I went to the local walmart the other day looking for blackout cloth, but they didn't carry any so i tried something else instead...and achieved fairly decent results I would say.

What I picked up was pleather, basically. It's white, has cloth on the backside and the front is a pleather/vinyl material. I was previously projecting on a bare white wall in the basement painted with killz white primer and noticed a slight gain in brightness but also much better picture clarity.

The great thing about this pleather, you can condition/shine it with any easily attainable automotive detailing product. I shined half of the screen using armor-all vinyl shine, knowing it produces a fairly even sheen throughout application. I'm also planning on testing various tire shines from our shop, a different vinyl shine, and also a couple of leather conditioners if the shines give hot spots. This should still allow for gain but won't be quite AS reflective as the vinyl shine.

I currently have the lcd out of my projector to remove the antiglare, am switching to an unsplit design, and trying to locate capacitors to overdrive my 400w mh (where can i find them?) but just running the projector without the lcd panel there was a massive increase in brightness and I was unable to find any hot spots, I'll let you know how it looks when the screen's in (hopefully tomorrow).

I also stopped by the fabric store and picked up a scrap of b/o cloth so when I test I will use b/o cloth/unshined pleather/pleather and post results.

I bought two 8yard pieces of this pleather, my 4:3 screen was too tall for just one

total cost of fabric: 31$
vinyl shine: 6.50$