Tech question regarding projecting an image from a laptop directly onto a screen.

[Baitball Blogger]

Is there any technology out there that can, with good quality, project a background directly from a laptop file to a screen without using a projector. I am trying to visualize how it would work in theater production to have a moving background. What I anticipate is that it can't be done unless the screen is special made with pixulation technology.

I understand that this may be in the sci-fi hemisphere, so points for quess work and creativity.

[nuxvomica]

1. For an ordinary screen you need a projector

For a direct link from the laptop, you need a monitor or large-screen TV and it's just a display setting. Projectors are pretty cheap, $40-50. In a theatrical setting, ideally you could rear project onto a scrim, horizontally flipping the image in the display settings so that it is oriented correctly when seen from the front.

[Baitball Blogger]

2. Projecting from the back?

That just refers to the placement of the projector because of the obvious stage situation?

[nuxvomica]

3. Yes

The projector goes behind the scrim (by "scrim" I mean any translucent cloth) so performers can appear in front of the scrim without shadows.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. Excellent! thank you!

[TommyT139]

5. Your local library...

...might have one you can check out. I was surprised to learn that mine does -- along with instant pot cookers, sewing machines, and some tools.

[Baitball Blogger]

6. Thank you!

[keroro gunsou]

7. if your laptop has an HDMI port

then the battle is half won.... plus what everyone else said

[jmowreader]

8. Let me see if I have what you want to do down

You're working with a theater group. You want the backdrop of the stage to be a projected image from your computer.

If we're talking about a typical community theater, high school auditorium or what have you...I don't think this is going to work. You don't have nearly enough room between the back of the screen and the back wall of the stage enclosure for the light from the projector to cover the whole screen. And then there's the monetary angle...you'll need a very powerful projector - think "movie theater projector like Barco or Christie" - to get the backdrop bright enough to be believable, and rear projection screen material is unbelievably expensive even before Trump slapped a 35-percent tariff on it. Front projection won't work here because of all the stage lighting you're using.

Now...what you COULD do, which would work, is to design a window into your constructed backdrop and put a big television behind it.

[Baitball Blogger]

9. I'm going full sci-fi with this idea.

There are things called bendable screens which are incredibly thin. Yes, very pricey. But I'm imagining them as the backdrop in a theater, and controlled directly from a laptop, without a projector.

[jmowreader]

10. Do these screens come in, say, two-foot widths?

What would be pretty cool is to hang strips of these screens touching edge-to-edge from your lighting grid. That way, if someone needs to cross between the performance space on the stage and the backstage area quickly, they can go through the screen rather than around it. The whole array would need to be driven by a controller box so...maybe a tower rather than a laptop for driving this, but there should be no reason you couldn't do production design on the laptop and transfer it over.

[hunter]

11. These exist and are used in the movie industry, but they are beastly expensive.

Here's an example, on possibly the the busiest most bloated web page I've ever seen:

https://www.roevisual.com/en/markets/virtual-stages-and-film-studios

There are much less expensive tools for spreading an image across ordinary 1080p wide-screen televisions but you'll see the seams between them.