Gain is the reflection index of a screen.
In the case of
Ecrane retroproiecţie it does not indicate reflection, but the flux of rear-projected light which is visible on the front side, it is also called transmittance.
It indicates the ratio between the light reflected from the screen and that reflected by a standard white surface used as a reference parameter:
a screen with 1.0 gain will reflect the same amount of light, while a screen with 1.5 gain will reflect 50% more light, and a screen with a 0.8 index will reflect 80% of the light.
The gain is measured in the point where the screen is at its brightest, that is watching it from a frontal and perpendicular position.
Moving to the side and watching the screen from an angled position, the brightness of the projection decreases.
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Is high screen gain good?
It is easy, and wrong, to jump to the conclusion that a high gain screen must be preferable to a low gain screen.''
First of all, there is a compromise between gain and viewing angle.
In high-gain screens, the brightness of the projection decreases considerably with the increase of the viewing angle, while in low-gain screens the brightness varies much less perceptibly.
Furthermore, a high-gain screen does not generally reflect evenly red, green and blue and the anomaly varies with the viewing angle.
Lastly, screens with a gain higher than 1.0 have a certain degree of hotspotting which is accentuated with the increase of the gain.
Than means, that looking the screen from a frontal position, the central part of the image appears brighter than in the peripheral areas.
This is not very visible up to a gain of 1.3, but, beyond that limit, hotspotting can seriously disturb vision.
''[ ... ]
the videophile looking for the optimum image quality [ ... ]
will usually want to opt for a low gain screen.''
Source:
Evan Powell, in ProjectorCentral.com