Grecko
03-01-07, 02:08 PM
Hey all,
First post to AVS, after a few months of lurking, and I must say this site has been extremely helpful so far. Thanks :)
I'm in the process of putting a home theater into my basement, but due to allot of complicated circumstances, it has to be practically invisible when not in use. So far, I have use two sheets of BO cloth to put a 139" screen (4:3) onto the wall, and am in the process of installing two curtains: a black one about 2" out from the wall, that is cut out for the screen (provides a border around the top/sides), and a white one behind it to cover the screen when not in use. This is acceptable for the family :)
All the speaker wire will be run through the baseboards, and for the time being, a single Sony HTIB system will be used for the audio (eventually I will either replace this with a better system, or repair my other (identical) sony system and double up). The power cable and VGA cable for the projector will be run up the wall in a plastic conduit, and then through the suspended ceiling to where the projector will be mounted (going to build my own mount so that it can easily be moved up into a box in the ceiling when not in use). The HTPC is using a modified WRT54G router running openwrt as an ethernet -> wireless bridge, and there is a cable outlet right beside where the equipment will be housed. This is all good with the family :)
Unfortunately, the room is horrible for both audio and video. Its a large basement (appx. 25ft x 60ft) with the stairs in the south west corner along with a small kitchen, a hot tub in the south east corner, and a pool table in the north east corner, leaving just the north west corner for the HT. I have the screen mounted on the north wall, about 6" from the west wall. The whole basement is open. So you get no reflection of audio from the right or the back (when seated), but you get lots of reflection from the front and the left. So my idea was to put a few hangers on the top of the left wall, and build a bunch of 2x2 or 2x3 sound absorbers that hang off of these hangers, and provide a way to hang another absorber under them. That way, it would be easy to store these small peices, and they could be put up fairly easily. They would also be black to help with the intense white of the entire room. Sound doable?
Moving on from that, I need some way to curtain off the side and the back - for several reasons. One, my brother (who rents the basement) has a tendency to clean very little to never (I found a rotten mouse corpse that appeared to have been stepped on, probably every morning as he went from his room to the bathroom.. it had probably been there for at least a few weeks). Two, is the light and the whiteness of the basement. I have no way of controlling the light from the rear. One idea was to put a galvanized pipe across the back, that turns and then goes up the right hand side, with a curtain on it that can be either stored in a box on one end or easily removed, but I wanted other ideas as I don't think the family would like this too much.
The other problem I have is the ceiling - again, white. I'd like to build something, almost similar to a projector screen, that rolled up when not in use but could be pulled out across the ceiling and latched onto the ceiling in front of the projector, made with a black cloth - but I think a better idea is again called for here.
Thanks
Grecko
First post to AVS, after a few months of lurking, and I must say this site has been extremely helpful so far. Thanks :)
I'm in the process of putting a home theater into my basement, but due to allot of complicated circumstances, it has to be practically invisible when not in use. So far, I have use two sheets of BO cloth to put a 139" screen (4:3) onto the wall, and am in the process of installing two curtains: a black one about 2" out from the wall, that is cut out for the screen (provides a border around the top/sides), and a white one behind it to cover the screen when not in use. This is acceptable for the family :)
All the speaker wire will be run through the baseboards, and for the time being, a single Sony HTIB system will be used for the audio (eventually I will either replace this with a better system, or repair my other (identical) sony system and double up). The power cable and VGA cable for the projector will be run up the wall in a plastic conduit, and then through the suspended ceiling to where the projector will be mounted (going to build my own mount so that it can easily be moved up into a box in the ceiling when not in use). The HTPC is using a modified WRT54G router running openwrt as an ethernet -> wireless bridge, and there is a cable outlet right beside where the equipment will be housed. This is all good with the family :)
Unfortunately, the room is horrible for both audio and video. Its a large basement (appx. 25ft x 60ft) with the stairs in the south west corner along with a small kitchen, a hot tub in the south east corner, and a pool table in the north east corner, leaving just the north west corner for the HT. I have the screen mounted on the north wall, about 6" from the west wall. The whole basement is open. So you get no reflection of audio from the right or the back (when seated), but you get lots of reflection from the front and the left. So my idea was to put a few hangers on the top of the left wall, and build a bunch of 2x2 or 2x3 sound absorbers that hang off of these hangers, and provide a way to hang another absorber under them. That way, it would be easy to store these small peices, and they could be put up fairly easily. They would also be black to help with the intense white of the entire room. Sound doable?
Moving on from that, I need some way to curtain off the side and the back - for several reasons. One, my brother (who rents the basement) has a tendency to clean very little to never (I found a rotten mouse corpse that appeared to have been stepped on, probably every morning as he went from his room to the bathroom.. it had probably been there for at least a few weeks). Two, is the light and the whiteness of the basement. I have no way of controlling the light from the rear. One idea was to put a galvanized pipe across the back, that turns and then goes up the right hand side, with a curtain on it that can be either stored in a box on one end or easily removed, but I wanted other ideas as I don't think the family would like this too much.
The other problem I have is the ceiling - again, white. I'd like to build something, almost similar to a projector screen, that rolled up when not in use but could be pulled out across the ceiling and latched onto the ceiling in front of the projector, made with a black cloth - but I think a better idea is again called for here.
Thanks
Grecko