Rich H's Variable Image Size Home Theater - Build Thread - Completed! - Page 5

Something I never mentioned were my side tables. I tried to solve the issue of where to put drinks and food, safely. One advantage I love with the dedicated home theater recliners many people buy are the arm-rest drink holders. No such luck in a sofa.

After a LOT of searching while designing my room I found these side tables (sorry for the old, crappy cell-phone photo, taken in-store):



They are just like (or actually are, I'm not sure) the well loved George Nelson Tray Tables. And at something like $400 each, darned expensive (and that was on sale!)

But....they were perfect. The feet slide under the sofa if desired so the table can end up right beside a viewer (not in front, visually distracting). The height is easily adjustable - a great feature I use constantly. They take up minimal visual space and to top it off the wood finish was a perfect match for the room. The store had only 2 left, no one else had them, and they were not importing any more. So I snapped up the last two.

I've been meaning to find some good car-like drink holders, have a couple holes cut out in each table, and insert the drink holders so drinks will be held firmly.

UNFORTUNATELY...

While on vacation these past two weeks I had some family house-sitting. I taught them to use the projection system which they loved. However, at one point (after inviting a bunch of guests over) one of the side tables was placed back behind the viewing sofa, but in the path of the projector lift. When my guests pressed the button to lower the projector lift back to it's sitting position it caught on the side table, crushing it downward, and snapped the table off it's metal stem. What a bummer!

A brief look on the web is telling me replacing this table is going to be damned expensive. I hope I can get someone to weld the table top back on or something.

Ah...it's always something isn't it?

The Carada is usually easy to put up as reported by other users, although my
system requirements made it a bit more tricky. I was trying to place it really low on my wall and it was a HUGE screen. Once done the system works very reliably.

My lights don't rattle. One of the reasons for building down the ceiling somewhat was for lighting. This room is on our main floor and our bedroom is directly above. I wanted directional pot lights, but didn't want to poke any holes in our ceiling because sound can travel through such areas. So we built down the ceiling enough to put pot lights in without poking holes in the existing ceiling. Worked fine. I'm also glad we made a trough to put in some track lights. The track lights are more precise and flexible in terms of aiming light than pot lights, which really helps dialing in lighting, especially getting precise task lighting on to the sofa area that does not affect the screen image.

Thanks for the sketch. I've seen similar solutions. One problem for me is that my sofa seat is all one long cushion (which is how I prefer sofas) so nothing can be wedged in between seats for stability. Although, I suppose a cup holding/food holding unit might be possible that doesn't need to be anchored in between seat cushions.

I'm happy to be of service!

Curtains are the single best strategy I can think of if you are trying to achieve both a non-bat-cave-looking room AND the ability to have bat-cave-like performance when watching a movie. Curtains can look beautiful, add aesthetically to the room, they can sit unobtrusively when stacked in a corner, but pull out easily in seconds to cut reflections.

And because they are fabric they absorb ambient light better than even painting the room a super dark color. It's a win-win situation, I've found.

I knew I was going to use curtains this way and one of the benefits of doing the build-down modification of my ceiling was to create hidden spaces along the wall corners were curtain tracks are placed out of sight, making for a clean look.

My wife's truly palpable and often-spoken fears about the room looking "dark" or "weird" are all in the past: she thinks the room looks great and I can see my wife's pride when guests go on about how much they love the room (and never want to leave it).

It...can...be...done!

Glad you like it guys.

I'm in heaven with the room and even though it's been operational since last winter I feel like I appreciate it just as much or more now. It truly does look rich and striking even when walking by it from the hallway. I love the variety of "moods" and looks I can get via the Lutron zoned lighting in the room along with all the colors offered by the LED lights. I particularly love having most of the lights really low, with some deep slowly pulsing color on the screen, a beam of light over the sofa for reading, and some chill out music in surround sound. It feels so luxurious I often want to pinch myself that I own this place.

Last night I had guests over to watch Iron Man 2 (first time I'd seen it - lots of fun). I had the black side panels closing off the entire screen until the lights went down for the movie. Then, as the "Paramount" logo with the floating stars came up in high definition, the panels slowly opened revealing more and more of the image until it opened up to a 120" wide CinemaScope screen size. My guests were literally shouting their "wows" and "Oh My Gods" this is awesome it's so huge! It's amazing how a bit of flair in presentation can add to the experience.

Also, I've actually been amazed that virtually every single guest in the room has actually commented on the acoustics! This is something I thought only an audio nut like me would notice. But one of the first comments out of everyone's mouth upon entering the room is "Wow...listen to the sound. It's so quiet and peaceful. It sounds amazing just talking." They say it feels like such an inviting, calming room to be in, even sonically. That's really neat to hear (and rewarding, given all the sweat put into such matters).

Looking over my in-construction pictures in this thread almost gives me a shiver of dread :-) It was a long, arduous, gritty job getting this thing done. Sort of like when I think back to my university days and all I can think of is how tired I was day in and day out from the work and long studying nights. I'm much happier to have it behind me and enjoying the fruits of the labor.

I'm sure others here who have built a home theater, or who are building one, can sympathise on just how all-encompassing and consuming the project can be. It used to be there was always some part of my day I was researching, or driving somewhere to get new samples for the room. It's almost weird to be over with it.

Thanks BamaDave.

I'm glad some people are finding something useful about my build thread. I hope to see you guys do your threads so I can see how you tackle your challenges.

I vow to get video of my room in action into this thread before Christmas!!!!

Cheers tony123.

I'm working on the video right now of the room and system in action. I hope to put it up within a week.

Checking in again...

I know I promised video a while back, but work, family, the holidays, all get in the way. I've shot most of the footage, some of it on my iPhone 4 actually. It's quite amazing the advances in technology. I have one of the original Sony DV-Cams, the first pocket-sized, shoot on DV tape video camera (NTSC).

It's always taken reliable video, but I'm finding my iPhone 4 actually outperforms it in a few areas, image clarity (iPhone is 720p after all) and less noisy performance in low light being such areas. That a phone video with it's tiny lens can out compete a dedicated video camera a all is pretty amazing to me.

Anyway, my home theater/music room has been operational for almost a year and a half, and essentially "finished" for the last year or so. One of the things I wondered while designing and laboring over this system was how ergonomic and useful would the variable image approach end up? This was after all my first projection based home theater and most people learn what they like and dislike, and what they actually use and don't use, during their first try. Would I perhaps start of varying the image size but then grow tired of it and just tend to leave the screen one or two shapes?

I'm very happy to report that I'm still as thrilled as ever, more thrilled than ever, that I went this route. Varying the image size is so quick and easy on this system, and actually fun to do, that I use it all the time. We watched ChunKing Express (1:66:1 AR) at a nice comfortable size, then when we watched Inception we watched it really big and immersive (closer to 120" wide cinemascope) which blew everyone away. And this week I'd recently seen an IMAX movie so when I watched some of the Planet Earth (HD DVD in my case) series I blew it up to around 136" diagonal, or so, which really gave me some of that walk-into-the-picture vibe I enjoyed at IMAX.

And I often go back and forth between the things I like in a smaller projected image vs a larger one. Obviously a larger image will always be more immersive. But the smaller image will pack more picture information into a smaller area which gives a brighter, denser, punchier more plasma-like look which I can really enjoy. A 94" diagonal 16:9 image can look like I've got an amazingly huge flat panel on the wall.

Going with 4 way masking and zooming has given me total freedom for choosing the effect and impact I want, no matter what source material I'm watching. And another benefit I find in varying the image size is it keeps the impact "fresh." If I watched all movies the same size it's human nature that the impact can wear off to some degree. But for some periods I may be watching a smaller image size, and when I make it really big I get that breathtaking "wow" effect like I just put in a new screen.

So...yeah...I'm still ecstatic with my choice. In fact my excitement and appreciation for this room has grown over time whether it's lounging listening to music with the colored mood-lights on the screen or watching
the Twilight Zone series on Blu-Ray with my son.

Our home theater projects sure can be a PIA to work on, but boy they can be worth the effort in the end.

Over 'n out for now (until the video).

Brad,

Well, obviously I'm extremely happy with the way I went in terms of screen flexibility.
I've got my system to be extremely easy to use. Perhaps if it were harder I may not be as happy. Though I bet I'd still want this type of flexibility.

There may be other ways to achieve a variable image size set up but this one worked great for me.

Thank you Mike!


The automated shades are from a company called Solarfective (I think they might be Canadian). I'm very happy with the shades, which have continued to work very well. Especially when retrofitting into old windows, it's tough to get a perfect light seal. The main culprit was some light leaking at the very tops above the blind valance. It was easily solved by getting some thin pieces of wood at Home Depot, cutting to right length, wrapping some black velvet around them, and inserting them on top of the shade valance to block the light. They are essentially invisible to the eye and it all works well.



Yes the Fidelio is noticeably darker than the Carada Black Hole material. Just as surprising is that the Fidelio is darker than even the black flocking material I bought that typically is used to line telescopes! (The black flocking with a sticky backing is discussed in one of my posts in this thread. It is almost exactly the same material as used by Carada for their frame and I used it to fill in some space below the Carada frame for a cohesive look).

The difference in darkness between the Fidelio black velvet and the Carada BH material is not noticeable in my set up when viewing movies. Both are pretty "black hole" like. But ultimately it depends on how you use them.
All the black hole material is on the screen wall, facing me, so it gets very, very little light cast on it, thus remaining pitch dark. Whereas used at another angle it could be different. I have my speakers surrounded in Fidelio black velvet, and a front portion of the floor under the screen done in Fidelio black velvet. In those cases, the velvet is right near the screen but at an angle such that it receives the direct blast of light right off the screen.
In those cases differences in "pitch blackness" of material really do become
more discernible, with only the darkest materials remaining invisible despite the intense light cast on them. The Fidelio remains pitch dark, but I suspect if I'd covered my floor/speakers with the Carada-like material, I may still have been able to just discern them in the dark.

The Black Hole material is terrific to be sure.

The Fidelio is expensive, but it combines two very desirable qualities: It's a real black hole in terms of light absorption, and when the lights are on the Fidelio is a particularly rich looking velvet, so instead of looking cheap they add a sense of luxury to the room...well worth the extra bucks vs cheaper velvet in my opinion.

Sorry, missed this question.

I bought the panel track from Goelst (they have factories around the world; I bought from Goelst America).

Link to Goelst products:

http://www.goelst.nl/rail/products/

Panel track system is top/right of that page.

Cheers,

Thanks.

I've shot most of the video of the room "in action." I just have to put it together and get it on-line.