Rich H's Variable Image Size Home Theater - Build Thread - Completed! - Page 3

Thanks guys. I'll get to answering any questions. Just gotta post the final shots/descriptions....

SO...DOES IT ALL WORK?

Believe it or not: Yes.

There have certainly been many bumps in the road, but ultimately it worked out even better than I hoped for.

The JVC projector puts out a stellar image.

The projector lift works beautifully and reliably. In fact the projector lift may actually be the thing that gets the most "Oh My God" comments in the whole room. Once the button is pressed the projector appears out of nowhere, rising from behind the sofa up...up...up quite high. I get lots of "It's like a James Bond movie" comments. :-)

The screen wall turned out just as I wanted. I was quite nervous about how it would look, given how busy it could have appeared with buikheads, two different masking systems combined etc. What really helped was using the Fidelio black velvet everywhere possible which gave a consistency to the material look. And the fact that all the screen wall fabrics/materials (excepting screen) are black, you don't see little seams or discontinuities. So the whole screen wall looks really even, coherent, one-of-a-piece.
It strikes me as having a coherent built-in look, rather than a bunch of systems thrown together.

Not to mention I get that image-floating-surrounded-by-pitch-black look I was craving!

MASKING: It works!

I knew the system would be a bit of a kludge: the Carada only offers 2 preset image heights: 16:9 (masks fully open) and 2:35:1 (masks deployed). While the Goelst offered 5 different image width pre-sets. Both Carada and Goelst systems also allow you to move the panels to any in-between points - in the case of the Carada system there is a "jog" button that moves the masks in 1/2" increments. The Goelst system you just hold down the "open" or "close" buttons and the masking smoothly travels to wherever you want. It stops on a dime too! Very responsive to the remote, to perfectly precise masking is quite easy.

During initial planning stages for my HT, I wasn't actually sure how'd I'd use the system. Was I just going to zoom the image first to whatever size I want and then mask around the image using the masking controls? Or would I more likely use pre-set image sizes and then use the projector zoom to fit those?

Turns out I've found it easiest to have pre-set image sizes. I select an aspect ratio/image size, and as the screen is altering it's shape I zoom the image to fit. It's fast and easy.

This would all have to be whipped into shape by a powerful Universal Remote Control, which is why I bought a full RTI system. It can be programmed to do almost anything you can dream up. My AV installer (who sold me the RTI and programmed the remote) and I found that we could use macros to make one-button commands for literally any image AR or size as we wanted. Aside from the screen shape itself, there was no limit.

We made some initial image sizes that employed the pre-set stopping points available on the Goelst/Carada systems. Then for all the subsequent image sizes/AR choices, we would choose the closest pre-set stopping points already programmed, and followed by the appropriate amount of "jog" and "open/close" commands to get the masks to the desired new position.

At this point I have 16 pre-set image ARs and image sizes and have found no need for more.

Now, the one issue with this system is that, when you select certain image sizes the masks don't travel directly to that shape. Rather, they move out, or in, to an intermediate position, and then move again to the final position. So the screen sometimes does a "magic shape changing thing" where, if you didn't know what image size was chosen, you'd wonder where it's going to end up. I don't mind this, it actually looks kind of cool and the timing is virtually perfect for how long it takes to zoom the image anyway. (Takes about 12 to 15 seconds to change images size/AR).

Lastly, the masking system has proven to be amazingly reliable and accurate! I keep measuring to see if there is any drift, but the Carada and Goelst masks stop dead on to wherever they were programmed, over and over.

So I can give my hearty recommendation for anyone considering the same type of solution for automated masking.

MASKING SYSTEM SHOTS

Here are some quick shots of the masking in different positions (BTW, some of the masking lines may look
crooked in these shots; it's the camera lens, they are straight in real life):

1:85:1



2:35:1



The extra tall screen (vs strict CIH) allows me to open up the image height/size for more spectacular presentations when desired, for instance Avatar, IMAX-source movies...or just when I want a bigger 16:9 picture:



I can also go for a bigger 4:3 image as well:



This was very gratifying for a recent viewing of the Wizard Of Oz blu-ray, where I could have quite a huge 4:3 image for a cinematic effect.

HERE'S MY RTI T2-C REMOTE CONTROL:



I love this remote. It was certainly a pricey remote control system, but it feels like quality when you hold and use it - it's really solid, very ergonomic in my hand etc.

Perhaps a better shot:




For me it's virtually the "perfect remote" insofar as it has all the hard buttons I would need as well as a customizable touch screen. I started with a more fully touch-screen oriented remote (a T3) but missed the ergonomics of hard buttons, so this remote fits the bill.

We have it working via RF antenna. The signals are sent from the remote to the RF antenna, which then sends the signal to an RTI RP6 control module, mounted in my equipment rack. Since all the commands are actually stored in the command module, which is hard wired to my equipment, it means that even for the longest macro commands, the remote only has to send a single command via RF, then the macro string is reliably executed by the main RP6 unit. No unreliable macros and you don't have to point the remote at any components.

LIGHT CONTROL

I use the Lutron Grafik Eye system, which allowed me to break up the lighting into 6 different discretely controlled zones on the ceiling. There are 8 pot lights, which are controlled as 3 different zone - from closer to the screen to the furthest from the screen, and four sections of track lights, in an outer square. The track lights are worked as 3 different zones: front colored lights, side lights, over the sofa lights.

This allows me total control over the lighting and vibe in the room. I can control exactly how much light we might want to have on over the sofa area, without spill on to the screen. Once you've controlled directivity of the lights like this, combined with non reflective surfaces, it's pretty startling just how bright you can have the lights on over the sofa area while having an image on the screen. The image looks almost the same whether bright lights are on over the sofa or not. It's almost a plasma-like experience, and this is with a Stewart ST-130 1.3 gain white material, which is among the most sensitive-to-ambient-light screens you can buy.

I can select light control either from the remote home page or from any of the movie/TV watching pages. Selecting the LIGHTS button brings me to the light control page, for different pre-set lighting scenes:



More discrete controls are on the next page, to control the different zones of light separately:



Choosing the COLORED LIGHTS button brings up the page with the LED colored light controlls, mapped to the screen. So I can select light color, light dissolve patterns or whatever:

USING THE SYSTEM: WATCHING A MOVIE

I find the image looks excellent even if I simply just close the automated blinds and the doorway curtains. However, being a fellow AVS nut you know I want to maximize image quality by controlling light in the room. So to that end I've ensured I have options available to help. Again, I went dark on the floor, ceiling and furniture because those are things that would be generally hard to change to watch a movie. I went light on the walls to keep it cheery in the day time, and because I figured ways I could easily change the reflectivity of the room for movie watching using curtains/blinds. Besides, materials like velvet curtains are, in terms of reflectivity, generally much darker than any paint. I could probably paint the room black and it would still be more reflective than using dark velvet curtains pulled along the walls.

First, here's a close up of the remote control MAIN PAGE (or "Home") screen:



As you can see I can choose the screen size either before I put a movie in or there's an option in the movie-watching pages to do so as well.

When I press the WATCH MOVIE button it goes to the movie-set-up page:



Pressing "System On" starts a macro that: shuts the window blinds, turns the projector and equipment on and sets the lighting to dim (I turn the lights off when everyone is settled in). The PROJ UP and PROJ DOWN buttons raise and lower the projector. That command is also mapped to a hard button that is hard to see in the picture. When you press and hold PROJ UP this happens:

PROJECTOR BEGINS RISING FROM BEHIND SOFA



PROJECTOR LIFTED TO FULL HEIGHT:




"Look up...look waaaay up...." (Canadians will know that one). It's a neato sight watching the projector telescope way up high. That will be part of the video I'll post, hopefully soon.

You can also see my rear FX speakers mounted between the bay windows. They do a nice job of filling in the rear ambience for movies etc.

CUTTING LIGHT REFLECTIONS

This is where curtains, and some other hidden ploys, come into action. After I've pressed the SYSTEM ON button and the projector is warming up, I quickly pull the curtains around the room.

There's a curtain that sits in the back wall corner, that I can pull along the back wall:







Room entrance:



Curtains pulled to close off room entrance. They also pull along the walls right up to the side FX speaker:



What about the other side of the room? The fireplace side? Well, I want to kill reflective surfaces along that wall as far as I can a well. To that end I had a blind made from the same chocolate brown velvet as the curtains. The blind is hidden up between the small space between the coffered ceiling and the wall, so it's completely out of site when not used. I've taken this over-exposed photo, looking up into the ceiling where you can see the blind hiding:



Here's the blind when lowered:



Next I have another panel of the brown velvet I had made to cover the rest of the fireplace.
It's kept in the ottoman nearest the fireplace:




It has 3 little eyelet holes, which hook on to 3 discrete hooks on the fireplace. Here's a close up of one hooking point:



FIREPLACE COVER ON (images are over-exposed somewhat so you can see better):



The curtain to the side of the screen covers that section of wall. Together they provide a very dark, non-reflective material surface along the wall, well out from the screen sides:



Again, this process is very fast. I can do this transformation in under 30 seconds.

I even had a large panel made from the Fidelio Black Velvet material. This panel is kept in one of the ottomans. When I want I can even lay that on the floor, out from the stage area, to make the floor entirely black right up to the ottomans. The effect is plenty amazing, actually. The rug is already dark so I don't think it's a big deal in terms of killing light reflection, but the way the room just disappears in front of you when all this is done just sucks you into the image big time. Many a guest has commented on this aspect. I think attention to the little details which many dismiss as subtle or unimportant end up reaping big dividends overall.

USING REMOTE CONTROL...and MASKING CONTROLS

If I choose BLU-RAY from the WATCH MOVIE page, it switches the source to Blu-Ray and ends on this page:



I like the fact all the transport and menu buttons are mapped to the remotes hard buttons for ease of use in the dark, freeing up the touch screen to have various options readily available. Pressing SOUND, or PICTURE brings me to pages allowing fine control.

You can see on the bottom right that there is a SCREEN SIZE button, like on the main home page. Pressing that button brings up pages from which I can select and manipulate image sizes. PAGE ONE:



PAGE TWO



What happens is I choose a pre-set Aspect Ratio/Image size button, say...16:9 115"

That starts the screen size changing and calls up the projector's lens zoom feature on the screen. As the masking is changing size I'm zooming the image out to fit the width of the screen - the projector is centered so it zooms out evenly on both sides. This makes it really quick and easy to just zoom until the edges of the image meet the new image width.
Then it's just a quick vertical shift up or down to adjust the image into place (the top/bottom masks will have stopped in place by that point).

ETA: This is also were a good universal remote pays dividends. I have all the commands needed for making a new image size mapped to the IMAGE SIZE pages. The projector lens functions are mapped to the center cursor buttons (zoom/shift etc), while, aside from the discrete image size buttons being on the LCD screen, the masking open/close control of the Carada is mapped to the "channel up/down" ("open/close" masks) and the Goelst side masking is mapped to the "volume up/down" ("open/close") buttons...just in case any minor adjustments need to be made to the masking. So it's all easy to reach by one thumb.

This process is quick and painless. I have it down to as low as 12 seconds to change from one AR/image size to a new one. And guests tend to think it's way cool watching the process. I use the JVC RS20 projector's lens pattern, which has all the relevant ARs marked in "laser green" against a black background, and it really does look cool using it.

SCREEN SHOTS

Ok, here are some very quick screen shots of the system at various image shapes/sizes. Unfortunately my tripod was a piece o' crap and was very wiggly, so the low exposure times plus the wiggle made for somewhat blurry images. But I want to finish this thread and can't be bothered to do better for now. I left some lights on over the ottomans to try to give a little bit of perspective to the shots, but I note that the screen size changes don't come across with remotely the same size difference/impact they do in person. But...it'll have to do.

Here's a 1:85:1 (almost 16:9) AR image, from Ang Lee's HULK (I think around 105" diagonal):



You do get a sense of the image-floating-in-black effect that I was going for. It's one of the more satisfying results of the reno, to my mind.

Image in wide mode - LOTR Return Of The King:





AVATAR at 122" diagonal:



WIZARD OF OZ, 4:3 AR, at full screen height:

Whew...that's all I can think of posting for now..until I manage to put any video up.

Feel free to let me know what you think or ask questions. I tried to design to overcome various challenges and issues. I certainly learned a lot from this forum. I posted in detail just in case any of my ideas/approach are remotely helpful to other people wrestling with similar design/aesthetic/ergonomic issues.

I'll respond soon.

Cheers,

I don't know if I mentioned it, but in case it wasn't obvious from the pix, my L/C/R speakers around the screen have been covered with (fitted) Fidelio black velvet as well, so with the lights down the completely disappear from view.

REPLIES TO COMMENTS SO FAR




Thanks for the invite. Careful, I may well take you up on it. It's how I met AVS forum member "mrlittlejeans" as well.

I was crazy about details on this project. You wouldn't believe even how many sofa materials I researched, everything figured out to the inch. It was like a grotesque, surreal Rubik's cube of renovation horror. Every time I tweaked an inch there, other things would be affected.

I have a pal who is in to music and 2 channel stereo and who has a nice little projection system as well. It's an old Panasonic AE700 720p projector and a smallish graywolf screen. It's all he needs and he's very happy (I like his set up too - I watch a lot of stuff over at his house).

Sometimes I thought it would be wiser to be more easily satisfied rather than sweat every detail. But I think one element of wisdom when doing these projects and soliciting advice is "know thyself." I know that ultimately all the little things, the things I didn't do when I had the chance, would bug me...even if they wouldn't bug someone like my pal.

That's why it can be hard taking advice from some people who don't share the same characteristics; solutions for their temperament may not be solutions for mine.

In the end of course I'm glad I sweated the details. Everytime I use my room I feel like everything, every detail, is "just right" and just as I desire, so it's extremely satisfying. I use the room constantly.

So...take that FWIW. May your "pain" end soon and the movie watching begin.




Curious what you think of the end results. If you don't like it no problem, I understand.


Will do.


So do I. I'm all about flexibility and being able to alter the mood of the room via lighting adds to the fun. And they are cheap!




You spotted it, you wily dog you.

Yeah, a few of the lights aren't working at the moment. It might be the bulbs which I have to check out, but I couldn't be bothered waiting any longer to take photos (my friend, a photographer, took a bunch of the "finished room" photos for me).


Thanks. Another benefit of having the speakers "disappear" during a movie is that when you don't see the sound source your brain tends to "map" the sound to the picture better. It may not go all the way to an Acoustic Transfer screen effect, but it gets closer.

I find it pays off to pay attention to what might seem "little" or "subtle" details when designing the viewing experience. It makes the difference between "good" and getting to the "next level." A number of forum members have made awesome theaters and clearly understand this.
(Some of the builds here blow my mind in the scope of the work...they make me actually think I'm the sane one!).


Nice to hear from you Kelvin and I appreciate the props. Steal away

Since I described some of my earlier ideas and reno stages on the UK AV forum, I figure I'll get around to posting some of this stuff on that forum as well.


Cheers.

It's really convenient too; if I have to get at the projector for any reason, clean it, change the bulb or whatever, it's easy to just lift it up to work on.
Another benefit is that it can go both high enough to work with an angular-reflective screen like my Stewart ST-130, or it could go only as high as needed to work with a retro-reflective screen like the Da Lite High Power screen (which needs the projector lower, closer to the viewer's head height).
Turned out I didn't go with the High Power screen, but it's nice to know the flexibility is there.


Dixon, so nice to hear from you. Look at our join dates, huh? Remember when we had one foot into the future with our spanking new flat screens?

Thank you for the compliments regarding the room. I mean to post a few photos on my old "Goodbye Panasonic Plasma" thread. I don't know if anyone I know is still around in the plasma forum.


Much obliged.

I actually really enjoy the process of changing the picture size. It's fun and looks cool.

Over 'n out.

Brad,

Thanks. If my wife is happy I must have done something right.

Regarding the stained glass windows, I understand. However close up the windows were old, stained and grotty, not to mention buckled and cracked so air was coming in during the winter. I was told they couldn't be fixed.

For me the "nice" factor of those windows wore off long ago; I always wanted a better view outside to the street, which has beautiful trees and houses, which the stained glass blocked. Plus, I wanted to counterbalance the fact was was doing a dark ceiling and some dark furniture by getting rid of the stained glass and letting in more light. I think the room remains as bright as it does, despite the darker ceiling, due to this decision.

I can't remember exactly when the house was built. Sometime between 1915 and 1925 I think, though I may be a bit off. I could find out, I think, if you really want to know.

Much obliged Art!

My reno is certainly not going to thrill those looking for the more spectacular theater-like constructions that can be seen on this forum. But happily it does suit my tastes and goals for the room.

I just tried stretching a bit of the Fidelio velvet (I still have some bits left over). It's actually quite tight as fabrics go, likely due to the backing, so it stretches very little when pulled.

However, do I infer correctly your masking idea is to have pull down masking, which roll up on blinds? If so I know from experience that most normal materials won't do.

I have one area left on my wall, beyond my fireplace toward the back of the room, that is not covered by curtains when watching a movie. I had planned on using a blind system for that space - material put on a roller blind, hidden up in the ceiling, that I'd pull down to cover that area of the wall.

The blind place rejected most materials as too stretchy and we settled on choosing materials from those offered by blind manufacturers, which were dark black out plastic fabrics (no stretch at all). I haven't employed this yet.

You might find that your blind place will try with non-standard materials like the Fidelio velvet, I don't know.

This is one reason why I made the velvet cover/blind over my fireplace a "roman blind." That style of blind essentially folds the material up, rather than winding it around a roller, and hence stretching isn't an issue, leaving fabric choices much more open.


You bet. I was a fixture there for over a year looking at various fabrics for my room. I looked at all their black velvets. They were decent, but I saw nothing that was as dark and as nice looking as the Fidelio fabric.