That's a lot of good information. I must say that I've only built a screen once, and I didn't find it to be worth my time. Prefab screens are of completely acceptable quality and save a ton of time overall. I did a blackout cloth screen, and it really looked solid when I was done, but it can't be broken down and took hours upon hours to put together properly. Stretching fabric to get a drum tight screen is no joke. Anyway, I decided at that point to only buy screens, and I've had good luck with both SilverTicket and Elite, but I stick with their pretty basic screens.
A real issue remains in the market with shimmering, and I think it is always something to watch out for with different fabrics and different manufacturers and certainly is an issue with any screen which adds some gain. I was always very happy with the Carada screens, but I think their gain rating was a bit higher than they delivered and this contributed to a very smooth image. I have gotten to a point where I do look for shimmer, especially since I see ALR screens with huge amounts of shimmer in their material and reviewers that never seem to see ANY issues when they look at the screen.
I'm not a DiY type of person, and I haven't played with any, let alone a bunch, of DiY flavors out there. I think it's cool that some people love to experiment with all the different stuff there is, but I just stick with pretty basic setups when I can and it seems to work quite nicely for the needs of my clients, and myself.