One of the most often quoted properties in a home theater screen is the gain. This is a measure of reflectivity of light compared to a screen coated with magnesium carbonate, titanium dioxide, or barium sulfate when the measurement is taken for light targeted and reflected perpendicular to the screen. Titanium dioxide is a bright white colour, but greater gains can be accomplished with materials that reflect more of the light parallel to projection axis and less off-axis.
Frequently quoted gain levels of various materials range from 0.8 of light grey matte screens to 2.5 of the more highly reflective glass bead screens, some manufacturers claiming even higher numbers for their products. Very high gain levels could be attained simply by using a mirror surface, although the audience would then just see a reflection of the projector, defeating the purpose of using a screen. Many screens with higher gain are simply semi-glossy, and so exhibit more mirror-like properties, namely a bright "hot spot" in the screen—an enlarged reflection of the projector’s lens. Opinions differ as to when this "hot spotting" begins to be distracting, but most viewers do not notice differences as large as 30% in the image luminosity, unless presented with a test image and asked to look for variations in brightness. This is possible because humans have greater sensitivity to contrast in smaller details, but less so in luminosity variations as great as half of the screen. Other screens with higher gain are semi-retroreflective. Unlike mirrors, retroreflective surfaces reflect light back toward the source. Hot spotting is less of a problem with retroreflective high gain screens. Unfortunately, at the perpendicular direction used for gain measurement, mirror reflection and retroreflection are indistinguishable, and this has sown confusion about the behavior of high gain screens.
A second common confusion about screen gain arises for grey colored screens. If a screen material looks grey on casual examination then its total reflectance is much less than 1. However, the grey screen can have measured gain of 1 or even much greater than 1. The geometric behavior of a grey screen is different from that of a white screen of identical gain. Therefore, since geometry is important in screen applications, screen materials should be at least specified by their gain and their total reflectance. Instead of total reflectance, "geometric gain" can be the second specification.
Curved screens can be made highly reflective without introducing any visible hot spots, if the curvature of the screen, placement of the projector and the seating arrangement are designed correctly. The object of this design is to have the screen reflect the projected light back to the audience, effectively making the entire screen a giant "hot spot". If the angle of reflection is about the same across the screen, no distracting artifacts will be formed.
Semi-specular high gain screen materials are suited to ceiling-mounted projector setups since the greatest intensity of light will be reflected downward toward the audience at an angle equal and opposite to the angle of incidence. However, for a viewer seated to one side of the audience the opposite side of the screen is much darkened for the same reason. Some structured screen materials are semi-specularly reflective in the vertical plane while more perfectly diffusely reflective in the horizontal plane to avoid this. Glass-bead screens exhibit a phenomenon of retroreflection; the light is reflected more intensely back to its source than in any other direction. They work best for setups where the image source is placed in the same direction from the screen as the audience. With retroreflective screens, the screen center might be brighter than the screen periphery, a kind of hot spotting. This differs from semi-specular screens where the hot spot's location varies depending on the viewer's position in the audience. Retroreflective screens are seen as desirable due to the high image intensity they can produce with a given luminous flux from a projector.
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