esc's Home Theater Odyssey

[ganthc]

esc's Home Theater Odyssey

Seeing this got me excited. This must be awesome to work on!

(p.s. the link doesn't point to the "super hottie" carpet installer )

[Pirate]

Esc may end up with the best HT on the forum. Bastard!

[esc]

Originally Posted by piratehunter

Esc may end up with the best HT on the forum. Bastard!

teehee
the pics can be slightly misleading too. the room is about 13' X 17'. Some of the pics make it look a bit smaller, especially with the overstuffed furniture.

more pics to come soon ....

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here's more pics!!

Outside and Inside my bio-dome.

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Furniture piled up with the component rack sealed off and me in my level-10 biohazard sanding gear.

The projector had of course been taken down off the celing by this time.

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Puttied, sanded, and primed wall, ready for another screen attempt plus tons of drywall dust on the lens.

After priming the wall, I painted it and then put up some cheap light-grey paint as a temp screen for a few weeks until my Da-Lite arrived.

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The new Da-Lite Light Contrast 2.5 Gain Glass Beaded screen arrives!

Measuring and cutting the screen material.

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Hanging the screen and putting up an nice MDF border, with a little Sin City on the screen for a 1.85:1 reference of where the inside of the border should be.

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Here's a shot of the screen once I got the rest of the curtains up. The brightness has been tweaked out as the screen is too reflective to get a decent picture with the flash on and the pic originally just looked like a big white rectangle in the middle of a bunch of black.

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A little splash of PowerPuff colour, overstuffed pillows and black end tables with handy chip storage underneath complete the seating.

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.

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One of the first things I watched with a bunch of people was the NHL Stanley Cup .... booooo! Edmonton lost!

Once again, the cheap camera is terrible at picking up images on the screen.

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..

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The rack.

If you look closely, yes, there is a christmas tree behind the Xbox.

I'll have a full hardware list and a few more pics up soon. The room is just about done and only needs a few finishing touches like movie posters.

[ganthc]

absolutely beautiful!! and even more impressive that you built it yourself.

[elwood731]

Very nice, and I am impressed that you did it all yourself (well, sounds like a little help from your friends . Anyway, if nothing else, you should be proud of accomplishing a home renovation task such as this.

[Pirate]

Looks beautiful! Good job! .



P.S. Those end tables are awesome!

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by piratehunter

P.S. Those end tables are awesome!

Oh yes, I meant to comment on those. I love how they look, and it adds to the look of the room. I think you did a fantastic job, esc.

[Pirate]

Is the curtain material leather?

P.S. As one person who had trouble taking pics of their HT to another; go down to Wal-Mart and buy yourself a 5mp camera. Take your pics. Post them. And then return the camera.

Nice HTs like yours must be well documented.

[sub780lime]

Great Job Man! This is what i someday hope to be able to do with a basement or large room.

[Iguana Man]

I can't believe I never saw this thread before. Kudos!!!

Now I wish I had taken pics of the "progress" of my HT.

I also wish I had done something similar with the audio equipment, but I guess I didn't feel like cutting a hole on the side of the closet to make an inwall audio rack...now I wish I did!

Awesome!

[Iguana Man]

I think I would like to see some better pics of this room in action ESC.

Have you made any updates on the camera (a GOOD one. ) or room? Any more documentary pics to add?

Come on Mr. Do-it-yourself!

[esc]

I know! I'm tryin here! I have been meaning to get some more pics up. I hope to soon.

[EM3]

Is that 3 dvd players or 2 players stacked on a 5 disc cd changer? If so what players?

[Pirate]

Hey Esc,

What's the distance between the seating area and the screen?

[esc]

Originally Posted by EM3

Is that 3 dvd players or 2 players stacked on a 5 disc cd changer? If so what players?

Its a cheapy Toshiba R0 PAL to NTSC / DIVX player, underneath that is a R1 Panasonic S77S HDMI upconverting Player, and on the bottom is a Panasonic 5 disc DVD player that I am using as a CD player because its getting twitchy when playing DVDs in its old age. In addition to all that I now have the Toshiba A1 in the rack.

Originally Posted by piratehunter

What's the distance between the seating area and the screen?

the rear seating is about 16ft back from the front wall/screen.

I promise I'll get a whole whack of new pics up soon, including some HDDVD pics. I've been busy with work and dogs and traveling and yardwork and picking apples for pies and making pies, etc.

Originally Posted by piratehunter

Is the curtain material leather?

see post 3 and 4. Its called Pleather. Its very heavy, thick and rubbery on one side, and cloth on the other so its very stretchy and durable. I got it at the WalMart craft department of all places. They had a ton of it in around halloween '05. I guess its used alot for halloween costumes and decorations ... because of its qualities its used for S&M gear sometimes too!

[bembol]

Great job...looks amazing, congrats....!!!

[Dolby CP-200]

esc

Very impressive display of documenting the project, I do like however a few things that you have done at that is the raised seating platform, and the electronics system rack display.

The screen is all wrong, don’t get me wrong here mate, it looks fantastic, but loudspeakers, properly belong behind the screen, a (perforated screen) that is!

I could see all the trouble you was going though to do everything else, but making a false wall for the loudspeakers to be mounted within in it, much like the THX baffle wall, and then cover the wall with (high frequency absorbent material) and then fit the screen over it.

You would also need an access way to get behind the screen to remove loudspeakers, in the unlikely event that one or more needs to have a bass mid or HF tweeter replaced, or sub bass!

That is how the real THX sound system looks, behind the baffle wall itself, the entire fitting is covered with (pink panther) or (rock wool) to absorb the sound behind it, but, but the front wall between the loudspeakers and the screen uses a material that is slightly less in thickness for the (high frequency absorbent) to stop high frequencies bouncing of the hard parallel surface and the screen, thus creating a bright harsh sound!

If you watch the video interviews about Tom Holman in this section of the (hardware) thread you’ll twig on mate.

I’ll post my home cinema up sometime soon, but isn’t has no where as good as yours, I mean, if I had a video projector, I could really finish it off!

Tom Holman Video interview
Mr. Tomlinson Holman THX Video interview and more!

[Derb]

Originally Posted by Iguana Man

I can't believe I never saw this thread before. Kudos!!!

Me neither, thanks to Taxi for setting up a recent question thread.

esc, Freakin awesome!

Seeing your HT being built from the ground up is very cool.

As for seeing the final results..

[jdurg]

Originally Posted by Derb

Me neither, thanks to Taxi for setting up a recent question thread.

esc, Freakin awesome!

Seeing your HT being built from the ground up is very cool.

As for seeing the final results..

Same here. That theater looks amazing! I am in the process of starting to house-hunt as I plan on purchasing a home sometime next year, but now I think more and more of my search will require a room that can be converted into a theater!

[esc]

Originally Posted by jdurg

Same here. That theater looks amazing! I am in the process of starting to house-hunt...

when I was house hunting and I saw the size of this room in the basement, I knew that this was the house we had to get.

more pics coming any month now!!

Originally Posted by Dolby CP-200

Very impressive display of documenting the project, I do like however a few things that you have done at that is the raised seating platform, and the electronics system rack display.

The screen is all wrong, don’t get me wrong here mate, it looks fantastic, but loudspeakers, properly belong behind the screen, a (perforated screen) that is! ...

thanks for the constructive critisims. I realize that optimally the way you described would be a way better way of doing it and if I had a 25' deep room, I may have built the speakers flush with the screen, etc. But I only had a 13 X 17 room to work with. And it does look and sound very very nice as it is

[esc]

I am finally posting some more pics.

The reason it has taken so long for me to get more pictures up is that I have not been able to take any pictures of my screen in action that I have been happy with. I borrowed a 5.1 megapixel camera from a friend and I took a few OK pictures with it that I will post, but overall I am very disappointed because they do not show off the true quality of the image that my proj/screen produces. I cannot find a decent setting for taking pics of my screen. What the hell camera setting do you use ??? :S

I finally had some spare time, so I've edited together a whack of new pics and comments so here's some more eye candy !

When you first walk downstairs, you see the 2 DVD racks which hold my 900+ DVDs and HD DVDs. Here's hoping for that thousandth DVD by this christmas.


New Pic added 10/29/07

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New Pic added 10/29/07

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Outside The Theater

Hanging out around the DVDs racks are Jedi Master Yoda and Han Solo in Carbonite.

I got the Yoda print from a good friend as a Christmas present back in 1999. Now Yoda helps guard my DVDs. Its one of those posters where the picture is composed of 1000 various still frames. All the teeny pics are of Yoda and Degobagh from Episode 5 and 6.

Han in carbonite sits between the DVD racks along with his certificate of authenticity.

Also hanging around the DVDs are my sweet little 'Space Egg', its WARNING sign, and a hand made Frank Mask from Donnie Darko.

I do not have any display cases for the egg or Frank as yet, so they are not really on full display yet and are kind of burried behind some stacks of DVDs and computer junk. I've hit a speed bump with my funding for the theater, so $200 for a couple plastic or glass cases is not a high priority right now.

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Han Solo In Carbonite Ltd. Edition #417 of 2500

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oh! and special thanks must go out to DanishDVDfreak who hooked me up with the .jpg of the Space Egg sign in the first place which I then had made into a full sized metal sign.

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Turn to the right and you'll see the door to the theater along with my little NECA Extreme Headknockers.

Not pictured : Staypuft Marshmallow Man, Black & White Marv - Sin City

Coming soon : The Crow, Pinhead, SAW Puppet guy, Mr Oogie Boogie (Nighmare B4 Xmas), Stripe (Gremlins), Capt Jack Sparrow, DareDevil, Elektra, Cornholio, HULK.

[esc]

THE HARDWARE

The in wall component rack includes, from top shelf to bottom ...

- MonoPrice 5X1 HDMI Switcher / Cheap WalMart Component Switcher for the video game systems

- Crystal XBOX / 3 controllers

- Nintendo Wii, 4 Wiimotes & Nunchucks / Silver Ltd Ed. PS2

- Motorola HDTV cable receiver (1080i HD via DVI to HDMI adapter, run to the HDMI switcher and out to the projector)

- Toshiba HD A1 HD DVD player (HDMI)

- Toshiba Region 0, HDMI, PAL upconverting single disc DVD Player

- Panasonic S77S, Region 1, HDMI upconverting single disc DVD player

- Panasonic 5 Disc DVD player (used as a multi-disc CD player)

- The Remotes (12 of them, including light dimmer remote and front fan/air purifier remote)
oh what the heck... in order from left to right on the remote shelf: fan remote,hdmi switcher remote,light remote,proj,panasonic dvd,toshiba R0 dvd,hddvd,cable receiver,technics receiver,panasonic 5disc cd player,vcr,LD

- Sharp VCR (really just a placeholder so the rack does not have an empty spot)

- An Ancient Pioneer LaserDisc player (another placeholder for now... I have no LD's!)

- Technics SA DX1040 5.1 DTS/DD Receiver (upgrading to a Denon AVR3806 any year now...)


most of the cableing is Monster (I couldn't live without my 36ft MonsterBass400 cable running to my sub), and all 200ft of the speaker wire is Knu Konceptz Klear Blu 12 Gauge Wire I absolutely recommend the stuff


[current pic coming soon]

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The Hardware

The proj up on the celing.
(also pictured is my loveseat and chair in the back of the theater on the riser and my new table sticking out from between the two seats)

Sony HS60 720p/1080i LCD Projector.
16:9 1280X720
10000:1 contrast ratio via Adjustable Iris technology
2000:1 contrast ratio with Adjustable Iris set to Off
1200 Lumens in full bulb mode
23db fan noise
Weight 6KG
Manual Focus/Zoom
Manual Lens Shift
Screen Door : non existent (unless you are 3-4 feet away from the screen)