My New Home Theater 2.0, Staggered Wall HT. - Page 3

Starting to fill up the rack

Yeah, FINALLY! And I was really tempted to keep the XPA2 that they sent wrong too.

Receiver is the empty/place holder slot at near the top. I'm thinking either a 4311Ci or the upcoming replacement 4520Ci (release in Sept.) depends on how low the 4311 will goes next month.

Btw, I think I'll wait at least after CEDIA before I decide on the projector. Wanna see what's new coming first.

So far I know, 4520Ci (4311Ci replacement), whole new lineup of JVC projector with 4k e-shift might be available on RS55 replacement/price level ($5k!), new Panny 8000 projector (your 7000 replacement). Espon might/should have a new lineup too (a 5010 brightness/performance + lens zoom would do me fine). So, I'm really against of buying any new equipment at the moment as CEDIA is only a month away. I even hold off on getting the OPPO 93 even tho I already have the custom faceplate for the rack.

See you in a bit.

Just installed the Height Channel speakers this afternoon. Btw front wall will be covered with black GOM fabric.

We've been working on the fabric wall design & color.

Here's my inspiration:

We want a clean looking modern-ish style room, not a typical very detailed cinema space.




And I really like the patchy/stacked wall panel design as I think it'll give the room a bit more interesting.



And here's what Big comes up with:

Picking the fabric color for the wall.

I think I like the 3 level for a bit more randomness.

The bottom of that bulk head will be covered with black GOM fabric panel.

12" step depth seems totally fine. IF you wear size 10+, then you might want to add a few more inches for the steps. 12"-18" seems to be the average step depth.

As for 2' wide, the main reason is for space saving. My room is 15' wide, minus 4' for both steps, that will leave me 11' (132") width for the front row seats. And depends on the style, a row of 4 seat could range from a little under 10' to 11' wide. That's why I didn't/couldn't have any wider steps or I'll be very restricted on the seats' choice.

OK, I've just placed an order of the seats. Palliser HiFi, 2 rows, powered, front row with love seats, back row 4 individual seats. We like it's modern-ish style. And that would also means me & Big will only have no more than 45 days to finish up the room before the seats come! The pressure is on you now Big!

Oh, I think my 8 months old also picked her own chair for the HT too.


Edited by landshark1 - 8/25/12 at 8:26am

I'll ask my daughter to see if she'll let you borrow her seat.

Could you wrap it with fabric so we could see how's the difference of the frame depth look? I'm afraid 1/2" difference might not be enough to showcase the different depth design. May be we could also try 3/4" depth difference too (1", 1 3/4", 2 1/2")?

Ever since we visited Big's awesome HT, both me & my wife were digging his LED movie poster frame. Unfortunately, the source of his frame isn't available anymore. So I've been searching for alternative solution the past month. I thought about using a 40" TV as they aren't much more expensive or could even be cheaper than a lighted poster frame, and certainly very low profile too. However, it doesn't really suit me from what I want from the lighted poster frame. First, I'll have to "feed" the poster to the TV. So, a source of some sort is needed, may be a small PC/laptop, even my home server could do. But added cost of the device & power usage of running it 24/7 "just" for feeding poster doesn't sound too good to us. Another thing I want from the poster frame is, I know most of the user that has lighted poster frame, they are controlled by a switch or some sort. So, in order to have it turn on, it'll need a "user input", manually flip the switch. IMHO, it's not a good solution as I'm sure after 1/2 a dozen times, the owner will never turn it on every time he go into the HT. And most likely will have it on "only" when hosting a gathering/party for "showing off" purpose. That's not really practical as we both want to enjoy it, see it lighted up, whenever we go down to the basement. I've installed Insteon switch + motion sensor in our walk-in closet, and has super high WAF! So I decided to use their wall outlet + a motion sensor, so every time when someone walk down to the basement, the movie posters will turn on itself and everyone will get to enjoy seeing it every day. If I use a TV, this will have some delay as TV needs warm up time to fully turn on, and by the time it warmed up and on, we might passed by the posters already.

We know we don't want the thick light box poster frame for sure. And I've found a couple low profile LED one, one from Stargate Cinema, one from Display2go. I actually stopped by Stargate's office to check them out, but both me & my wife weren't really sure about it. The quality and the finish just isn't as good as we were expected.

Then, I've found Mr.Poindexter's HT who also use Display2go's LED poster frame and by judging his satisfaction & his photos, I know I've found the one I want.

Fast forward to yesterday, I received the poster frame from them. Good thing I've already purchased a double side poster too. The build quality is very good, very sturdy, very metal feel. Not flimsy plastic feel! It's super easy to change poster thanks to the "flip" side edge, and I feel the flip edge will never breaks regardless how many time I'm going to change out the poster. Unlike some plastic one that you actually feel like you're going to break it someday.

I'll be installing a new wall outlet right behind the frame for cleaner look this weekend.

Anyway, here's some pic of the frame.



Lighted up


It's less than an inch in thickness.


The laptop size transformer

I bought this so I could hide the transformer and have the frame hang flat on the wall.

http://www.galesburgelectric.com/Carlon-SC300PRB-Recessed-Dual-Voltage-3-Gang-Old-Work-Plate.html

Want to keep them in the same color, don't want to be too "busy" if using different color/shade.
No special reason other than that's what the build had, and 10GB home networking is still in the far from reasonable even 5 yrs from now. I had GB network through out my old house and this new house. Even though I do transfer full Bluray backup from my main PC to the home server, I've found out that unless I'm using the new & expensive SSD drives; otherwise, the hard drive is the bottleneck rather than the GB network speed.