Eh, I wouldn't want to store this thing for the 3 times I may use it in my life. It'd be a pain to set up...but for some less lazy with more storage space, it may be great. I prefer to have only stuff I use on a regular basis.

That is really cool. When I was little we used to go to this campground that would show movies or Yogi Bear on a big outdoor movie screen at night. That would be really fun for kids at parties or just on a summer evening. At least it would get them outside. Adults can definitely enjoy it too. You could use it at evening parties, outdoor weddings, even play those dvd games outside with friends.

Growing up, my family would have used this endlessly because we had a large enough backyard and had backyard barbeques every 2 or 3 weeks.

If you're not into outdoor entertaining, you probably wouldn't get much use out of this, but I can also seem myself trying to use it as much as possible if I it.

I think its awesome.

A friend of mine saved up for months to buy a really nice projector then painted one wall in his room black with a big white rectangle in the middle. We watched so many movies like that. it was great.

Can you say "distortion"??

My techno-geek partner would commit seppuku before resorting to a screen this bad! Some of us have much higher standards!!! ;^)

(I never saw the attraction to movie-watching outside anyhow -- bugs, airplanes, traffic noises, moonlight, rain... maybe sports fans would like this sreen for Big Game Parties??)

This is pretty stupid. How about just using a wall and/or a white sheet? I find AT's posting as a tacit endorsement of a material wasting product - c'mon people!

i frequently host outdoor movie nights, but i just magnet a white kind-size bed sheet to one of the shipping containers in our back yard.

I agree - Two trees, a rope and a white bedsheet

This is the epitome of wastefulness and unnecessary overconsumption - I can just see these clogging garages, closets and in landfills in a few years, unused and unusable due to punctures that will go unrepaired.

Shame on AT for posting this.

Oh boy... you guys get a lot of slack for fun posts.

My issue with the product is this: I bet it will function like many other inflatable products I have purchased over the years (pools, aero bed, etc...): Works great the first time but will spring a leak or malfunction by the 10th time.

Bedsheet a much better solution (assuming zero wind).

Wow, I wasn't expecting such a viscerally negative reaction to this.

Keep in mind that there often isn't anywhere to tie up a bedsheet... especially for those of us who live in small apartments or rowhouses and entertain on our roofs (well, I could hang a sheet off the side of my apartment building and we could all stand in the urine-soaked back alley and watch from below...).

A free-standing option that is compact and doesn't involve having to store poles/tires/sandbags/whatever else you might use to improvise supports for a screen is actually pretty useful. It's not like this is a good option for everyone, but it's at a price point where they're not going to sell a ton of these anyway.

And it's not that hard to patch leaks!! There's no reason you'd have to throw this away just because it springs a leak, especially because it doesn't go in the water or have kids jumping all over it. That's what duct tape is for.

I saw one of these on display at Best Buy a year or two ago and the screen is far from being as flat as the one in the photo.

Reduce, recycle, and reuse are all well and good, but the best preventative measure against damaging our environment is to simply not manufacture spectacularly ugly, useless monstrosities like this.
Although, I must admit, it's just a stupid enough product to make me laugh.

Ridiculous.

This looks like a product that would be best for kids, because they'd think it was funny, wouldn't care about the wrinkles or curves, and it's probably easy enough for a kid to set up.

For adults a regular projection screen would probably be better, and would probably take about the same space in the closet/attic. Would probably last longer too.

We own an inflatable movie screen and, for us, it is awesome. Here's why:
- Summer nights in my town are hot, dry, mostly bug-free, and simply perfect for sitting outside.
- I have a huge backyard and no pool.
- I do not have trees, or high walls, or anything else that would accommodate the suggested "just hang up a sheet" approach.
- My husband & I love movies. LOVE. For some, we prefer a more hi-def home entertainment experience. But for others? The ones everyone's seen 100 times? The great outdoors is, in fact, the perfect venue. And picture quality doesn't matter as much, because it's more about the social experience and the novelty. That said, the picture on this thing isn't as bad as you might think.
- We host outdoor movie nights for our friends/family 4 - 6 times every summer.
- We have been doing this since 2007, so we've used our screen close to 20 times. So far it doesn't have a single leak & has held up like a champ. But we also have a patch kit just in case, which is really easy to use.
- It packs up pretty tight and is easy to store in the garage.

Clearly, there is a market for this product, because for us, it's perfect. I'm not sure why making products or allowances for a specific (movie-loving, backyard-having, only-buying-stuff-we're-really-going-to-use) group of people is such a bad thing.

puffpiece - do you by chance own stock in the company that manufactures this screen! lol!

Landfill.

Not a stupid idea at all. The Alamo Drafthouse screens films in historic or otherwise significant locations around the world, and the screen they travel with is a blow-up screen (really big though). I can't vouch for picture quality, but I would imagine it would make for a cleaner image than a plain sheet.

@edgardo60 I totally don't, I promise. :) A friend of mine forwarded this story to me in a "Hey! Thought of you!" kind of way. After seeing all the comments I started to feel kinda bad for the writer who posted it & wanted to offer the perspective of an Actual Owner, maybe answer some of the questions that came up.
@graefix We were actually inspired in part by the Alamo Drafthouse to get our screen. Now if only I could replicate their fried pickles...

Old news.

My college has movie nights outside every once in a while on one of these in front of one of our dorms. A lot of people enjoys these nights so I wouldn't call this screen crap. It serves a lot of fun if you use it and use it right.

We project movies & slide shows on the side or rear of our house. Works great, kids love it.

Wow, I didn't realize how many AT readers were such total jerks! If you don't like a product or can't use it, fine. But many of you sound so insulting. And "Old news"? Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that everyone has heard of everything already. Why bother writing at all? It's all been written before apparently. I don't own one of these, I don't have a super strong opinion on it (though I have watched outdoor movies before and thought it was tons of fun). But lighten up and grow up, people! And no, I don't think it's tacit endorsement to post about something.

If you've ever tried to hang project a movie onto a bedsheet in even the slightest wind you know how frustrating it can be.

Inflatable screens are much more than landfill material. UNICEF and many other organizations have used them to screen educational content to over 30,000 people at a time in refugee camps in Africa. Even right now Google is using inflatable screens to screen the World Cup to thousands in rural Kenya.

Inflatable move screens come as large as 100 feet, and at that size they are much more portable and consume far fewer resources than steel-frame options (or a cinema hall for that matter).