I know this is a big task for someone to under take but it never hurts to ask. There's anther great DIY forum on kitchen remodels that has a finished product site with categories. It's called Finishedkithens.com and it allows you to search by various categories all the diy kitchens that have been submitted. Here's a link to check it out.

http://starpoohonline.com/FKB_categories_list.html

It would be great to have something like this for all the great theaters out there. Here's the guidelines they use.

Q: How do I get my kitchen added to the Finished Kitchens Blog?
A: Follow this procedure:
First you must be a member of GardenWeb [register here] and have participated in discussions in the Kitchen Forum.


Post your finished kitchen in the Gallery section of the Kitchen Forum. (Why in the Gallery section? Because your post has more longevity in the Gallery section than in the Discussion section.) Please include
a. "punch list" of your details
b. a link to your photos (visit the Kitchen Forum FAQ site for help adding photos to your post.)


Fill out the Finished Kitchens Category Checklist. Submitting this form gives starpooh permission to archive your kitchen in the Finished Kitchens Blog. Your kitchen will be added to the "FKB" using several of your photos and the details from your gallery post.


(optional) Send an email to starpooh that gives permission to have your kitchen archived in the Finished Kitchens blog. You will receive a personal reply within a few days. :-)

If anyone has the skills and time to pull off such a site it would be great. You could probably sell advertisements on the site for revenue.

Just an idea.

The best way to find great finished theaters is to go to the first page of this forum, sort by hits, and start reading from there. I really like this community and the depth of the posts that it contains. I've been able to answer nearly every question that I have had about building a theater within this forum.

Maybe it would be a good idea to post a "Show Me Your" Completed Theaters Thread...

I for one like having everyone one here (in one place).

CJ

The big advantage to the FKB is you can instantly find what your looking for. If you're build a large theater you could go to that category and get ideas. If you want to see theaters with 6 seats you can instantly see how 6 seats fit into different sized and shaped rooms.


With the forum some theaters will just fall off eventually. Say you're thinking of doing a red theater. It would be cool to see a bunch of red theaters. Whats to much red? How to accent a red theater. You just can't do that now.

This doesn't replace the build threads. It just an archive of finished theaters split in to categories.

I would be up for the task but I am in the middle of a construction schedule. Give me 2 weeks and if nobody else has started yet, I will do it. I think its a great idea.

I dunno, hasn't this already been done with all the the "SHOW ME" Threads here on this site? Show me your screen walls, show me your before and after photos, show me your risers....etc.

Yes, it's been done before in different aspects, but what I think the OP is looking for is a searchable tool (almost like a database) for very specific details (i.e. color scheme, seating, etc.) that will make it very easy to query. If someone is talented enough to pull it off I think it's a great idea.

in addition to the search-able data elements at a bare minimum there should be a picture of all four walls, the seating/riser arrangement, and any ceiling treatments.

But a theater is never really finished. . . ;)

But, it is a good idea to have a more formal example of the show-me threads and sig links.

Bump for any willing to start a cool project.

I think this would be great. As someone who is actively researching to come up with ideas for theater design, I have started creating my own docs which are my "Best Of." I've been creating these by cutting pictures, and putting bullets under with things about the build that are of interest to me, then maybe even more pictures, links, etc.

As a rookie, this is what would help me design my perfect theater:

For "finished" theaters, a single post with summary information:
1) At minimum, pics of 4 walls, maybe ceiling and flooring
2) Type of theater (basement, 1st floor, detached, upstairs)
3) Theater Dimensions (LxWxH)
4) Isolation techniques used
5) Sound treatments used
6) List of Audio/Video Equipment
7) Speakers (5.1, 7.1, brands, inwall, columns, etc)
8) Seating (brand, model, locations from screen)
9) Lighting (zones, types)
10) Lighting Control
11) Riser (LxWxH), step heights
12) Stage (LxWxH), step heights
13) Screen (brands, materials, DIY, dimensions, etc)
14) Rack (brand, DIY, in-wall, separate room)
15) Added Coolness (manual/automatic masking, star ceiling, etc)
16) Things I would do differently ("I wouldn't cut the tip of my thumb off," etc)

These are things that I have been researching, but I'm sure there are many more that I have missed.

It would be like a consolidated reference-by-user for all of the "show-me" threads, without the complexity of full database implementation.

I think it's a great idea! I started an excel file last week and started putting data in it for my own use. I did size of room, screen, projector, wall treatments, stage, and a few other things. It's a cool idea if someone wanted to do it, but as I always say "If you want something done right, do it yourself!"

Sounds like it would be an excellent subforum on AVS!

Hummm... I am getting closer to being finished with my theater. Does anyone know of a CMS that could be customized for this application? I really don't want to code this from scratch. I'll start looking around some more on this. I'm excited to see this site get going.

I doubt a CMS would already be built for such a niche application, but I've written PHP scripts to sort out lens tests (for DSLR photography when tests resulted in 10s to 100s of images indexed by a couple different variables.)

I'm not sure if this is what the OP is proposing, but if I understand it right, it's a really cool idea:

1) website accepts uploaded photos. There should be some standard shots (like mentioned above, all 4 walls, ceiling, riser, seating...)

2) if a standard file name scheme was adopted, ie:
#seats-whichwall-colorscheme.jpg

Where which wall was (screenwall, rearwall, leftwall, rightwall, ceiling, or floor) and color scheme was either a basic pallet (say 8 colors, or else something enumerated like "neutral", "monochrome", "two color", "vibrant", "solids", "patterns")

Then you don't need a database. You just need a simple form and it uses drop down boxes, then brings up all the photos that match the selected drop down boxes.

Come to think of it, if you use the same form when uploading photos, you can let the PHP script take care of file naming.


Good luck with this! It would be cool to quickly query an image catalog to see ideas answering questions like: "5 seat layout with blue color scheme"

I started to take a stab at this...using Gallery2, but that image gallery just doesn't do everything you need for this project.

I think it's going to have to be written from scratch. I will try to come up with a design and get started on it next week.

If anyone else wants to help, or if someone else is already working on something, let me know and we can combine efforts.

Anybody that's interested in this please take a look at my first thread on the FKB site. Here's the link. Play around with it and you'll see how it works. Maybe the person that did that site could point us in the right direction on software. I dunno it's all over my head.

http://starpoohonline.com/FKB_categories_list.html


For us nontechies we can help by coming up with categories.

Room Size:
Small
Med.
Large



Ceiling Height:
7ft
8ft
9ft
10ft+

Seating:
Theater Seating
Couch
Other

Cost:

Color:

Theme:

Screen type:

Stage:

Riser:

Lighting:

Equipment Brand:

Doors:

Acoustic Treatments:

Sound Isolation:

One problem I see with their site is that it's all done by the admin(s) right now. Users have to send them an email with links to their gallery on the GardenWeb site.

I'd rather set this up to allow users to upload their own theaters, and do their own tagging.

I'd have it where users can register, upload their own images to their personal album, tag the images...or album...haven't decided what makes the most sense yet.

We will have to come up with pre-determined tags (like what you just posted sting) that users can select from.

Then, we can sort/search based on category/tag/whatever we want.

We can set it up where you can search one tag, cost for example, then sort/search the rest of the tags of images/albums that have that cost.

I've got some sites and space for this, and have offered to host it. For now, I think it will just need to be the link format. I'm not going to have the time to build a more sophisticated site. However, we can get started simple, and it can always grow. Anyone who wants to help, your ideas are welcome here or via PM.

Sounds like a cool idea......the show me threads are good but they quickly get bogged down with questions etc.

If there was a site where the content was in a controled format but linked to the AVS thread for comments/questions I think woul be a great idea.

Just got to steer clear of the 'whats a theatre' police :eek:

WarrenP I'd be willing to help if you have the server space.

Cheers,
Mark

The biggest problem with the show me your anything thread is that not much showing gets done. Too many comments and questions. if all of the comments and questions were erased and it literally had finished theaters that would be cool. I know nothing about web design so I would be the last guy to do that. a few pictures from a bunch of angles, an equipment list and room dimensions would be all I would need. At the end of the post a link to that person's build thread. If you have questions you ask there.

bump

bump


It is underway, but will be a bit of time before I have anything worth posting. I'm guessing Springtime.

bump

The best way to find great finished theaters is to go to the first page of this forum, sort by hits, and start reading from there.

I disagree. While it's true that when you do that some of the best theaters come up, that's really only an indication of the build process and typically how long that build took.

I've seen many great theaters on this site where the thread is not even started until the theater is complete. As a result, the hits on that thread will be very low. Other members start build threads and over the course of a couple of years they'll finish. This results in lots of hits during the process.

So, while most of the threads with many hits will be excellent (if they weren't people would stop participating, no matter how long it took), there's a ton of great theaters on this site that have very few hits.

Not to mention the fact that there's a lot of great theaters (Capn Randy's comes to mind) that are forever in the archives now.

I have hosting space/bandwidth available to use for the next two years as well as a domain (lostremote.net), might work out for development purposes anyways, right?

Also, I think that a user/visitor voting system would be good for being able to search by as well. Also a construction pics option.

This is such a great idea. I could do this up right and from scratch without tweaking a CMS, but for now I won't have the time while I'm in the middle of building my HT.

Working on it! I have a few other projects going on right now as well, but it is underway...

If anyone wants to help out, send me a PM. The main thing I need help with is in pulling together all the links. Everyone has their folder full of saved theater links I'm sure....

It won't be super fancy when it starts, but should work well for getting the project going. :)

Here are the ones that I've been using:

ReedZone Theater: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=735097 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=735097)
Farm House Cinema: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=627306 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=627306)
Mr.Poindexter: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=640853 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=640853)
Steve Jenkins: http://theater.stevejenkins.com/gallery/complete/ (http://theater.stevejenkins.com/gallery/complete/)
TK Theaters: http://www.tktheaters.com/gallery/tuscany/ (http://www.tktheaters.com/gallery/tuscany/)
BigJoeMoose's Theatre: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1018914 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1018914)
Big Mouth in DC: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=683853 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=683853)
DE Theater: http://blog.audiovideointeriors.com/407roof/ (http://blog.audiovideointeriors.com/407roof/)
Helene: Prototype System of Tomorrow: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=908533 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=908533)
Cinema Kellogg: http://web.mac.com/donkellogg/Cinema_Kellogg/Chronicle/Chronicle.html (http://web.mac.com/donkellogg/Cinema_Kellogg/Chronicle/Chronicle.html)
Sandmans Home Theater: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=574704 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=574704)
Ted White's Theater: http://tedwhite.homestead.com/ (http://tedwhite.homestead.com/)
Completed theaters: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1061114 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1061114)
Kirk's DE designed theater: http://home.comcast.net/~kirkk/Construction1.html (http://home.comcast.net/~kirkk/Construction1.html)

CJ

Thanks CJ, that is great! Anyone else want to post their list like that?

TrikinCurt - Fluegel Family Theater - LINK (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=754073)
dbbarron - Mayflower Cinema - LINK (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=879747)
pkonold - The Pirate Cove - LINK (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=731215)
crackyflipside - Burnt House Theater - LINK (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=632077)
jikkjack - Royal Fortune - LINK (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=633842)
ronnie_jackson - Ronnie's Home Theater - LINK (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=638024)
W00lly - The Copper Fields Cinema - LINK (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=869753)
BritInVA - The Wright Family Theatre - LINK (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=655800)
swithey - SWithey Home Theater - LINK (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=620108)
jamis - Jamis' Theater - LINK (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=794089)
indygreg - Big Red Ttheater - LINK (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=761723)
chinadog - Blazing Ridge Cinema - LINK (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=549924)
jerrodshook - November Sky Theater - LINK (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=539243)

I left a few that CJO mentioned off. And after going through my subscriptions there are A LOT that have been not been updated in quite awhile. Logan better get in gear. :)

bump

I love this idea and you can throw mine in there too. It really won't be "finished" until I add the acoustic paneling around the room and stage/curtains up front.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1029731

-Tom