Mr.Poindexter's home theater under construction - 2.35:1 - Page 3

Not much in the way of compelling new photos coming along in the theater today. They are still working on the soffits and doing a little electrical work.

I do, however, have a work-in-progress shot of the renders done by Reaper. Here is a mock-up of the room with the color scheme I am planning on along with the chairs and the sconces. The soffit isn't finished in this either, which I guess is sort of ironic.


Also, work is progressing in the park next door. I wanted this specific lot so that I can have outdoor events on a 20' wide screen.

Here is what they have so far. Pretty much all the areas that have dirt will be grass, but if they are putting in trees I will not know their location until they are finished.

This is directly to the west of my house. I should be able to hit the screen here without even taking the projector out of my house if I put the projector in the baby's room.


This one is catty-corner from my house. I can hit this from the window in my daughter's room. I also happen to have a dedicated 20A circuit in her closet - what an amazing coincidence!

OK, nothing much happened in the theater this weekend, but Reaper was hard at work rendering and now I have some pictures that show a lot better what we have coming up. This is coming into the theater:


Even a fly on the wall in the back row will have an excellent seat:


Of course, I will have a much better seat:


We still need to put in the trim and add another seat in the back row. The designs for the snack bar area are being finalized right now and I will have only a little bit of time until I need to finalize what I will do for the entry hall.

Milt,

I didn't go with a curved screen. I instead opted for 4 way masking so I am covered on all aspect ratios - even those like Ben Hur's 2.76:1 and also when I mask down to demo projectors that cannot fill a 150" screen like my CRT.

One major benefit of curving the screen is to give a better uniformity across the screen and eliminate hot spots and color shifting - something I don't really need to worry about with the 0.95 gain. The only reason I would want to curve the screen would be to remove any pincushion I would get from the anamorphic lens and with an ISCO III that is fairly minimal.

Heated seats, massage and mini LCD screens are not standard, but they are options. I have not seen any cooled seats - I would think the condensation lines would be a pain to deal with. Still, I am intrigued and think that would be great for summertime viewing. If you have a link to some, please post it.


The seat is $2K retail in leather. They are $3600 in premium leather - think batting gloves. Yeah, that is plush. Add $500 for the motorized recline mechanism and you are at $4100 retail per chair. Now, if you want to debate over how much more one should charge for the premium leather, go for it, but I have sat in them and you haven't. I owned 2 Fortress chairs for a long time and prefer them over the Cinematech chairs that are so highly regarded. In fact, I think they are WAY better than the Cinematech seats.

As for the build quality, they are very well built. These are not berklines with a high price tag on them. They are certified for use with the D-BOX Odyssee motion simulators, which means they are designed to withstand the stress of multiple G-forces that would tear apart Berklines in a very short time.

As for the cup holders, that is the price of the cup holder plus the wood and the mechanism to allow it to fold back into the arm rest. They are not from exotic trees where only 3 exist in the world. Exotic woods are extra.


Speaking of extras, you left out the lighted side panels. I didn't opt for the motorized retractable flight control joysticks, but I might change my mind. I want to see them first. By the way, are these options even available on these "lesser brands" you refer to?

Drive a Mercedes Benz and then drive a Honda Civic and tell me they are basically the same. They are not.

As far as the pricing, you got me. I have boxes and boxes of cash sitting in that room and I have to spend it to make room for the equipment. You should have been here last week when I was just tossing it out the window.


Dude, you really have some issues with this. I would love to toss some money to a struggling family, but we moved into a nicer neighborhood and all of our neighbors are wealthy. We don't know any struggling families, but I know what it is like to struggle.

Kelly: Is it like when Daddy wanted to buy Shell Oil but said he couldn't afford it.
Woody: Yeah, it is a lot like that.


I did build my own server for less than half the cost. I sold it when I upgraded to the Kaleidescape. You missed out on that deal, I guess - it was a steal. As far as getting up and getting the DVD off the shelf, I think you must have read something I didn't put in. You see, I don't have a DVD shelf or cabinet in my house. I don't have any budget for it I guess. By the way, where would that DVD be? We watch DVDs in 4 different rooms in the house right now - later that will jump up to 8. You see, the Kaleidescape system does a lot more than just load a DVD for you. You might want to look into some of the things it will do before you assume to know all that it does.

While I am capable of loading a DVD myself, I do like the fact that I can automate my system enough that a 2 year old can load her own videos up (or at least my 2 year old can - she's smart). My wife won't have to know anything about aspect ratios or anamorphic video - she will just touch the picture on the screen and the curtains will open, audio system will turn on, projector will warm up, lights will dim, the scaler will set the proper aspect ratio, the masking system will move into place and the movie will start without first forcing her to watch 15 minutes of ads for other videos we already own. When the end credits come up, the lights will raise. She will only have to hit the system off button and that's it.


Yes, Bill Gates does have a home theater, but mine will be much nicer. Not because I have more money than him, but because I care more about home theater than he does and have just enough money to do it right.


No problem understanding that. I think it was Andrew Carnegie whose doctor told him to drink soda water to help make him well. He told him "I tell ya doc, I can't afford it!" He was one of the richest men in the world at the time.

I suppose I could get the standard leather, but I don't know for certain that it is dolphin safe or if it was made with baby seal pelts. I just feel better knowing I get my leather from safe, renewable sources like some kid's pet cow that he was forced to sell at the FFA/4-H auction to raise money for a school trip. "Sorry about your pet cow, little Timmy, but think of how soft my seats are going to be now. I'll make it up to you. You can come over for a barrbeque. We are having steak."

By the way, if you haven't had the pleasure of using a power recliner, I can understand your thinking. I thought the same thing until I used one. I will never use anything but the powered ones now. Unlike the manual recline seats that have 3 settings (closed, reclined and laying down) the power recliners have infinite settings so you can stop wherever you feel comfortable. They also raise the legs before reclining the back so you can get your feet up without changing your viewing angle.

And if it makes you feel better, I did use generic speaker wire for the job and am not buying any "upgraded" power cords. There will not be a single product from Monster cable in the room unless I put it on the Bose system as part of the comparative demo. Ironically, that is the only part of the whole process I personally feel like it is a wasted investment.

I think the price for the masking is more than 2/3rds of the screen cost, since I only need the motor controllers for that and the IR/RS-232 interface as well.

There really isn't a better masking system in the world. It is adjustable on every axis and independantly controllable on each mask. This would allow me to mask off center should I ever need to do that. I can move the bottom mask up to slide the center of the screen up higher, which is good when using a projector that cannot light up a 150" wide screen. Remember, I am going to be bringing in lots of "other" equipment in here to test/calibrate/debug. I will also be able to take a client's entire system and put it up in my showroom without disturbing any of my existing gear - a very nice feature when you want to pre-tweak all the settings so you are not having to camp out at a client's house for more time and will allow me to work on it into the wee hours of the morning when a client might feel I need to leave and come back the next day.

Anyway, the screen masking system has extra quietening features put on it as part of the "tailor-made" option and the masking is acoustically transparent as well, which is VERY important since all of my front speakers will be behind the screen.

Actually (and shockingly) the seat price doesn't include the Odyssee motion simulators, although it does include the cost to prep them for the system and the labor to have them installed.

After owning an Odyssee for just over a year, I went to Universal Studios and Disneyland. To say that the Odyssee it the same stuff used at the major amusement parks is actaully an insult to the Odyssee system. The theme parks have great systems in regards to having a lot of displacement (i.e. long throw for large angular movement) but they do not have the finesse and their programming is not as good as the D-BOX system.

I looked at the system they use in the commercial theme parks. It is impressive but both impractical to implement in nearly any home theater (it is a bulky system and kind of loud) and they don't have the library of titles that the D-BOX does. In fact, the other system doesn't have a library of titles at all, so you can kind of see the dilemna - sort of like getting a Cray supercomputer for an HTPC, but it doesn't have a DVD player for it. All the power and none of the software makes for an expensive piece of furniture - and one that doesn't even have leather upholstry or motorized recline!

Bobbejaan, welcome to the thread. Yeah, I figure after working my butt off and having to endure getting my ass chewed out every so often, my rear end deserves a nice place to park itself.

Art, you are welcome anytime, but I think waiting for the theater to be done would be prudent.

I do wonder how many people will actually come out to an open house. I don't have anywhere near the number of AVS readers you have within such close proximity.

Then I better find a way to pay for those chairs! I want the room complete - or at least have a few of them in place. The seats and the final Odyssee motion simulator system were the last things on my list to get, as they would be easiest to add on later. I either already have almost all the other equipment or it is on order. I still need chairs, one Odyssee system and then a whole lot of dough on decor.

I might have to leave my theater entry partially unfinished instead.

Or maybe I should log off AVS and go make some more money... Nah!