Help with TV room project

One thing I tell everyone in your situation is to consider how the projector will be used. A theater demands a dark room. When you are in the theater, you are watching the screen. You are not knitting, reading a book, doing homework, etc. We have both a projector and a plasma in our house and each gets used depending on the type of viewing desired.

Our setup is a few years old, but similar to what you propose. Epson 8100 with Elite Sable 120" screen. Look at the elite sable series to save a few $$. Our theater runs an Onkyo 806 receiver, feeding Klipsch full range speakers. Also a Velodyne 12" sub with massive amp. The Klipsch 1000 series is OK, but consider it a starter set. They definitely need a sub to make them live.

You can't lose with the Denons. Also consider the Onkyos and Yamahas. They are all quality units and you may find a bargain like I did with the Onkyo.

The room size is good for what yyou are proposing. Consider investing in some seating as it makes a massive difference. 19' is a bit short for two rows, but you would want the main seating a bit closer, say 11-12' from a 120" screen. I'd look at 120" or even 130" at the distances you are proposing.

The projector is a blast with XBOX. Ours probably gets used more for that than for movies. The only thing that doesn't work well is Kinect as standing and waving your arms will block light from the screen. Playing Halo with real sized opponents, or driving games with a wheel and full immersion roads is an unbelievable experience.

Since Epson revised the bulb, they seem to be lasting around 2k hours or so. At 6 hours a day, that's about a year.

FWIW, the 2k number seems to be what is being reported. I am well over that number on mine, approaching 3k hours.

You have to be very careful with those cheap bulbs. You generally get the bare bulb without housing. You would need to disassemble the old housing, remove the bulb and replace it with the new one. This requires careful handling. In addition, there are numerous reports, even on Amazon that these third party bulbs only last a few hundred hours, so they need to be replaced often.

I have no experience with the Panny projectors. Probably better asking in the Projectors under $3k forum.

Look in the screen forums for screens. However, there seems to be good reviews on the Elite Sable, Jamestown and Visual Apex lines for entry level vinyl screens

http://jamestownhometheaterscreen.com/

Speakers are such a personal and religious experience that it is hard to advise. You will get lots of opinions, usually fanboy type raves and slams. This is the time of year that you can find bargains if you shop. For example, Best Buy had a good sale on the Klipsch towers a couple of weeks ago. One issue is that you have not provided a price point. A good tower speaker can be had for anywhere from $250 to $OMG. I can help you find some dandy fronts at $25k each.

For home theater and gaming, I would look at distributing the money spent as follows:

equal amounts on the main and center speakers. It is important that they match, so same brand and line.
Spend twice as much on the sub as you spend on each main speaker. The sub makes a big difference, and you want a good one. The sub seems to be the first speaker that people upgrade, so do it right the first time.
Spend half as much on the surrounds as you do on the mains. I would wire the room for 7.1, but would hold off on the speakers at first. The room is fairly small and the benefits are small. Put the money into better mains.

So, with a $2k speaker budget, I'd be looking at
$300/ea for Left, Right and Center\
$600 for the subwoofer
$150/ea for the surrounds
Total: $1800. I might put the extra $200 into the sub.

With careful shopping this would get you a good setup from brands like Klipsch, Polk, Definitive Tech, Mirage, etc. The only way to find the ones that are right for you is to go listen, but not at Best Buy. Their showroom floor with its 30' ceilings will not give you any sort of accurate idea.

You have a lot of options for mounting. It can either go upside down on a ceiling mount, upright on a ceiling shelf, or as I did, shelf mount on a rear wall. Not sure where you got the 30" number from, but I have seen a lot of installations that didn't have that much drop. The Panasonic has lens shift, so you have a lot of mounting flexibility. You can even mount tight to the ceiling as long as you mind ventilation reguirements.

The rule of thumb is to mount the screen so that the eyeballs in the prime seat are 1/3 of the way up the screen. A 120" 16:9 screen is roughly 5' high. A typical HT seat has eyeballs around 42" off the ground. That means the top of the screen would be a bit over 80" off the ground, so I would mount between a foot and 18" off the ceiling.

You aren't planning a second row, so you don't need to worry about riser heights and that sort of stuff. One thing you should consider is where the projector sits in the traffic pattern. If you do mount it 3' off the ceiling, people are going to be bumping against it and you will be constantly fiddling with it. Try to avoid that