Sanity check and advise on new CIH setup

Howdy,

I've been in my new house for about 9 months now and the other day my lovely wife told me I needed to get on the stick and build out the media room before the kids don't have any time to enjoy it before they grow up and move out. In the spirit of trying to be a better husband, I acquiesced to her request

I spent the last couple of weeks in heavy research mode, crawling through this AVS forums and other sites until my eyes are bleeding. I'm getting close on most things, but it's time for me to seek the wisdom of those that know more about this than what I can learn in 2 weeks of internet reading!

On to the parameters and the toys...

The room is 13.5' x 18'. The front wall is 7'10" tall, but the ceiling is 10' (sloped wall from the ceiling to the front/screen wall). The room will be a dedicated HT used primarily for movies but there is probably the occasional big group sports event or video games when the kids have sleepovers.

I'm planning to do a 2.35 setup, but I'm going to hold off on the anamorphic lens for now and just zoom initially. I know I'll lose light, but my other big hobby is photography and things like CA and pin-cushioning will drive me nuts so that will keep me out of the cheaper anamorphic lenses.

Budget-wise, I'd like to keep the equipment costs around $10K (ignoring furniture, labor, etc.) but that's not a hard-cap.

I'm not planning to move any of my AV equipment from the living room, so I'm doing this from scratch.

Projector: JVC DLA-RS20
This is the one I'm lusting after if I can get everything else to fit inside my (soft) budget. Other projectors on my short list are:
* InFocus IN83
* Epson Home Cinema 7500UB
* Panasonic PT-AE3000U

Updated list (7/3/09):
- InFocus IN83 (not enough zoom)
+ JVC DLA-RS10 (in case of overall budget pressures)
- Pansonic PT-AE3000U (good projector, but liking the others more)

Screen: Seymour AV F120
I'd really like to have the front speakers behind a fixed/flat AT screen. I haven't done any major research specifically on AT screens other than knowing some of the major brands, so suggestions here would be particularly helpful.

Originally I was thinking the screen would be ~120" - 130" diagonal, but that was before I started looking at having the speakers behind the screen. With that sort of setup, I've got room on the sides to go larger, but I haven't tried to figure out yet whether that's too tall or if I have enough depth for the projector throw ratio.

Seating will probably be around 13' from the screen, but that's easily adjustable if need be.

Updated (7/3/09): Settled on the Seymour AV after recommendations and research.

Speakers: Atlantic Technology in-walls
Planning on the IWCB-727's for the mains and center. The IWTS-30 SRs for the side surrounds and ICTS-8.3e for the backs (in-ceiling).

No ideas on what to do on the subwoofer yet...

A/V Receiver: Yamaha RX-V3900

Blu-Ray Player: TBD
Probably either an Oppo or PS3, but haven't researched the current generation of players yet.

Updated list (7/3/09):
Either the Oppo BDP-83 or Panasonic DMP-BD60.

Power Conditioner: None

With the projector, receiver and speakers I've layed out here, that's just shy of $9K so I'm getting tight. Any recommendations on reasonable ways to fill in the holes or tweaks/changes to the setup I'm looking at would be appreciated.

Thanks!
Jay

Hate when I make spelling errors in the title like that. Tried to fix it, but apparently can't edit the thread title.

/sigh

Thanks for the responses, stranger. Comments inline below...


I haven't looking into AVScience's lens specifically, but I understand they are rebranded and I've looked at most (all?) of the anamorphic lens options out there. Right now, when I balance my budget vs. quality goals, I'm mostly coming down on the "hold off on the lens for now... maybe next year".

The CA and distortion from prism-based "lenses" will eat at my soul. Moving up to an ISCO or Schneider lens is outside of my budget given everything else that I have to get.


The RS20's mostly on my list because I've got access to some seriously discounted pricing on it. Even then it's "just barely" on the list. Probably only still there from sheer lust.

I read up on the Planar 8150 and it definitely looks good and seems to play in the same ballpark as the RS20. I don't have access to any "special" pricing on Planar equipment though.


Thanks! Will definitely check them out.


So no sense in going bigger then? I don't have a good feel for the trade-offs between bigger == more immersive and "oh my gosh, I'm stuck on the front row!" overwhelming.


That makes the engineer in me happy to hear.


Thanks for all the feedback. I'm excited about getting this done!

Jay

Good point! That's a shame because if it weren't for the mediocre black levels, I really like the IN83. The excellent colors + awesome lumen power are a beautiful combination.


Yeah, that's why I'm planning to stick with zooming for now.


Good to hear on the zooming front. I've been wondering if I'm going to regret zooming and whether I should go back to 16:9. If zooming works reasonably well without major sacrifice, I'd really like to get a scope setup.

Thanks,
Jay

Thanks, Jason.

The only reason I have hope of doing the setup I'm looking at is because of a good friend that can get me dealer pricing on some of the expensive parts of the system - primarily the RS20 and the AT speakers. Unfortunately they don't have access to the Yamaha receiver, BD player and most likely the sub.

If you are interested, once I get the rest of the component selection finalized more, I'll contact you for a quote as well. Just didn't want to waste your time if that level of pricing on some of the major components kills it for you. That said, I can't get several parts through him so the overall deal might still be of interest. Just let me know (I've heard nothing but good things about you and your company).


Thanks. A good friend of mine has them as well and I like them. It's been a little tricky trying to listen at his house, then run back home real quick and play the same source material through my Paradigm's in the living room to compare!

Also good to have folks that likely have more critical ears than mine confirm things

Jay

BTW, I'm trying to not violate the forum rules about listing prices and such. Hopefully discussing things in terms of the overall price I'm seeing vs. my budget allows folks to make recommendations based on my constraints without breaking the house rules.

Thanks for the link, that's helpful.


No worries. I appreciate the input on this stuff. Truthfully, the arguments for using a lens vs. zooming make sense to me assuming you use a curved screen and the lens doesn't exhibit CA or focus issues.

I'll follow up with Jason on the AVS lens. Maybe it's cheaper than I'm expecting.


I considered the RS10 for a bit but I read enough posts from folks concerned about the colors on it to get nervous about it. Folks kept talking about getting Lumagen's and such to get the colors under control. The RS20 starts of better on the colors and with the CMS, should avoid the need for post-processing.

Also, the price difference between the two wasn't as large as I might have thought.


Gotcha. I saw a few references to lower gain on AT screens, but no hard numbers. Nevermind the lack of in-person visual comparison of screens with different gains to give me a feel for this


I was EE in school as well, but virtually all of my professional career has been in software (well, and management lately). At least the EE background let's me talk intelligently to the board designers and FPGA guys at work.

I'm definitely not an audiophile. I certainly appreciated the improvement going from the traditional college Bose bookshelf speakers to Paradigm Monitor 7's, but going up from there would be wasted on me unless it was just due to needing to fill a bigger volume of space.

On the flip-side, I'm seriously into photography so I spend loads of time analyzing/critiquing images so I'm more picky on the video side. Nothing like most of the folks that hang around here of course.

Thanks again, stranger!

Jay

That's pretty much where I'm at.


I'm not quite so fanatical that I'll be recalibrating multiple times like that (well, at least not yet... give me time maybe ). Depending on where pricing comes out on the rest of the system, it's possible I'll fall back to the RS10. For all I know, I'll be shocked by the pricing on AT screens and have to make big adjustments to my plan.

I know I'm amazed at how much automated CIH masking systems cost. Much like the anamorphic lenses, a masking system is on my "maybe one day" list.

Jay

Thanks for all the feedback so far guys.

I'm trying to cut down on the number of TBD's in my list, so I spent the last couple of days diving into BD players, AT screens and subwoofers.

BD Players
For the BD player, I'm pretty much down to the Oppo BDP-83 and the Panasonic DMP-BD60.

I have the older BD30 hooked up to my 50" plasma in the living room and I've been very happy with it. It's only so-so for upconverting DVDs (definitely a step down from my even older Denon DVD player with a Faroudja scaler), but for BD material, it's been great.

The BD60 seems like about the same story... Excellent on BD, so-so on upscaling.

The Oppo is clearly the best-in-class below $1000, but at 2x the price of the DB60, I'm not sure it is worth it. Here's how I'd rate the differences:

* Significantly faster load times are a nice-to-have. Load times on the BD30 are annoying, but at a few times a week, I can live with it.

* BD playback is probably a wash. I'm sure the Oppo is slightly better, but probably not in a material way for me.

* Assuming I understand the new world order in audio correctly, audio for movies should be a wash. I should just be bitstreaming over HDMI and letting the Yamaha RX-V3900 handle the audio, right?

* I don't care about the "universal player" aspects of the Oppo in a dedicated HT room.

Which boils down to the one big difference that might matter to me: DVD upscaling. Oppo is clearly the hands-down winner, but is it worth 2X? I realize that's one of those "only you can decide how much something is 'worth'" sort of things, but given this screen is going to be 2.5x bigger than anything I've ever had, I may need to weight it more heavily than I expect.

Most of the movies we watch these days are Blu-Ray, but we still occasionally watch older DVDs. Given it's probably only 10% of the movies we watch, I'm ok with "less than optimal". I'm not ok with "wow, just can't watch this because it sucks so bad".

The best comparison I can think of is with HD channels on the 50" plasma. The kids watch a fair bit of SD material on there (usually with a bad aspect ratio selected... nasty!), but for sports, I pretty much won't watch non-HD anymore.

How big of a deal is the difference in the scaler between the Oppo and the Panasonic on a 120" screen?

From the looks of things on screen pricing, I'm probably going to exceed my budget, so this was one place I was thinking of actually containing myself. OTOH, the delta here is only ~$250 so "containing myself" may just be "fooling myself"

Dang I'm long-winded on this stuff. I'll go through the screen and sub in different posts.

Jay

I should have known AT screens were going to be a pretty penny. Seymour AV looks to be the best bet for me (thanks for the suggestion, stranger).

The design of the SmX screens is excellent, but at over 2x the cost of Seymour for 120" wide fixed screen.

Given that I'll be painting the walls behind the screen dark, is there any reason to get the black backing on the screen? I tend to think no, but not sure...

Are there other places to buy Seymour AV screens or just direct?

Thanks,
Jay