Sandmans Home Theater Construction Begins! - Page 6

Yes, Scott - believe it or not, we are building another house. Just got under way so will be a while before my costruction really gets going.

I finally get a basement theater, though. Really looking forward to that.

Hey Sandman - would you mind posting some dimensions on that stage?

Dude, your CRAZY! All that just to get a basement home theater?!
I hope its a good move and you don't loose your shirt on the equipment that you do leave behind. I beleive you did o.k. the last time, so you know how to do it. Maybe you should start a post on how to sell a home with a dedicated theater in it! Or maybe I missed it already?

Sandman, It must be nice to be home finally. Sorry for what mother nature has put you through, although you must have renewed enthusiasm to work on your room.

Man, those seats are fantastic.

I have a quick question for you. How are you going to finish the joint formed where the MDF on their soffit meets your ceiling? Do you mud and tape as usual? I am at the same point on mine and can't decide to mud and tape or just seal it and cover with a crown. I'm worried that this is going to crack over time because of different expansion rates between the MDF and sheetrock.

Thanks. That's very close to what I eyeballed it at from the picture. I thought your top radius projected about 12" - looks like its 11". Is the lower step about 8"?

The width is almost exactly what I have to work with as well and I like the proportions you have. Thanks again.

Looks like it may be time to start planning a trip to Florida?

Hey Sandman, the seats look really nice, I really like the way the red came out, almost a splotchy look because of the way the leather took the coloring. I like it better than a solid red as it looks like they started with black leather and added red after the first dye process or something.

Sandman,

Those chairs are beautiful!!
Who makes them?
How do they compare to Berkline 090's in regards to pricing per seat!!

Craig

Yup, you need to be careful and not put one of those chairs outside. The cops will issue you a speeding ticket. I can't wait to see them in formation and the room all tricked out. Glad to hear you are home and everything looks undamaged.

You are going to need to see if there are some neighbor kids who want to make a fort out of all those boxes. That would make it someone elses problem to cut them up for the garbage man. I think I went trough two blades on just my 6 boxes.

So what's the total cost so far if you don't mind me asking (minus chairs)? This could give me a really good idea what if my $30K budget for room construction is going to cut it.

BTW: I vote for the coffered/tray ceilings. I imagine that adding boxing beams will help to break up frequencies akin to a bookshelf on the wall. And it looks like you're looking through a glass ceiling in something like a atrium/solarium.

wow...this thread has been SOOOOOOOOOOOOO helpful!

Sandman we are waiting for new Pictures, whats going on ?

Ultimatum: Post at least one progress picture this weekend or we will all boycott this thread and turn to other more responsible forum members for our weekly DIY fix.

I think the underground bunker has the potential to steal your time slot if you don't watch out.

We don't want pictures of a great looking finished product. We want to see where you had to rip something out because you made a mistake. Or where you couldn't fit the prehung door in the framing, Or the light fixture wouldn't fit in the space you planned.

We're trying to get him another helper....

Correction:

10) organize a big spread of snacks

11) Watch Movie

By the way OTA HD by the networks, or cable or satellite HD feeds are the best images you'll see on that big screen. After I got my projector hooked up it took me about 30 long and painful days to be able to feed the beast a HD signal. You may want to get that on the planning critical path. At least think about OTA.

If it's not too late you may want to run a Quad shield rg6 cable to the attic to pick up the ota stuff if your distance works for you for an in attic antenna.

if you haven't discovered Antennaweb.org yet it is useful to let you know what to expect at your location.

Agreed. The HD OTA is definitely better than the compressed stuff you get from satellite or off the cable.

Ruben, when you subscribe to the locals on DirecTV, that is for the SD channels, not HD. If you are in an area where your local stations are owned and operated by the affiliates (parent company of that network) then you would be able to qualify for a waiver from that station and only that station. The other way to get a waiver for a station is if you cannot get the signal OTA with an antenna. For me, I am 40 miles from the transmitter, so I can only get one waiver, from CBS, since Viacom bought the local CBS station (Viacom owns CBS or the other way around). If you can get the waivers, you would be able to get the network from the East Coast feed, which is based out of NYC.

This is all changing with the launch of the latest satelites from DirecTV that have the ability to send a "Spot beam" of local HD channels for different regions. This roll-out of true local HD channels is happening as I write this, but they are doing the first (I think) 25 top markets, so you need to find out which market you are in. I happen to be in the #18 market, so sometime in the next year, it will be in my area. With this roll-out is the replacement box that you need to get in order to get these new true local broadcasts which is an MPEG-4 decoding box, instead of using the current MPEG-2. There is more compression in MPEG-4, so they can squeeze more channels into one transmitter. DirecTV will be doing promotions in your area to replace your existing box with the new one for free (probably a rebate to make it free and possibly even a contract agreement for a length of time). So, be patient, it's coming.

I think that is all correct, it's hard to keep up with everything.

If you don't want to wait and also don't want to get an MPEG-4 compression, install an antenna so you can get your locals in HD. The OTA image is the best you can get.

As for your long/ugly coax cable run, do your best and if it gets to be too long, you may need to add a pre-amp to your coax.

Oh, also, if you are running coax, I reccomend running two of them, for the sake of using a DVR so you can have dual tuners.

Ruben:

Right now my HD experience with Directv is that I got waivers for the network HD feeds for Fox and NBC. They come in fine. In fact the NY feed of NBC I get via the satellite has 5.1 sound the OTA version of HD NBC is only 2.0. In summary the only Thing that Dtv can offer me on networks is the added feature of 5.1 for NBC.
Big deal! I have the HD package but wish there were more offerings.

Even though I get the Fox network on the sat feed I usually just pick it up with the antenna. ABC,CBS,WB,PBS are available as well with good signal strength.
UPN is too weak to pick up at this time.

OTA is worth the price (equipment only). I was surprized at how small the antenna was. I got the DB4 bowtie ( antennasdirect.com) and it sits near the peak in my attic.

I'm in one of the first 12 markets with the mpeg4 and the new satellite system. I've been following the posts for the guys in Detroit who are the first market to get the new system.

Right now I can't see any advantage in moving to the new system. You have to install a new larger dish (more problems with wind) and there appears to be a number of roll-out bugs and inadequate experience in the field. For that headache I would not get a single additional HD channel. Ok maybe one if you consider UPN a channel. (The what's in it for me? deal) I would just have a 2nd source of my existing OTA.

However once they start adding additional national HD channels that aren't offered in the current HD package then it's a different story.

Also, for those of us with HDTivos - which record both Sat and OTA in HD - there is pretty much zero incentive to go to the new system (until they start offering more sat HD).

Sandman - sorry to hijack your thread here...now resuming proper topic...

One more point on the whole DirecTV thing. It is my assumption (and only that at this time) that once the rollout of MPEG-4 is complete, they will use the additional bandwidth that was being used for the NYC and L.A. HD locals to add more of the other HD networks such as TNT, USA, Encore....

Once again, it is my assumption only and if it does happen as I am guessing, it will be a while since they have to do the full roll-out first.

Yes,

1500 = 1480 local network channels rebroadcast into the originating market (Local into Local aka LIL)


20 other HD channels like the MTV HD,

Soon, 5-6 years roll-out I'm guessing.

Yeah, it will take a while for them to really get things sorted out and set-up for what we really want, which is all HD all the time.

Too bad we don't have the a-la-carte packages, I would only ask for about 30 channels total since that's all I ever watch. They could drop the channels that nobody wants and then have more room for more HD...