality products that used to come from Hurley Screen Company? They used to make great quality screens. The last several years seems to have shown a steady continuing decline in quality over all from Hurley. During my tenure of employment we hung a number of Hurley screens several of which had odd perforation patterns. Hurley stood behind those and provided replacements. Just before I left may last tenure we had installed one of their new silver washable screens in a theater for a digital 3-D system. The washable aspect of the screen seemed like a good idea… Once the screen was hung we started to see otherwise… the screen was extremely splotchy like the coating had been applied improperly (it obviously was bad). It was so bad a number of the theaters patrons complained that it was like watching the film through a haze. A call to Hurley got us the answer” It met our specs when it left” All I can say is the definition of their “specs” must be “What ever happens… goes”. Another very recent example of their poor quality and the reason for this post is an electric roll down screen that a customer of mine recently purchased directly from Hurley. The aluminum pipe the screen is secured to is too light of weight and it sags in the middle when the screen is lowered… so the result is what you see in the picture below. A call to Hurley by my customer got the same reply I got a year earlier regarding the silver screen “They said that it met their specs”. Seems like they must be saying this a lot at Hurley lately, they sound like a stuck record! All I can say is Hurley certainly has gone down the tubes (quite literally) if this screen meets their specs. It is obvious they have thrown their specs away. This is by no means a really large screen… 18’6” X 10’2”. I’ve installed a a fair number of Harkness and even some Draper roll down screens over the years, several larger than this and they all looked perfect. I’ve suggested that my customer hire an attorney to deal with Hurley on this since they seem to think this is normal. Has anyone else had any recent problems like this with Hurley recently?  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 01-07-2010 12:47 AM                     Film-Tech deals only with Harkness...for a reason. These sort of issues do not exist for us.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-07-2010 09:43 AM                     I agree Brad. Unfortunately my customer bought this just before he became my customer. This is a brand new screen... still has yet to see light from a projector. In all fairness, I've had the exact same good luck with both Harkness and MDI. FYI: MDI can produce much larger silver screens at it's Canadian facility than Harkness can in the US.  |  IP: Logged Richard Hamilton Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1341 From: Evansville, Indiana Registered: Jan 2000 posted 01-07-2010 10:57 AM                     About 10 years ago, had 1 bad Hurley. It was in a new 16 plex and in the biggest house. When I put light on it to align everything, you could see every seam on it. Every seam had about 12 inches to the right of it were the light was a couple ftl lower. Hurley replaced it and sent some guys to look at it after the fact. I had it taken down and it was crumpled up behind the theater. They tried to spread it out and look at it on the parking lot. They just ended up cutting a section that they could take with them to look at back at the factory. When I was with Megasystems, we always used MDI. I just looked them up online and its a shame that their website is Strong/MDI. When I was in China, we used 1 Harkness silver screen because it was too big for MDI to make. I think that sheet cost around 100k.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-07-2010 11:02 AM                     Yep! Harkness can produce larger silvers in Great Britian but the shipping is really a killer getting them to the USA. I'm pretty sure that MDI is supplying most of Imax's stuff now...  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 01-07-2010 03:13 PM                     Mark, It's not very clear from the picture; is this a top-roller or a bottom-roller screen. What is the diameter of the roller? There also seem to be two very visible horizontal seams in that screen, far more visible than they should be; I would expect them to be almost invisible when lit from the side like that.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-07-2010 04:29 PM                     It's a top roller system. Most of the roll down screens I've installed and worked with have a side tensioning system that comes down with the screen itself to prevent this sort of thing from happenning. In this case the roller tube itself is sagging in the middle. The good news is that Hurley seems to want to work something out to resolve it. I wonder what changed their minds? Far as I know they never resolved the washable silver screen issue over in Wyoming... Mark  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 01-07-2010 05:05 PM                     Most of the roller screens I've seen of that sort of size, or larger, are bottom-rollers; are top-rollers more common over there?  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-07-2010 07:33 PM                     Everything I've seen and worked with are top roller systems. Including Harkness...  |  IP: Logged Tom Egbert Film Handler Posts: 13 From: Victor, Idaho, USA Registered: Oct 2009 posted 01-08-2010 12:09 AM                        Prior to shipping, Hurley inspects their screens with an image using a DLP projector. To accurately judge the screen, Hurley requires that we send them a picture of the screen with no ambient light and an image on the it. They say that the ripples should not be visible when a movie is being shown on it. I cannot comment if this is true or not, since we have not used it yet. My concern is that from the auditorium seats, while the house lights are up and the screen is blank, the ripples are visible. We don't want to it to appear as though we hung bed sheets up for a screen. We have a very old theater, and not very much is new...except the screen, and we were hoping that it would look nice and flat...first class. We did some experimenting today. We put the light to the side again so we could see best what was happening. We climbed a ladder and put slight upward pressure on the carrier pipe. Instantly, the v-waves disappeared and a few droopy areas remained, but it looked much better. With a little engineering ingenuity, we might be able to devise a small horizontal roller on a pressure spring to apply upward pressure on the carrier pipe to mitigate much of the drapery issues. I am concerned that we give Hurley a fair shake on this first before we make too big of an issue out of it. They have not shut the door on us yet. We will have to see how it all pans out.  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 01-08-2010 02:48 AM                     quote: Mark Gulbrandsen Everything I've seen and worked with are top roller systems. Including Harkness... That's interesting, I don't think I've sen any cinema type screen that's top roller, though Harkness' website lists both types. Pictureville Bradford, Sheffield Library Theatre, Concert Hall and I think Ashcroft Theatre at the Fairfield Halls Croydon and the arts centre in Potters Bar are all bottom roller for example. Top rollers are mainly seen here for small screens in places like lecture theatres and sports bars, usually about 2-4 metres in width. In the past small screens were also often bottom-roller, with manually-operated cords just tied off on a cleat, but motorised top-roller is normal for modern ones. I think bottom-rollers hang better; the top of the sheet can be more rigidly supported, and when in use part of the weight of the roller is carried by the sheet, providing vertical tension. The top and bottom edges are slightly tensioned before being attached, an no other horizontal tensioning is generally required. There may be a slight curl at the very edge of the sides of the sheet, a couple of inches or so, but this is covered by the masking. Unless the sheet is stretched or damaged in some way they look fine. Obviously, they cannot be curved like a normal frame screen can be.  |  IP: Logged Richard Hamilton Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1341 From: Evansville, Indiana Registered: Jan 2000 posted 01-08-2010 08:02 AM                     quote: Mark Gulbrandsen Everything I've seen and worked with are top roller systems You dumbass, you're installing them upside down  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 01-08-2010 09:28 AM                        Richard, you are BAD... Hurley is right -- a projected image will cover a lot of faults because it hits the screen at zero angle, thus it doesn't produce shadows around the screen imprefections -- hence DIs can use corrigated metal for their screens and the ridges simply disappear. That said, it is also monumentally absurd for a screen company to say that it's acceptable for their screen to hang with ripples and sags like an old whore's tits simply because you can't them when the picture is projected. That's like the madam telling you, "Sure she's old, but don't worry, just turn off the light and you won't see the wrinkles." I've heard some pretty far-fetched cop-outs, but that one is totally bogus. Hurley should be ashamed. I know there are a lot of bad things said about Technikote out there, but we've hung four of their "pearlescant" screens over time in three spaces, one less than two years ago and have never had any issues with them, especially with seams, which seems to be what the complaints are usually about. No seams visible on any of them, INCLUDING room light as well as projected light. Maybe we got lucky, but they have stayed white over a 15yr period -- no yellowing. I am very happy with them, and given that their price is considerably lower than Hurley or MDI, they are a worthy alternative for us independent/smaller (read poorer) operations.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-08-2010 09:33 AM                     Richard.. Thats hilarious! quote: Tom Egbert "I am concerned that we give Hurley a fair shake on this first before we make too big of an issue out of it." I'm all for giving anyone a fair chance however why should you have to do the reverse engineering? They should be doing it for you... you're the customer! Re: the wrinkles... as soon as there is an image where the camera pans/tilts or where there are rolling credits(just about every movie) then it will be immediately obvious! Frank.. Technicote is long gone... Now a part of Big Sky and I recently installed two screens from them... another total disaster! But I will save that for another post down the road a bit... All of this really does leave just MDI and Harkness as reliable screen manufacturers. Mark  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 01-08-2010 08:25 PM                     ahem... Uh and Stewart. By far, the best in roll down screens. I just got through PMing a theatre in Central PA ...now about 4 years in....you'd still never know it is a roll down screen from the audience. The Stewart looks better behind the screen than yours does from the front: While I don't have frontal shot of it handy...here is one that will show any wrinkle that may have been in the screen: The only downside to Stewarts are their price...they are easily 4-5 times as much as others. However, you can get a Stewart roll-down with built-in maskings for most any format and have it all programed in...just hit say 1.85 and it will configure itself (drop down side maskings out of the screen box...etc or even drop down top masking if needed to create a ratio...they are pretty darn impressive and their image quality is significantly better than the common brands...but again...4-5 times more money. Another thing to remember when dealing with roll down screens (proper ones with side tension)...keep an eye on the tension and DON'T let it get too tight...they DO need to be adjusted over their entire life. Steve  |  IP: Logged

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