I've been lurking around back in 2006 when I got into my 1st real TV, real as in not a 4:3 anymore. A quick look once or twice a year and I never got around to making a post.
A little background on me, I'm an I.T. guy for the last 14 years at a university. I got thrown into our media department about 3 years ago and I've had to hit the ground running learning how to design and install media equipment with my only experience being what I've learned on my own. I have some great resources now with fellow coworkers and some training I've been to. However almost all of our knowledge is based on academic environments and conference rooms. So even though we use a lot of projectors they are almost always a 4:3 and now recently a 16:10 format. I do get to play with a lot of toys and even get to take our old and obsolete equipment home.
So I had my basement finished 3 years ago when I had my 1st kid and the wife decided that the bedroom office I had was to be given up for a nursery. I offered her to give up her spare room and she can have an office built in the basement but she denied my request and countered with, just get the whole thing finished and you can have a man cave. Needless to say I'm not stupid and I jumped on that one.
We finished about 75% of the total basement and sectioned off 2 areas. 1 got french doors and became my office (PC gaming room) and the other holds all the utilities and what's left for storage. Its on the half finished wall to the utility area that I shine the projector on to and behind that wall I have an old rack I took from work. I'll see if I can attach photos here. In this rack I have an old Crestron control processor so I can control everything with an RF remote (I since broke it and have gone back to the IR for now)
As you can see in this photo I have an Epson 7900 which is pretty bright but the rez is lacking a bit. I can run 1080 stuff to it but I think it just downconverts it to 1280x800 or less. I have a DVI to HDMI adapter on it so I ran just one long HDMI cable to it from my AVR
On the wall behind the couch with the small closet door is a small access closet for the sump pump. Its unfinished inside but I was thinking of cutting it out to the back of the couch and mounting the rack there so I can use IR and not have to go inside the storage area to insert media and such. Will being in the same area as the sump be too humid? The pump runs a lot but I've never had any apparent moisture above the pump cover.
And lastly here is the wall I shine it on. Everything in the basement is just primer white for now, the office is red but I haven't gotten around to picking a color for the rest of the basement yet. I have a few choices here. I can splurge and buy some screen paint, or I have access to a lot of screens that have seen better days. I got one that has a perfect screen but will no longer roll itself back up, so my thought is this. I can take the screen material and some way mount it on the wall and build a molding around it to make a permanent screen? Anyone have thoughts on that?
I have a living room upstairs I'm proud off but I'll save that for a later post.
Thanks for taking the time to read all this!
-ZS
A little background on me, I'm an I.T. guy for the last 14 years at a university. I got thrown into our media department about 3 years ago and I've had to hit the ground running learning how to design and install media equipment with my only experience being what I've learned on my own. I have some great resources now with fellow coworkers and some training I've been to. However almost all of our knowledge is based on academic environments and conference rooms. So even though we use a lot of projectors they are almost always a 4:3 and now recently a 16:10 format. I do get to play with a lot of toys and even get to take our old and obsolete equipment home.
So I had my basement finished 3 years ago when I had my 1st kid and the wife decided that the bedroom office I had was to be given up for a nursery. I offered her to give up her spare room and she can have an office built in the basement but she denied my request and countered with, just get the whole thing finished and you can have a man cave. Needless to say I'm not stupid and I jumped on that one.
We finished about 75% of the total basement and sectioned off 2 areas. 1 got french doors and became my office (PC gaming room) and the other holds all the utilities and what's left for storage. Its on the half finished wall to the utility area that I shine the projector on to and behind that wall I have an old rack I took from work. I'll see if I can attach photos here. In this rack I have an old Crestron control processor so I can control everything with an RF remote (I since broke it and have gone back to the IR for now)
As you can see in this photo I have an Epson 7900 which is pretty bright but the rez is lacking a bit. I can run 1080 stuff to it but I think it just downconverts it to 1280x800 or less. I have a DVI to HDMI adapter on it so I ran just one long HDMI cable to it from my AVR
On the wall behind the couch with the small closet door is a small access closet for the sump pump. Its unfinished inside but I was thinking of cutting it out to the back of the couch and mounting the rack there so I can use IR and not have to go inside the storage area to insert media and such. Will being in the same area as the sump be too humid? The pump runs a lot but I've never had any apparent moisture above the pump cover.
And lastly here is the wall I shine it on. Everything in the basement is just primer white for now, the office is red but I haven't gotten around to picking a color for the rest of the basement yet. I have a few choices here. I can splurge and buy some screen paint, or I have access to a lot of screens that have seen better days. I got one that has a perfect screen but will no longer roll itself back up, so my thought is this. I can take the screen material and some way mount it on the wall and build a molding around it to make a permanent screen? Anyone have thoughts on that?
I have a living room upstairs I'm proud off but I'll save that for a later post.
Thanks for taking the time to read all this!
-ZS
