The Once and Future Theater - Page 3

For this one, I've increased screen size a little. 45 (up from 42) inches tall. I've also moved the seats back, decreasing viewing angle a smidge. It helps. The new riser required is 17 inches. Should I move the screen up? It looks low in the diagram, but I don't want it too high for the front row.

Of course, the other thing is the screen material. I've been planing on the Center Stage XD. Is 9.5 ft still too close?

Also, this second arrangement puts my first row exactly in the middle of the room. Most likely a bass null...

Well, see that's the thing. I don't really know what ratio is going to be best for me. I was hoping to get the first row a little on the close side, and the second row a little on the far side. That way neither would be egregious and I could pick the one I preferred later.

Do you have a link to the calculator? I've been doing it all long hand.

This next one is much better, but it pushes up against some other limits. This 48' tall screen is 9.6 feet wide (which will complicate my secret plans for masking), but with 11' first row distance maintains the THX viewing angle (36 degrees). The second row is now within three feet of the rear wall. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but at least the first row is not in the center of the room.

The process I've been using doesn't require I know the bottom screen position, but I went back and "measured" in the image. The most recent image has the screen bottom 29 inches off the floor. I haven't decided about a stage for sure, but I was planing on one, as well as a complementary proscenium over the screen.

Here's the process I've been using:
1. decide image height (arbitrary - guess and check)
2. use image height to get other screen dimensions and first row distance (THX 36 degree viewing angle for 16:9)
3. use first row distance and image height to determine top of screen (15 degrees up from first row eyes)
4. draw in screen, top to bottom.
5. draw in second row distance based on first row plus 70 inches
6. draw sight line form bottom of screen to second row
7. "measure" difference in eye heights to determine riser height

Thanks for the link. I'll bookmark it.

I see the minimum height you noticed. I'm close to that recommendation too; 29 inches is just over the 2'4" he gives here.
I think I'm zeroing in on it. I'll keep fiddling.

I have been trying to notice where I like to sit, and I think it is about 1 screen width for 1.85, so just inside two screen heights, which is pretty close, but not super close. I'll get back to work on some more complete renders and check it all out.

I appreciate the response - even you telling me what I would tell someone else is useful. Sometimes I get a little lost in the details and need to talk it out.

My rationale for my seating preference is based on 16:9 because I believe that 'scope should be wider. If HDTV is large, but not too large (?), then 'scope is just wide enough to be awesome.

The issue with the compromise I mentioned earlier, in reference to one row being a little close and the other a little far, is my attempt at hedging, but also the result of real geometry problems. If "the sweet spot" for distance is a range only one screen high (say two to three screen heights), and rows can't be closer together than one screen height, then both rows can't be in the sweet spot. So, in my view, unless you can get a really big screen, someone is too close or too far. The question is only, which row do I want to sit in? And I'm happy to make that decision later. The decision I can't make later is how tall and how deep to make the riser.

I've proven to myself that if the first row comes back to eleven feet from the four-foot-high screen (13ish feet from the front wall), then the screen will be high enough off the floor for the riser to be sufficient at 14 inches. The only downside I'm sure of as a result of this is the proximity of the second row to the rear wall. Their are other possible problems, like screen width and my masking plan, plus I have to go find a projector I can afford to light it up (leaning toward the JVCs).

I totally dig where you're coming from about building a theater for empty seats; I just don't see that it's worth it if I can't share it. I'll tear my hair out for a little while trying to make the compromises that keep everything as good as possible, but hopefully when it's done I can let my guests have their choice of seat and know that I won't be disappointed - in part because I'll know I'd done everything I could to make it as good as possible. Of course, that's just my take on it. Has your planning been different?

I'll get back to my drawings...

Appreciated. I'm hungry.

Hopefully I can build some wiggle room into the final positioning of seats so that no one is up against the edge of the riser and the seats can be moved after I get a few hours on the system.

RTROSE, when you say 115" screen, you mean diagonal, don't you?

I need to do some more testing to know what's right for me, but it seems like at least some (RTROSE is almost 4 feet nearer than THX) are happier with bigger/closer than I'm planning.

The two things (OK three things) that keep pushing my seats back are vertical viewing angle, horizontal viewing angle, and screen weave. Screen weave is the only one with a fixed value - I just don't know for sure what it is (I don't want to be able to see the weave in the screen). Some reviews suggest that the weave disappears somewhere in the ten to eleven foot range.

So here's what I think I'll do (some of which I was planing to do anyway): First, I'll build the riser 8 feet plus two 2x12 from the back wall. That will give me space to push the second row forward a foot or so without problems - 4 feet to rear wall will still give me about 2 feet between the front of the seat and the edge of the riser. Then I'll build the screen as large as I can fit, and then hang masks in front of it. This has been my plan all along. I'll build the hangers for the masks so that their adjustable for each image size - and no matter the image size, there is no screen edge to come up against; it's always the mask.

This should also give me plenty of room for positioning the front row - it could move back if the bass is bad or the weave is too large, or up if the image is too small. In fact, I'm still leaning toward free standing seats that can be pushed around at will and won't need to form a neat row. I'm pretty sure the 14 inch riser makes all of this possible, assuming I can tolerate a little higher screen - this current plan puts the screen within 2 feet of the ceiling. That should give me enough room to build the proscenium that will conceal the mask hanging system.

Now I just hope the projector throw range and brightness allow it to be placed just over/behind the second row. I understand that for all the power zoom and shift functions to work smoothly for CIH, the lens shouldn't be higher than the top of the screen. That puts the bottom of the projector only about 5.5 or 6 feet off the floor of the riser. That's too much to plan for now. I'll just have to find a projector that will do it, once the time comes. Hopefully it will be one of the JVC's like the open box specials the AVScience Store had recently (I almost bought one...)

I'm starting to come around to the idea of the biggest screen possible. Somehow all the screens way larger than recommended have slipped by me. Among others (like you guys, Greg and RTROSE), I read CAVX's recommendation that screen height should be room length divided by 3.something (I forget right now). I'll go back later tonight and see how big I can push. I'll worry about brightness later.

The only "rules" this layout breaks are the vertical angle for the front row (and it doesn't really break it, it just pushes it to 20 degrees instead of my preferred 15) and the screen is more than 80% the width of the room. As free bonuses, there are a few inches of wiggle room for seat placement and screen placement, so I can revise without major problems; the rear row came farther away from the wall in order to get the sight line, but still leaves 15 inches between the sofa and the riser edge; and with the larger screen, all the seats are closer to the ideal spot; not too mention that keeping the seats closer together will hopefully make optimizing sound easier; there was something else I liked about this I hadn't foreseen, but I forget now what it is...

It hasn't managed to keep the first row far from the center of the room, but maybe I'll get lucky with bass response. There is a lot of available floor space for subs, so placement options abound. Plus, I'm still planning/budgeting for two.


In this layout, ^^ the screen is the bold line, with the 16:9 portion highlighted in orange. The orange spot in the second row of seats is three times the image height.
I've included this ^^ elevation mostly just for reference.

This ^^ is the screen wall. The horizontal grey lines are the eye heights for two rows. I've marked the 16:9 image area as well as zoomed all the way to 2.40. The details of the stage are preliminary and may never get planned carefully. Not sure. Not worried.

Does this look convincing? I feel fairly convinced, but I haven't gotten in to the projector calculators...

Thanks RT, I reposted my pictures in a thread in the CIH subforum and got one response that it was going to be too big, but others will disagree. So, I think I'll aim for this big and then mask in to whatever I like. Funny - that was what I thought a year ago...

As far as my subs, I'm not totally sure, but the ones I'm looking at and planning on are CHT's sealed subs with 18" drivers - CHT SS-18.1. Link Being a new company and internet-direct, the offerings continue to change a little every few months. User reviews are very promising, and the price to performance ratio seems very good. In fact, I expect to order all my speaker gear from them.

I like the way you think!

Today's been a good productive day. My brother-in-law, Robert, came over this morning and helped with some demolition.
Before:


After:


Also, I told Robert he'd be internet-famous; so the ten of you who see this are his audience.

This all went fairly smoothly. We started around 9:30 this morning and had returned from the big box store with materials to seal it up by a few minutes after 12.

Then I took a break for lunch and my buddy Ben came over to help seal it up. We were supposed to have siding to install over everything, but the big boxes don't have the right size in stock, so I'll have to do some searching.

You have to start with a new stud. This one is actually recycled. Can you guess which of the "studs" is "used" here?

Then you apply some sheathing. In this case, 7/16 OSB, because again, the big box doesn't carry full 1/2 - what a bunch of baloney!

Then you wrap it up. We're not bad wrappers, for a couple of suburban white dudes.

Finish it off with a red solo cup - PROCEED TO PARTY!


There's a few imperfections. Like some of the OSB wasn't quite square, so there are some gaps that will get some Great Stuff (or is there a better option?)

The big "oops!" was the cement board that broke - you can see it in the upper right of the wrapped up wall image, above. I've got plans to use some aluminum sheathing behind it and just sort of hope for the best - nail and caulk it back into place. The alternative is to remove the whole board, since I don't want a seam over the other window. That would be a huge hassle and risk breaking more boards in the process. So I'm trying to stop the bleeding, as it were.

I'll get some new siding up Wednesday, hopefully. I guess I'll have to call around to some building supply houses and see who's got it, or see if Lowe's or Home Depot can special order 12 planks for me. Then I get to break in my new paint sprayer! Someone around here reposted a link that MississippiMan had posted for a killer deal on a refurb HVLP sprayer - HV2900 spray station for $50, so I got it. Seems awesome to me!

Now it's time to shower and head out to the movies. I've got tickets to The Hunger Games tonight - pretty fired up about it.

Hope all your Sundays were as productive as mine,
Fred

As it turns out, I'm not a big Toby Keith fan, I just like to yell "PROCEED TO PARTY!" I will, however, come check your thread again - thanks for stopping by!

Also, as it happens, all those studs are reused. I kept them from the demolition, and since these are short lengths, finding portions without gaping holes or bends was pretty easy.