Stevens Home Theater - The Fun Begins - Page 5

Cool, I figured you knew to do that. I know when I angled my center channel that was in a high entertainment center down towards me, wow, what a difference it made.

Thanks for the compliment msw. I'm pretty patient. I've waited this long, I can wait a little longer. What is that I see? The wait is over! Fedex just showed up with the projector and mount. New pics coming tonight!

I had a nice ride home with my new friend. She was quiet as I did most of the talking. Got her home, unpacked and HOLY COW! She's HUGE! When I took the patch off, her one eye was just staring at me. I think I hurt her feelings when I said that though. I had to apologize and say I'm sorry. I told her she was just the right size. I've worked with projection units before at church. Have one in my youth room, main sanctuary, my wife has one at school. Let me say, this is no school projector. Panasonic double boxed it so it was safely packaged with no damage. I placed it next to my PS3 and it made the PS3 look "cute and cuddly" in comparison.





Pannyla (like Pamela) and the PS3 quickly hit it off and were attached at the hip via HDMI. There was definitely a connection between them. I believe they will be together for a long time. I cranked them both up to see what they could do together. The settings are straight out of the box, no adjustments yet other than zoom and focus. Here are some screenshots with my cheap Nikon Coolpix camera.










Wish I had a better camera to capture the details more. Some of the colors seem a little off but even out of the box, it's very nice. I can't wait to get it mounted and calibrated.

I told Pannyla and PS3 goodnight. Hope they can behave themselves when I'm not around. Better not be any late night movie action going on when the doors are closed. I won't be having any of that. I don't want her to wear out her bulb before I get a chance to enjoy my first movie with our family.

One thing that I did notice is that I had it zoomed for 2.35. Totally fills the canvas completely. But when I hit the Freeze on the Panny, you can see that the menu drops below the screen. Anyone know a workaround for this? Once I get it mounted, I'll set the zoom memory for 16:9, 2.35:1 and not sure what is between those two.

Yeah, after playing around with it, I now am understanding what I have been reading about it. I'm a visual person, hands on. I can deal with that in order to have a cinescope screen. Definitely worth the trade off. I thought I would be bothered by the grey bars on the sides in 16:9 but once you start watching the movie or playing the game, the grey bars seem to disappear. Much less noticable than bars on top and bottom. Once cabinets are in, I might see about manual side masking using some felt strips. Could find a way to attach them to the cabinet that could be easily added or removed. Not sure yet.

Thanks nezff. Yes, one of the double doors is permanantly closed and locked. I did this to allow for a wider rear riser in order to help get the back row closer to the center of the room. It's still offset some but definitely not an issue.

I hooked up the Wii to the projector for the kids to play a bit. Not too impressive as far as resolution but then again, it's only at 480i. I ordered a component video cable for the Wii so that will move it up to 480p. Probably won't be much difference. Sad Nintendo had to skimp on the video quality with so many people hooking them up to their purty plasma and LCD's nowadays. Oh well. It is now much easier to play on the 103" than it was on the 17" LCD TV.

The mounts are very sturdy, well made mounts. There are two screws that tighten that "clamp" the bottom sides of the speaker. Each clamp has a rubber piece that protects the speaker from the metal bracket. You can angle the speaker downwards up to 10 degrees. If you choose to angle it, they strongly suggest using the supplied tiny screws to help secure the speaker to the mounts. You can either screw into the side of the speaker or to the bottom. I have mine angled downward so I chose to use three tiny screws in the bottom. I would prefer not to, but I would rather have three tiny holes than a dead child from one dropping on their head. With these mounts, you can also swivel them left and right. What I found is that they do not swivel very far due to the size of the RB-35's. They sit so close to the wall and are so wide that it doesn't move far before the back corner of the speaker is hitting the wall. Let me know if you have any further questions about them.

You can tighten them down pretty tight. Mine are tall, deep and just didn't want to run the risk of the screws coming loose over time due to sound vibrations in the room. Another alternative would be to tie some kind of wire or string around the mount, then attach it to either the front of the speaker or a more none obvious way, the rear binding posts. The grips would hold the weight, the string or wire would just be a safety net.

Tonight I pulled out the Avia II disk for the first time and went through the Video calibration portion. Flesh tones looked a tad too red but now look more natural and contrast is more defined. Here are a few screenshots

Well, no word from the cabinet guy. I'm about ready to give up on him but I'm trying to be patient since he is doing them in exchange for me designing his website. I was really hoping to begin installation this weekend but not sure if that will happen. It's quite frustrating when you are waiting on someone else. I'm going to mount my projector this weekend so that will be the last thing I can do until the cabinets are installed.

Welcome to the forum. Right now, I have the projector on two barstools between the first and second row seating. I have not installed the mount yet. It is directly under the hole that I cut for the mount so it is around 14' back. It is extremely quiet, I've yet to notice the fan at all during quiet or loud scenes. I did read somewhere that it is louder when mounted upside down but I have not verified this yet.

I'm going to mount my ceiling mount for the projector this week and have a few questions. I purchased the mount shown below. My original thought was to have the top bracket mounted inside the attic and the pole would extend through the ceiling for a stealth look. I'm guessing that I would have to put a board across the joists since the bracket is not wide enough to span two joists (or is it?). My A/V friend cut a square hole in the ceiling because he is suggesting we mount it directly to the ceiling. What are your thoughts about this? My ceiling mount can extend from 11.42" to 32". If I mount it to the ceiling, do I use lag screws into the joists, bolts? I know my A/V friend knows what he is doing, I just wanted to see what my options are. Probably at this point since he cut a square, I'm probably better off mounting it just to the ceiling, running the cables through the pole. We are going to make a plugin in the attic as opposed to putting one in the ceiling so that the power cord is running up the pole, not hanging down from the ceiling.

I also have a question about how to determine far down I need to extend the projector. Ceilings are 10'. My rear riser is about 12". Cabinets are not in so I do not know exactly how high the screen will be. You can see the previous pics showing it on barstools. This is probably pretty close to where it will be height wise. Would it be best to have the cabinets and screen mounted, then mount the projector? I would hate to mount it only to find out I need to be back another 6". Based on feedback and my calculations, the projector should be ok. It is 14" from the front wall but the screen will no longer be mounted to the front wall. Still not sure how far off the back wall it will be. Not having the cabinets in has held me up quite a bit. I'm going to call him today to see when he can come and install them so we can get this thing wrapped up.

Thx Jason. I just wasn't sure if you were supposed to have it about as high as the top of the screen for the optimal positioning. I know there is a lot of flexibility with lens shift but didn't know if it affected the picture quality and having to possibly keystone it.

That makes sense. I was thinking that I would need to angle it downwards somewhat but I guess the panny will have enough play in the lense shift to move the image down without having to keystone it. Sweet! Thx for the input.

I didn't see a photo of your mounted projector. Did you use a pole? Mount directly to the ceiling?

Although the cables coming down from the ceiling on the front wall will be hidden behind the false wall, I decided to tidy them up before the cabinets are installed. I chose 2" PVC, cut it the height from floor to ceiling, and cut a notch in the bottom for the cables to easily come out of. I used fine sandpaper to roughen it up to help the paint stick. Spray painted it black with Valspar spray paint that is made to spray on plastic. I used zip ties to bind the cables together about every foot, then slid them into the tube.



Cabinet guy is coming out on Saturday to begin installing the false wall. My fingers are crossed.

I have a question. I bought two 3/8" x 3" lag screws to secure the ceiling mount to the rafter. Two questions:

1. Will this be enough to secure the mount properly?

2. I was thinking that the wires would be able to come straight down through the ceiling into the pole and down to the projector. The problem is that the flat plate that mounts to the ceiling does not have a hole in it for the wires. This means that the plate will have to be mounted in front of or behind the square hole I cut in the ceiling. Would it be best to use a Recessed Wall Plate for the ceiling where the hole is, then go into the pole?

I know very little about construction but it is my understanding that the plate will only be able to be secured to one truss since they are 16" apart. Is this correct? If so, how did you manage to get 4 lag screws into the trusses?

Today, I picked up The Dark Knight on bluray. I was going to wait until the cabinets were installed but our kids all spent the night at grandmas and friend's houses. My wife is working on her Masters and had a major research paper she had to work on so I decided to check it out. I invited two friends over to watch it with me. I had never seen the movie, one of the friends had seen it 3 times, the other once.

I had read about the switching of aspect ratios throughout the movie. I found it pretty aggravating throughout the movie when watching it in 2.35:1. When the movie shifts to the Imax scenes, the image appears above and below the screen with grey bars on the sides. I understand what the producer was trying to accomplish but I really wish he would have picked one aspect ratio and stuck with it.

The movie was as everyone has said. WOW! Definitely reference material. Pretty messed up plot (haha) but definitely some high impact scenes, great LFE and provided some fantastic demo scenes. Batman's voice was WAY overdone and kinda cheezy. Wish they had not altered his voice to make it deeper. Why didn't he just talk to the bad guys the way he did to Alfred?

Thought I would share some screenshots from it.













You can see in the images below how the Imax scenes appear. The image extends about 4" above and below the screen which is not cool. It's not horrible but definitely not appealing on a scope screen.







This is a shot from the "Extras" portion of the disk.