Ciné-Tronn, An Outdoor Theater Project - Page 4

fast forward to monday the 16th. i was diggin through my photobucket account and found/remembered i had actually built an outdoor screen before! the date on the upload is something like March 2009.

i have a tendenancy to name the screens with a "tronn" ending btw

Meta-Tronn Screen:


Cine-Tronn Screen:


Mega-Tronn Screen:

fast forward to yesterday:

i want to build legs for my mega-tronn screen. first to make it somewhat portable around the yard, but also to be able to take the screen along with me to friends and families homes. private events all of them.

here are the "plans" i sketched out by mid-morning:


i picked up the 7 10' sections of EMT pipe by 1pm (no pic) :P

then i stopped by a local source for the corner connections/fittings i needed here:


PTM has got EVERYTHING needed to make your own screen frame. They sell tarps but they are too reflective. i would recommend a BOC screen anyway for an outdoor screen. but everything else you can get here:


they do have an updated website (i learned only yesterday) at: http://www.canopieselite.com/

u gotta git u one of these Mike!

^you have all the equipment needed already! (im here to prod ya!). the projector, a receiver, speakers, and a white bed sheet! if you want a better quality image you can grab a 54" wide swath of black out cloth from you local fabric store (length is up to you), nail that up or build a pvc frame (CHEAP!). spray for "s'quitos" and have awesome backyard movies!

for the rest of you: i have received plenty of instruction on materials, equipment, frame-building, and even party ideas and general shennanigans over at backyardtheater.com. a lot of ya'll already have all the necessary equipment. all you need is that little push! IM YOUR PUSHER-MAN! i know a lot of y'all are back east and mid-west, your spring time and summer this year can be supa-awesomer! have a gander at BYT.com and see the possiblities! :/

heres an example; last night (saturday 4/21) the lynids meteor shower was going on. unfortunetly we had a deep foggy marine layer here in southern california. however, to celebrate the event (if it is one) i played space related movies!

wall-E





star trek




lost in space:

this is just me fooling around with Adobe After Effects. strangely after rendering the file in AE, the output was composed of the video by itself and the audio by itself! i had to import the two files into Premiere and then the file was a single composition.

i have the AE file if anyone else wants to add their information to it

thanks to ballyweg (and ballyweg.net) for the informative video and files i have just rendered out this disney intro:

a few pics from my wifes' first "Ladies Night" for 2012. it was about 7:20 when i took this picture. most of the women where there but were eating. the movies didnt start till 8 pm. thats when they were done with all their gossip. also they didnt want any pics/evidence from the event.

the front row seats!


shot of the outsiders:


shot of dirty dancing. interesting fact... i didnt realize the movie was set in the 60's! i always thougth it was a wanna-be "Footloose" but set in the 80's like footloose.

from saturday night after the wifes' ladies night was done, i played a few clips from a few movies. if you follow my thread on backyardtheater.com you'd know that im tinkering with projecting anaglyph (red and blue) 3D movies outside. just bought 50 pairs of those paper glasses (red and blue). i had Coraline on blu-ray that had an anaglyph mode, but traded that away. what i use now is my HTPC running powerdvd10 (at the moment). it has a 3D mode in which you can play movies on your HDD in anaglyph, but also pictures and regular DVD's. if you have a windows 7 machine and powerdvd 10 through 12 you can also play regular plain 2D blu-rays in anaglyph mode (red and blue only as far as i can tell). i plan on having an anaglyph movie night sometime this summer with maybe a test run soonish.

i ran maybe 3 small anaglyph 3D tests, but i didnt take any pictures because the image is blurry to begin with.

TinTin:


disneys' african cats:


undercover brother:


enter the dragon:

well lookey here! im diggin through my photobucket account and found lots more "Meta-Tronn" era screens! "Meta-Tronn" is the meta version of the screen i have now. in a way it was simply a test screen.

this was an extreme close up of Modern Warfare 1 to show the low resolution of the borrowed projector:


my favorite pac-man... MRS. PAC-MAN!


found a picture showing the borrowed projector and xbox:


this one shows the screen and the sound system at that time. an extra HTiB i still have laying somewhere:

a few more pics. this is beverly hills cop on that beige screen. i guess i could have adjusted the projector settings but i didnt :/


i remember when i posted this up on the AVS Xbox thread i was referred to as "the Snuggie clan". i still have the snuggie! and yes my dog still has his too!



bonus pics: these 2 pics were from i was testing the idea for "Meta-Tronn". before the outdoor screen and just before i played modern warfare.

this past saturday night was my first 4 movie night! a quad-feature! it helped that the first 2 movies had a short run time. these were for a cinco de mayo fiesta we had. so there is a latin theme except for the last one.

1st puss in boots:


2nd born in east LA


3rd beverly hills chihuahua


4th some world war 2 flying movie... the name escapes me...

Ole!


these are my new outdoor speakers from outdoorspeakerdepot.com.


also the first night i use Flavacol! there was a definitely noticeable flavor improvement to the popcorn. i didnt have coconut oil to really make it authentic but it still came out great!


used this new to us 4oz machine... the wife and i agreed its great for smaller parties, but for big ones we may have to upgrade :0!

^gracias! lol

while digging through my rear-house i found an old gamecube portable screen. it was meant to allow gamecube playtime in a car. found the ac adapter and video input cable, tried it out yesterday as a "video out" monitor. works great but only if i have a source that is either component or composite. dont use many of those. but its also good for the on screen display of the receiver setup. i was doing audio adjustments whilst waiting for the dodger game to start

video out monitor in a temp location:


resolution is not great at all but video does playback. i did try video playback from my iphone through this monitor and it was passable. washed out and crappy resolution but it works. heres a pic with the receivers' on screen display:


this was the dodger game at the 3rd inning. picture must have been about 7:45pm. game had started at 7:10pm.

much later:

between commercials i messed a bit with the projector settings. lowered the brightness a tad and adjusted something called the "de-gamma" setting. overall image did darken but detail (not sharpness) improved considerably. definetly got rid of a slight "wash-out" look


towards the end of the game i was flipping channels. heres a snap of dancin with the stars:


The Voices' finale episode HALL AND OATES!!!!

to cap off the night, my favorite Blues Brothers scene. this song always makes me get up and pull (attempt) some james brown moves!

for those unaware, i am running an htpc outside. the tv signal is running from at OTA antenna, through an HD Homerun dual tuner unit, through my network, to the htpc. highly recommend the HD Homerun

I've figured out how to do some video calibrations before sundown.



The game started.... not that great actually


Further and further down the rabbit hole...

setting up my theaters first video game night. this time it will be a Kinect Game Night. i think mainly kinect sports and kinect adventures as both have various multiplayer game modes. i wonder if i could find Just Dance 3 cheap and soon because that one can have 4 player dancin!

i have 2 options for using the xbox. first is have the xbox and kinect up front under the screen and have a long hdmi cable run back to provide the receiver with sound and the projector with video. i currently have a 30' hdmi cable but i wouldnt want the cable to be on the ground in between players! i'd probably have to get at least a 50' cable, if not a 60' cable to run the cable from the front of the screen, towards the left wall of the property, along that wall, then a left turn towards the projector.

secondly would be to use the kinect plus the 10' extension cable i got for it to have only the kinect up front under the screen. the xbox would be by the projector and receiver. i've used this setup by myself and its a stretch because the projector is 28' from the screen. maybe just run a longer usb 2.0 powered cable? i'll have to dig through the kinect forums.

^true dat. i bought a $20 cat 5e/6 hdmi extender from amazon. the hdmi works great if i plug the hdmi directly to the projector. problem is there is no audio out from the projector to the receiver, thus no audio. i could use the component audio out on the xbox (via a hacked component cable harness) but then i would require a 30' optical audio cable! when i connected the hdmi extender to my receiver and use the receivers hdmi out to the projecter i get a big ol' black screen o' death. nothing. curiously the xbox detects something because it sets itself up (the status lights do that circle thing) that tells me the xbox has done its hdmi hand-shake. the projector doesnt detect anything. i tried different hdmi cables but to no avail. i'll have to find another way :/

this was a busy weekend

friday night started as a kinect/xbox 360 night. i got 4 glorious hours of disneyland adventures, michael jackson experience, kinect sports, and kinect adventures. also threw in a few regular xbox 360 titles. nothing online though.




saturday night was mainly a "date night" of sorts with the wife. started great with dem steaks:


John Carter was first movie:


then Coraline:


the wife went inside at this point

then Men in Black:


then Avatar in anaglyph 3D:


saturday nights movies ended at 3am!

sunday night we hosted a Memorial Day BBQ and Movie Night. final head count was 45.

played about 30 minutes of cartoons so we wouldnt have to play a full-on cartoon movie for the kids. the idea was that most kids have already seen most cartoon movies out there. so not to waste too much time on the kids and get to the real "meat". lol

originally planned a bunch of older titles such as caspar, felix the cat, popeye, betty boop, etc. the quality of the dvds we had bought with those titles on it was pretty horri-bad! ended up mixing 5 newer cartoons i had at the last minute and they were:

1. donald duck "the fox hunt"


2. disney/pixar "for the birds"


3. disney/pixar "presto"


4. tom and jerry "yankee doodle mouse"


5. disney/pixar "lifted"


6. spongebob "biggest fan"


then the main feature "this means war"

Friday night was a Indiana Jones Fest!

Raiders:


Temple of Doom:




I was up super early do I only handled till midnight

Saturday was my nieces kindergarden graduation and movie Fest too! The following set of pics are from the party at my parents house

Warm-up show consisted of some Foghorn Leghorn:



And a favorite Daffy Duck episode of mine:


Disney/Pixars Lifted is a favorite of my niece:


Main feature (and request of niece) was Jurassic Park:


I was told by 3 neighbor kids that they could hear the T-Rex scream from half a block away! >* as it was still before 11, the volume was still up! lol

Second movie was Alice in Wonderland (Burton)


Third was The Little Mermaid


Fourth was about an hours worth of Undercover Brother

friday night. the wife decided to join me outside. its been a small habit of mine that friday nights are my night, thus allowing me to play movies or video games or whatever.

before the main movie, i was playing a wide varied assortment of recorded tv shows, cartoons, and music videos.
such as the pixar "hawaiian vacation" short using the characters from "toy story":


some "dirty jobs", mike rowe is the man! (ps: this is the pg-13 picture, the original pic i wanted to post had mike elbow deep into the horses.... "backside", it was very funny but i dont want to offend! :P )


some donald duck, i believe this episode is called "the window washers", hilarious episode with donald, pluto, and a bee.


then the wife popped up and we watched "the aviator". never watched it before. its ok.



i was reminded of the awesomness that is "starship troopers", i made it my mission to find the movie on blu-ray. i've had it on dvd but wanted the resolution increase. could easily find it online but i just happen to spot it out of the corner of my eye at the local Ralphs!





about 2:30 am i popped in my also freshly acquired copy of "yellow submarine". i only withstood about 20-30 minutes, i set this movie on the side burner and will get back to it later on.

onto saturday night! the wife decided not to join me so i did as i pleased! MUWAHAHAHAHA! pretty much ate cheese-its and a wacky Tamarind soda i found at the local mexican supermarket and played Wii.... you know... for testing purposes!

started with a super mario collection. its in a red box and im at a loss for the actual name, but here it is.


after playing mario 1 all the way to the final castle (i could never remember the correct path there!), played some mario 3, then jumped to mario kart wii


i've never played it before and it seemed slow without that sliding round the corners and getting a boost thing from mario kart 64 (the last kart i played) :/


jumped to smash bros. its almost exactly like i remember the original smash bros on the super nintendo... you smash all the buttons and once in awhile you look like you know what you're doing! also i did in fact buy the "classic" controller for this title alone.


played some wii sports tennis, baseball, bowling, and pool (i think pool is from wii play)

warios' smooth moves:


overall had a pretty fun time out back saturday. mario kart and wario smooth moves were the highlights. then i played the final game of the night... it was kinda like grabbing some nasty candy at the end of an awesome chinese lunch (little asia). it kinda ruined the events!

i dont think i've mentioned it here but i've taken my recently built HTPC out of the equation. most of the videos i playback outside now are direct dvd or blu-ray rips. i own them and ripped them all myself btw. 3 weeks ago i bought a WDTV Live. it plays back all the file formats i needed. obviously it doesnt playback dvd's or blu-rays. i've heard if i "jailbreak" the thing, that i'd be able to use almost any external cd/dvd drive. even heard it can use the old xbox hd dvd player!

anywas all my movies, videos, music videos, internet clips and music are on an external hdd. that hdd plugs into 1 of 2 usb slots on the wdtv live, the wdtv unit plugs via hdmi to my receiver, that receiver feeds (via hdmi) my projector and viola! instant backyard theater!

for blu-rays or dvds, i can instantly add my ps3. i heard it plays video games too! ZIIIIIIIIIIIIING!
for hd dvd's i use my toshiba stand-alone hd dvd player (cant recall the model)