What do you guys think is the best material for a DIY screen, blackout fabric or trapeze cloth (a favorite of the BackyardTheater.com forum)?

When I did mine, I used 4x8 sheets of tileboard (dry erase board material) framed it, then paint a maxxmud mixture on it. In case you don't want to do that, I would recommend this I bought a 116x68" roll of it= 130" diag. For the price its great, plus the guy ships fast. When I compared it to my painted screen i noticed it was a bit brighter but lacked the contrast that I have in my maxxmud. The material also comes in 110, 130, and 140 inch rolls.

BTW: Nice name

What is maxxmud? Is it available at Home Depot / Lowes / Menards ?

Nope - it's a paint mixture that some have been developing for better blacks/contrast and such:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=713810

Right, like Quasi_Mojo said. The creator of the mix used to post here, not sure if he still does. I just checked his site and it seems that he has partnered with another company called invisible stereo. Anyway heres the link to the paint
http://www.invisiblestereo.com/html/products.html

Cool. Thanks for the link.

Did you notice a big difference after coating the whiteboard with this mixture?

I also was planning on using the home depot 4x8 whiteboard sheet for my screen.

I never tried to display an image on just the bare tileboard but I did try it after spraying the primer (1:5:5 ratio of UPW:Polycrylic:water). I assume you would get some pretty bad hot spotting with just the tileboard. If you aren't planning on getting some maxxmud, then i would definitely recommend spraying that primer that I used. That will give you a pretty basic screen, add the maxxmud for more deeper contrasts. If you want you can check out my plog I have the step by step process, from building the frame and piecing the tileboard together to spraying it. It starts here

Hope this helps.

greetings from Romania guys

i am in the progress of building a screen for my home theater .. i currently project a 120" image on a white wall but I want to reduce the site to about 100" and build a nice screen with black borders.
The problem for me are the materials witch are hard to come across in my area. What i could find was super withe photographic (background) seamless paper http://www.fotohobbyshop.ro/romana/produse...-75-x-11m-.html this is the link to the product I need you guys to validate that its ok for me (i also am guided by the tutorial on projectorcentral - where i found about photo seamless paper).

Also I can try and find some background cloth but its hard because I dunno how to translate the term in my language so its hard for me to know what to look for in shops.. can someone please post some detailed pictures with the BOC ?

So what do u guys think it would be better to get.. i`m safe with the photo seamless or i should try and research more for BOC ? from what I cand see the photo seamless is more expensive, but i dont mind as long as the overall PQ is better

I don't know anything about photographic seamless paper, so I can't help you there.
What you should ask for, when shopping for blackout cloth, is curtain backing material. That is, the material that you put behind the curtain so that light is prevented from getting through.
Perhaps that will help.

I just built my screen today using the blackout cloth.

very nice . put some pictures here for us
this is the article where I found out about the paper http://www.projectorcentral.com/diy_screen.htm

You can find the pictures in my PLOG. The link is down below.