ive been searching around for a decent screen and most screens i've found has been around
100" and they all have a gain of about 1.3 at the most.
I did find a company here in sweden who sell a da-lite highpower screen but with shipping
excluded it would be allmost 1000 usd.. wich in my ears sound allmost hillarious.

So untill i can find a decent high-gain material here in sweden without having to order from
bangladesh or even further away im sticking to the DIY group.
now.. when i inspect commercial screens i find many of them to have some texture in it, wich i
assume contributes to the defused reflection rather than a blank hotspot in the middle.

ive seen a shitload of people painting their own screen with various results,
some of you try yer best to get a surface as flat and matte as possible,
some of you try and get some texture using a roller. to do that i figure alot of work has to be
done to the board (normaly 2 boards together with a filled and sanded seam).

now, ive been to ikea and i bought 2 240x260cm white bedsheets and nailed up streached together
(2 layers) on my light-green\grey livingroom wall.

It works ok but the whites can be whiter and the blacks can be darker by only using a material
that doesnt let the light through. now, ive seen a couple different blackout drapes here in
sweden in decent sizes (not that large tho) but i havent been sattisfied with the white surface
of it. it's allmost a tad yellow and i dont want that!

And importing BO cloth from the states ? dont think so..

So without spending loads of money on different commercial materials i figured i'd streach up
one of the sheets on a wodden frame with white 4mm board to provide a flat surface under
the sheet, then apply some sort of colour with a roller directly on the fabric!
would result in a surface wich light can not penetrate but not flat enough to create hotspots.

My idea is somewhat rough atm and i have no idea how it will turn out but knowing the da-lite
screens are "weave" type wich creates a tiny glare facing you on every bump i figure this
could result in the same way if i use a colour that isn't matte but not shiny either,
somewhere in between would probably work for the best.

my only wonder is if the bedsheet fabric is too fine in it's structure to cause the reflection to
be defused or not, i guess there's only one good way to find out =)


Ideas thoughts?

I think using using boards and seaming them together (fill/sand) is your best bet. (ie. that's why so many do it this way, it works well and is cheap )

if you plan to paint your fabric, I would stay with a flat (matte) paint. Any type of gloss paint with result in hotspotting to some degree... i guess it will be trial and error until you find what is acceptable for you.

the high-power dalite screen using special tiny prisms or sphere's (not exactly sure which), but they are retroreflective and have to be applied in a special way to the screen. retroreflectors redirect light back the way that it entered, meaning that sitting as close to the triplet on your PJ provides the best viewing with the most gain (2.8 for the high-power). This is why there is a sudden dropoff in gain for the high-power when you move too far left, right, up or down from the triplet. The important thing is that the dropoff is uniform across the screen, and for most theater setups (from those i've read here) do not have a problem with viewing cone on with the high-power. some people have started topics here that include using retroreflective paints (like used on street signs for nighttime visibility), and also adding the microshpere's to their own paint mixes.

ive been looking for that type of colour, retroreflective white colour used for roadsigns, i'd like to get my hands on that stuff to try it out! any tip on where to find those threads or even find the colour! ?

mainly the reason i wanna paint the fabric is to get a textured surface, but an evenly textured surface! ive seen some DIY painted boards where they used a roller and the texture is a bit uneven, seems impossible to get the structure to be perfectly uniform due to the roller-size, not very noticable in detailed scenes but in sweeping cameramovements every uneveness comes out and makes the picture feel flat -basicly the only reason i wanna try and paint the fabric.

i'll try with matte white and work my way up the gloss-scale to see where the hotspotting kicks in.