Jedirun's Theater - Finally Moving Out of the Garage - Page 2

I need to do some paint touch ups and some more clean up, We are having the carpets cleaned on Saturday. I need a to purchase an XLR cable for the S2, a few surge protectors and a couple of HDMI cables.

I have a voltage regulator that I will use on the circuit dedicated to my sources and processor. My guess is that they will need it more than the amps.

I will see if the GIK panels will block out all of the light from the back window, or if I need additional window coverings. I might buy replacement blinds and then fill the window cavity with insulation, to hopefully keep the window from rattling.
Edited by Jedirun - 10/24/12 at 11:23am

I haven't been on here in a while, but there has been some activity in the theater.

I finally ran Audyssey for the front stage and am loving the sound with the JTR T8's and S2.

I have purchased my projector. It will be here next Wednesday, so I really start using the room, although I am still a few months away from purchasing seating.

I decided not to use my temporary surrounds and instead, use them in another room. They were my old main speakers and were concerning for a tipping risk on my speaker stands.

So this month, I will have my front stage and projector, and possibly GIK panels on the back wall or an new colorimeter and calibration software. I am probably going to go with the Display 3 Pro package from Chromapure. Most likely, I will get the GIK panels first, as this will cover the back window and they are cheaper than the calibration package.

Next month, I will buy my 4 slanted 8 surrounds and the either the panels or the display calibration package, or both if I can't swing them this month.

In January or February, I will either buy my front row of theater seating or buy new living room furniture and temporarily move the living room couch into the theater. (This may be the more likely scenerio for maximum WAF.)

My wife has begun decorating the theater which is a very positive development. Maybe we will get some bean bag chairs or something as temporary seating for the next 2-3 months and start putting it to use.

My wife said that she would like to do the theater seating before the living room. I may have a functional theater, sooner than I thought.

I got my S2 dialed in tonight. I was an idiot and had it set to 0 thinking that was the bottom, rather than the loudest setting. I think Audyssey was having trouble with it, having to set it as low as -12.5.

I reset the speaker levels to 0 in my SSP, calibrated my T8's and S2 to 75 db using the gain settings of my amps and then ran Audyssey again.

Now I feel like the S2 is contributing without having to bump it up a couple of db.

The projector is here. I should be able to get it installed by next Wednesday.



I put some old blackout curtains over the blinds in the window in the picture above. The plan is to cover that whole wall with GIK 244 panels for sound, to cover the curtains and to block any remaining light leakage.

The cable along the wall in the picture is for a UPS for the projector. I figure a little insurance to protect the bulb is reasonable.

I rehung the fan last weekend and now it is solid as a rock. For now I will install the projector on the pedestal as the fan may come in handy during the summer, even being this close to the ocean.

If we give in and get air conditioning, I may end up ceiling mounting the projector and freeing up some floor space.

Planned purchases for this month include the GIK panels and theater seats.

As soon as the seats show up, I will have a functional theater. I will still be missing surround sound, but movies will be watchable.

The 4 Slanted 8 surrounds and colorimeter and calibration software will have to wait until January, unless I end up with a ton of extra money. That is pretty unlikely with Christmas on the way.

In any event, we should get to watch our inaugural movie a week from now. It will most likely be Brave so the whole family can watch together. My wife and I have not seen that yet anyway.

Small update.

I have 4 GIK 244 panels coming for the back wall and 6 242 panels coming for the ceiling. That will get me to 19 panels in the room including the 9 behind the screen.

I still haven't been able to get the projector set up. Maybe I will have time this weekend.

I can't wait to actually watch something in there, even with no real seating.

I got the projector hooked up, but by the time I had it ready, we didn't get to watch much of anything. My daughter watched a Tinkerbell movie. From the few scenes I saw, the picture looked pretty amazing without any calibration.

Using the motorized lens shift, zoom and focus was a treat. My old projector, a Mitsubishi HC3000 did not have these features. It turns out that with the current placement, at maximum zoom, I have about an inch of blank screen around the picture. I may see how much moving it back an inch will increase the size of the projected image.

The reason we ran out of time was that with my 50 foot run of HDMI cable, I was losing signal and when I turned the projector on, the HDCP disabled the HDMI section of my receiver. I thought the receiver was broken, because I couldn't even get sound from my HDMI sources. However, replacing the final 10 foot run of cable with a 4 foot piece solved the problem. I have an amplifying HDMI wall plate on the way which I hope will solve the problem and allow me to keep the final run hidden. By the time I figured out what the problem was, it was 6:00 PM and time to start getting the kids ready for bed.

We bought a couple bean bags for the kids to sit on and have some lounge type lawn chairs that we can use as seating for a while. It looks like next Friday will have to be the inaugural movie.

I will post pictures of the enormous projector and our temporary seating arrangement in the next couple of days.

Thanks, now that the theater is semi functional, I am really getting excited about getting it done.

Here are the ghetto seats for the inaugural viewing of Brave on Friday.



Here is the huge projector. For perspective, the window is about 6 feet wide.






Edited by Jedirun - 12/11/12 at 2:49pm

Watched part of Art of Flight today. It was pretty amazing even without surrounds. There is some stuff rattling, probably the pictures on the shelves. I will try to track it down.

My 10 GIK panels are on the truck for delivery today, just in time for the viewing. I will get the back wall up tonight and hopefully get the ceiling mounted ones up tomorrow.

I am thinking about suspending the ones from the ceiling with eye-hooks and tiny carabiners to make them easy to attach and keep them level.

That will make 19 panels for a 1700 cubic foot room with the 9 behind the screen.

This is probably more panels than I need to properly treat the room, but I am limited in placement by aesthetics so I am going the route of treating a strip of the room from the screen to the back wall, including the ceiling. RMK said in one of his posts, that this is what was recommended to him. I am leavening the side walls alone.

Thank you.

I am still having HDMI cable length issues. I installed a display side signal booster, and although the green status light is on, not only am I getting no signal with the 10 foot flat cable at the projector end, it won't pass a signal with the 4 foot cable that works with the simple female to female coupler. I have put the passive coupler back in and will see if I can solve the problem by shortening the run in the equipment cabinet rather than trying to boost the signal.

The family watched brave last night. The picture and sound were really excellent, and we all enjoyed it. After the movie I played around with the CFI (Creative Frame Interpolation) feature of the projector. It seems to help. I will see if what I think of it on other movies as well.

GIK 244 panels ready to go up on the wall. I will try to get them up this morning.

I only received half (3) of my 242's for the ceiling. I will try to get them up as well. I am going to use S hooks rather than carabiners due to cost. I will see if they will work.

Apparently the flat 10' cable I bought to go from the ceiling to the projector is a piece of junk. I replaced it with a Monoprice 20' cable and I have a picture again with no issues. I switched out the other flat 10' cable I had in the equipment room for that one and now have a 70' cable run. I will shorten that eventually at the source end, but for now I have solved the problem.

I threw my guitars up on the right side wall. Probably not perfect, but the hope is that the guitars and pillars will at least provide more diffusion than a flat wall would have.

I also hope that having them out will get me to play them more.

Got the rear wall GIK 244 panels up. It looks a lot better than the exposed window and curtains. Seems to sound better as well.
Edited by Jedirun - 12/15/12 at 9:17pm

We had some friends over and watched Art of Flight at about -5. I think the sound from my T8's and S2 just cured my upgraditis. Even without surrounds it was incredible. The only way to describe it would be to say it felt like an IMAX.

Plus all that sound coming from this unassuming wall really surprised everyone.



I don't think any of my friends had ever experienced a home theater like the JTR's deliver. The picture from the HC9000D didn't hurt either.

I had the "True Film" CFI setting on for Art of Flight and it looked great. However, I left it on while watching the Dark Knight Rises and it made things look artificial. It looked pretty good when I turned the CFI off. I guess it is somewhat source dependent.

ha ha. I am sure you are right.

I watched The Dark Knight Rises tonight. The theater is so much fun now that it is functional.

I still have a lot to buy including surround speakers and seating, but it is really coming together.

I don't have to go back to work until Wednesday, so the hope is that I will be able to get the panels on the ceiling and do some cable management before then. I am also going to do some wiring so that the bookshelf lights will be functional when needed, since they are there.

If I get a chance, I am going to hook up my guitar preamp to the system to see how that sounds, with the speaker's roots, I think it will be pretty amazing.

Thanks. I am having fun with this.

Got the front 3 242 panels up on the ceiling. I ended up having to double up on the S hooks in order to have enough room between the ceiling and the panels to attach them, so I have to go back to the store to get some more before putting up the back 3.