My ongoing newbie projector blog... - Page 2

At least you're going with Spandex, I'm currently rocking the beige bed sheet screen.

So I've watched a couple movies now with the kids in the basement. We watched SD rips of The Incredibles and The Mummy. Now I'm irritated that I moved the PJ forward a stud. Now at max-zoom I can't quite fill the screen horizontally. There's a couple inches on each side of the screen that aren't lit. I know, some people would say, "Really? You're complaining about a screen being 104" wide instead of 108" wide?" One of the Super Walmarts by me has black felt on clearance at $3 a yard and I was just going to buy whatever they have left of the bolt (provided it's at least 3+ yards) and just frame it in at the 104". Moving the PJ back requires a lot more work, but that's what my gut tells me that I should do. Spend the hour or two doing that so I can zoom the image to the width of the screen.

Yeah, I'm probably going to move it, just haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm not in the biggest hurry right now. I sold my remaining ceiling gridwork system yesterday. After all was said and done, it cost me less than $50 to put my drop ceiling in my approximately 12x18 foot room. Can't complain about that. My concrete side wall and back wall (which will be a false-wall) are going to be full length floor-to-ceiling curtains. I will probably just buy a couple panels every paycheck until it's done, not in a hurry, and it allows me to hide it from the marshal (wife) which is always good.

I'm planning on going with alternating black and I think blue panels and the blue will determine the paint color on the drywall that I put up to keep it consistent.

Looking at some other people's DIY theaters on this forum over the weekend made me discouraged that theirs look so awesome. I have to keep reminding myself that I will end up with a theater in my basement with a 124" diagonal screen for probably less than $500 when everything is done.

$71.88 worth of curtains have been purchased for a whopping 8 panels. Yeesh. I went with the dark blue to counter the black. The panels are each 40"x84". The 84" is too long, but that's what the box of safety pins I bought is for. I'm guessing that since I want the pleated "movie theater wall" look I probably won't get much more than 20" per panel. We'll have to see when I get them up. I'm planning on just securing a wire to one end of the room and running it to an eye-hook at the other end and then using weight to tension it. That may or may not work, but we shall see. The wire/eyehook combo doesn't cost me anything as I already have it at home, so that will be what I try first. I also picked up a gallon of this paint from Home Depot. It's actually quite a bit darker than on my computer screen and it's a pretty darn close match to the blue curtain panels that I picked up. I should be able to get the paint up tonight while my wife is at work. Not sure that I'll have time to tackle the curtains as I still have some other stuff to figure out.

I'm still trying to come up with ideas for attaching ends to 1/2" EMT conduit which seems to be more of a challenge than I first thought. I'll come up with something.

Some of you guys might wonder what the heck I'm doing, and some may even wonder why I explain what I'm doing because some of my ideas are really off-the-wall, but if I can spark ideas for other people, I consider that a win for me.

**EDIT** Oh yeah, just so I could be a pain-in-the-side of the paint guy at Home Depot, I told him that I wanted that color in the cheapest paint he had. He ended up having to scan the color swatch from the Behr display so that the computer could mix it with Glidden paint. He also didn't have the right base paint so he had to recalculate it with the step-up that he had in stock and he knocked off the price difference for me.

Got a lot more done last night that I thought. I got the walls painted, but I think they'll need another coat. That's no big deal, I'll probably throw another coat on this week. I also got the curtains up, which was more of a pain than I wanted, but about as much of a pain as I figured. I did a quick wash/dry on them to get the creases out then ran the wire through them and attached the wires on the ends of the room. Those curtains turned out to be a lot heavier than I figured as no matter how hard I pulled the wire, I couldn't get them up to the ceiling without figuring I was just going to break something.

Out came the hammer drill and the anchors. I ended up scrunching the 40" panels down to 24" to just match the ceiling tiles. I put a hole then an anchor and a screw in right below the ceiling and then "hung" the wire on the screw. Seems to work pretty well. I have a little sag, but over the course of 24", it's not too bad. I can see some of the white wall behind it though, so I'm going to try to tweak it a little bit. The curtains are also too long, so I'm going to fold them up behind themselves and use a few safety pins to hold them.

Now I guess it's time to focus on my movable panels and keep my eyes peeled on Craigslist for cheap carpet to throw down there.

Ran into a snag last night. I was going to put up my grey sheet right over the beige sheet and as I was pulling it tight and stapling it I noticed the there were visible indentations where I pulled it and stapled it. I was also getting a lot of rippling. I came to the conclusion that every cloth exhibits different stretching characteristics. I got 3 sides staples on and then I walked away frustrated and I was tired and wanted a break. A while later I went back and tried stretching it again, but not as taut and it seemed better. I will probably try to stretch the 4th side tonight and I think I'm going to roll another coat of paint tonight too. Or I'll just drink beer. Worst case I just order 3 yards of Spandex and go that route which is around $40 with shipping. Too bad they don't have free shipping codes.

I almost scored some awesome carpet too. Someone on Craigslist was selling grey/black random pattern (hard to describe) 24"x24" carpet tiles for $1 each but it was in a neighboring city Craigslist that I don't check all that often so by the time I contacted him, he said that he just sold what he had. Bummer. He said he has some grey/brown ones which would work, but I can't get over there (about 75 minutes from where I work) during business hours.

Ok, I tightened up the sheet and it seems to be good. I also started working on my idea for the semi-automatic panels but it didn't take long for me to realize that my idea might just not work like I had planned. My servo motors weren't strong enough to raise a hunk of conduit, and while I could fashion some sort of lighter rigid material, I'm just not sure it's worth the effort. The setup also at this point cuts off a couple inches off the top of my screen and while it's not that big of a deal, the reward for a whole mess of work might just be a slightly smaller screen. Right now I have a 124" 16:9 screen and I might just frame it in with some black velvet I bought and call it done. Sure, it doesn't have the sweet geek factor of movable panels, but I'm fairly certain that nobody (mainly my kids) is really going to care about letterboxing on a grey sheet. I could also go low-tech and make some panels out of the velvet and velcro them to the frame. Seems like that's a better use of my time.

I bought 3.5 yards of black velveteen from Walmart this weekend that was on clearance for $2 a yard so I think it cost me $6.89. so no complaints with that.

I also figured out that my Xbox 360 over VGA will output 1280x720 and the projector doesn't seem to mind that resolution and it gives me a full widescreen picture. I played an hour or two of Rock Band drums on the 124" screen and loved it. I think I will try this week to see if my computer will output 1280x720 instead of the 1024x768 and see how that looks. Getting my Start menu off the floor would be nice

So I think I've scrapped my movable panels idea. I took down the stuff that I had on the top couple inches of the screen. I also moved my projector back a stud again so I can use the full 108" width of the screen. I was able to use the ATI control panel to get 1280x720 resolution, but text was pretty hard to read. I'm going to have to play around with it more, as a BluRay rip seemed to look pretty darn good, but in the back of my mind it just bothered me that the desktop/browser etc just didn't look quite right. I really need to find my extra Lenovo keyboard that I have laying around. An hour or two of searching through boxes in the basement and the attic didn't yield any results, so it's possible that it ended up getting tossed accidentally. Noodling around with resolutions would be much easier if I didn't have to walk to the back of the room and use the keyboard and mouse that's attached to the computer.

I think my next step is to frame the screen in and get the velvet up.

Welcome back slacker! How is your liver? I was actually able to get my projector to shoot 1280x720 but it was smaller than the screen, almost as if it was shrunk a bit and I couldn't zoom to fit the whole screen. I was toying with trying to force certain frequencies from the video card. My projector will tell me what it is seeing as far as signal goes and the Xbox (going from memory here) was sending something like 60Hz vertical and 4.9kHz horizontal. Or something like that. I was going to dive into seeing if I could replicate that from the Windows end and see if it would work. I can get the Xbox to display a 1280x720 on the whole 108" width, but it appears that it's letterboxed a bit top and bottom, which I'm ok with. I haven't played around with it much since last week besides grabbing a handful of beers and playing Rock Band drums.

I will try to snap a few pictures too. I tried taking some with my phone but they didn't pick up much detail because it's so dark in that room.

It appears that I can only change overscan on a flat panel. Perhaps it's an HDMI thing and doesn't work for VGA? Not sure, but digging around in Catalyst Control Panel I don't see an option for Overscan. That was my first idea too, as I've had to mess with overscan on my plasma and LCD upstairs.

Hmmmm, wondering if I could use something like this guy to use HDMI out on my video card and then use the overscan feature of Catalyst....

I watched a football game last week via the Xbox 360 using a feed from my HTPC and the image was SO soft. I think tonight I'm going to watch the game via my HTPC and see if it's sharper. I really hope so or else this whole thing might be much ado about nothing.

I didn't notice the image being soft on the HTPC before, but I hadn't watched much TV on it, mainly movies. I THINK that it has to do with the fact that the Xbox is using a TV feed from another computer (multiple HTPCs in the house) and it was also using a non-native resolution on the projector. Probably fine for beating my Yamaha drum set for Rock Band, maybe not so good for video, which is fine. I can use the HTPC down there for video, and I should know later tonight if the PC puts out a sharper image than the Xbox.

Oh snap! My folks gave me $1000 for my birthday. My first thought was, "NEW PROJECTOR!" lol Fairly certain my wife would kill me.

The image from the HTPC was markedly better than the Xbox image. It was a most enjoyable experience, except for the fact that the Packers played like they all had corrective shoes on. Not worried about a preseason game, but it would have been nice to have seen a couple guys have breakout games.