Calvin's Games & HT construction thread - Page 28

Update,

I've corresponded with Joel this morning and my 6 panels will ship out soon and they will be coming with the new mounting hardware so that is exciting news (for me anyways). I'll be sure to post some pics and my thoughts on the new fastening devices when I get installing them in mid October when I'm back at home again (I'm a working machine again only 5 days off in 40+ days over the next month and a half).

I'm hoping to have the new bulbs in the riser and the new panels up before my gaming get together for TAG in mid October.

More when I can
Cheers
Calvin

Thought I would post this PM here as I've received this type of question a few times and I think maybe posting it might answer a few future PM's before they are sent


Becks,

I was originally using the Harmony 890 RF remote to use the components down stairs with the living room HT. My new plan forward is having Connect install a Proficient IR system. I have some pictures in the thread in post # 731 of the system they will be installing in place of the RF Harmony 890 as it wasn't working as well as I would have liked.
I currently have all the components downstairs in the rack and the cables run to the display are still sadly just component as I'm still working with Connect trying to get HDMI there - our last 2 attempts have failed as chronicled in the thread

I don't have any satellite or cable boxes yet but when I finally get there we will be using a multiple box set up and I will have them run through the distribution panel to all locations. Using the panel I can put each box into as many or as few rooms as I need which is one of the reasons I bought it, which is one of the reasons the panel is extremely handy
In your situation I would likely get 2 units and have them feed their respective HT's for the sake of simplicity. If funding is an issue you may have to work with one and that will work as well but then you will both have to watch the same show at the same time as only one video / audio output is possible per unit. It is easy enough to get a splitter and push the signal to multiple displays though. Just look up splitters in the forum or Google and you will find what you need in short order.
I'm looking into buying 2 HDTV FTA PVR Satellites (Holy abbreviations batman!) I just have to make up my mind on whether to stick with Coolsat (which I've owned previously) or try out a new company?

Currently I'm looking at these and I haven't made up my mind yet.

Coolsat 8000HD or the 8100HD Micro PVR.

Diamond 9000 HD PVR USB.

Anyone have any opinions on these 3 units? Any real world experience users care to weigh in? The real thing I need to work on learning is how easy is it to get them back up and running once they go down which is usually pretty easy with Coolsat but I know nothing of the new Diamond FTA services.

Now that I've asked a few questions I should say that if anyone needs more info or has more questions fire away in the thread or PM I'll do my best to answer regarding the multi-room questions.

Cheers
Calvin

Hmm...nothing on the FTA satellites yet I see. I may have to delve into the forums here and see what the news is (was hoping I had a reader that might save me some time).

On a side note I'm 11 days away from my gaming weekend at the house so if I have any local (or non local) people wanting to come by for a day of gaming on the 19th to 21st weekend give me a shout here on the thread or PM me for directions. I'm hoping for a decent turn out and I'll be supplying food and drink for guests for the 2-3 day event.
It's looking like Halo 3 and PGR4 will be the games of choice but with all the hardware and software I have we do have a lot of choices so no telling what we will end up playing through out the weekend.

I'm not home for a few days yet so I'm hoping when I finally do get back I have some acoustic panels and LED lights waiting for me (and not just a stack of Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies I've been ordering off of Amazon the last couple of weeks).

Cheers
Calvin

Boss252,

I'll do some checking and get back to you. In the meantime if anyone has some real world experience please comment on any of the FTA's I've mentioned above.

Javry,

Hello again. There are no "dumb questions" I always say anyways (just dumb answers )
I'm in movie watching and game playing mode but I still have a laundry list of items to follow up on. I'm not out of the woods yet. I still need to get my automation and control system worked out (I should have looked harder into that at the start but I was sure the Harmony 1000 would work better then it has sadly).

I still have the HDMI to the main floor display to run it hasn't happened successfully yet. The IR system shown awhile back still needs to be implemented as well it is not yet installed.

The GE Carma distribution panel has a few bells and whistles that are ordered and have come in that Connect still has to install. Hopefully that is done soon.

I have to pick up a couple FTA satellite systems and get TV into the home so my lovely wife can watch 24 & Desperate housewives (she politely reminded me last week that it would be "nice" to watch those shows again now that we are in the house and settled a bit - which translates into TV = ASAP )

The lights in the riser are still a work in progress the new bulbs from the new company will hopefully be at my house waiting for me upon my return from this shift in a week or so.

Six new acoustic panels from ready acoustic are hopefully waiting for me at home (or will be when I get there). I'm putting 2 to 4 more on the ceiling and another 2 to 4 on the walls at the 1st reflection points from the center soundstage. I was leaning towards the 4 on the ceiling and 2 on the walls as outlined in the posts above but I may just put 2 or 3 on the ceiling and 3 or 4 on the wall. I have to make up my mind once I get them downstairs and see how they work before I mount them. I don't have my tracking number from Joel yet but they were supposed to have shipped (I'll keep the thread updated when I get confirmation).

Finally I will have some trim work and the door to work on in the room itself. I have sent the blueprints to a co-workers friend to try and get a custom solid core door built for the arch way by the rack. I'm going to get a acoustic seal and all that fun stuff with the door to help insulate the rest of the house from the sonic boom that is the downstairs. Right now that arch way works like a wind tunnel to funnel the noise from downstairs up through the rest of the house at high volumes. I'm hoping to see something back on the door soon once they give me an estimate to build. I would like to get some custom carving on the door ideally as well but if the wood worker is not an artist I'll likely have to get something that works and fasten it to the entrance side of the door.

I'm sure there are a few more items I've forgotten or just don't even know I have to do that are not on the above list but over all I'm 90%+ done

Cheers
Calvin

Update:

The bulbs are in and my wife tells me the box looks mint so I'm hopeful I'll finally get to try some new bulbs and hopefully fix the light in the riser issue. I should have an update Tuesday on that issue.

The panels are also in transit Joel tells me so I should be seeing those on the doorstep anytime as well. He has sent 4 of the new mounting brackets as well so I'll have my thoughts and a few pics up on that when I can.

Still trying to research FTA but been pretty swamped at work last few days so I've not had a chance to get to much into my research on the 3 models I'm looking at.

More when I can
Cheers
Calvin

Some updated pics. (click to enlarge as usual)

Getting ready for the gaming weekend: The rack is loaded up and ready to go with all 3 HT's having a 360 and internet connection.



The new lights are in at long last. They are working like a charm after I modified the casing- The new bulbs were a little larger so I had to remove the swivel in the light case and just set them in.
Here are a few pics of them in the dark.











I'm pretty happy with the overall result thankfully it saves me getting an electrician in and rewiring the whole riser like I thought I may have to.

Cheers
Calvin

Update.

3 of the 6 acoustic panels arrived and the other 3 which I've located will be waiting for me at the fed ex building when I get back to town (back to work again today).

Had a good weekend testing the house out as we had a few guests from "the adult gamer" over and played till the wee hours of the night on Friday and Saturday.

Some pics

The big tims





Some random action shots

















Cheers
Calvin

A few more shots of my gaming event. We had 6 Xbox 360's and 2 PS3's all going at the same time and there were no issues other then a few IP address mishaps that were fixed by putting in the information manually (luckily BiggK is an IT guy he had it up and running in no time everytime a conflict popped up)

Champ and Lastaction boxing it up



Round # 1 winner (actually I won but then put in another round so someone else could win as I didn't buy my prizes to win them BiggK stepped up and scored his best ever to win the prize with the extra round in GeoWars)

Round # 1 winner Limited Halo 3 figure and Controller (Cov. version)



Round # 2 was bomberman live and it was a 3 way tie till Fatherwags pulled out the stops and took us all to school.
Champ looks on at the prize he nearly had. The limited camo headset round # 2 went to Fatherwags



Round # 3 was a Burnout Crash party 3 round competition that went down to the finals with Calv1n1, Fatherwags, BiggK and Fubar

Here Fubar looks on as Fatherwags takes home his 2nd winnings



Fubar impressed with awesomeness of the new Halo3 controller



Round # 3 winner Limited Halo 3 figure and Controller (MC version)



The big winners showing off the swag!!



it was a blast I may do it again next year.

Cheers
Calvin

Becks,

Yes, the white xbox shown in the rack controls the 46" LCD on the main level and the Black Elite is for the basement HT.
I don't have any controller issues when I just use the 3 that I own in the home but I did have some connection issues over the weekend when we had 6 or 7 Xbox 360's all going in the home at the same time I guess it was just to much RF traffic and that location suffered as it was the furthest point in the home at the time. The distance from controllers to the console is around 25' if you drew a straight line through the floor and with 4 or 5 extra xbox's going and another 10 to 16 controllers it seemed to confuse that box as the controllers lost contact several times (only player one though strangely never player 2 and player 2 was further away. We tried swapping out batteries and other joysticks and nothing fixed the problem other then turning off a few of the other 360's)

All in all it was a great time though we had some minor issues but worked through them.
The controllers disconnecting on the main level was probably the biggest pain but it only effected 2 guys for an hour or two.

Cheers
Calvin

Minor update:

The remaining 3 panels showed up my wife tells me so I have all 6 finally at home ready for install. If it doesn't snow my next days off I'm going to try and get my back yard up to final grade so it can settle over the winter but if the weather goes bad I'll be inside working on getting the panels up and the "honey do" list my wife has for me (more shelves? Who would have thunk it )

More when I can.
Cheers
Calvin

Texas Tuck,

Quite happy with them. I also bought their highest end in-walls at the time and they perform well I have no complaints.

Cheers
Calvin

thenish03,

Thanks for the post. I'm going to pick something up this weekend and try to get something up and running in the house for my wife over the winter so she can watch some TV (she only watches a couple of shows but she does enjoy them).

I'm leaning very heavily towards the coolsat 8100HD Micro PVR and my second choice Viewsat 9000HD.

I'll let you know which way I end up going soon.

Cheers
Calvin

lumpy69,

I own a property in Millwoods as well (my 1st home, I use it as a rental currently).
Send me a PM if your going to be in town and if I'm home and I have some time I'll show you the place.

Thanks for the interest in the thread and the post.

Cheers
Calvin

Well the panels were at the house but unfortunately this is as far as I made it to hanging them



I ended up working in the garage and putting up additional shelving in the walk through pantry and a few other things for the wife so I ended up running out of time.

I also didn't get around to picking up my FTA satellites so this weekend was a write off for the HT.
I hope to get some things done when I'm home again next week... just ran out of time this set of days off again (it happens).

I did manage to get around to sorting out some of the media though - went through my games and HD movies this weekend and collected them into one spot as they were spreading through out the house into the different HT's like a virus








I also need to get a hold of Joel at ready acoustics as they sent me some new hardware for ceiling mounting but I haven't figured out how they intend to use them and the website doesn't outline there usage either

More when I can...

Cheers
Calvin

Texas Tuck,

Your a speaker dealer?
Your putting in FOUR 7.1 Home theaters?!?!
Wow, I thought I was going over board with two 5.1 and a 7.4

Looking forward to the pics

Cheers
Calvin

I'll assume that is a positive religious reference... so...thanks

Cheers
Calvin

cyron,

Thanks for the kind words. In the bottom picture BiggK is playing in my office on the 24" Dell
The model is Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW Widescreen LCD and can be had for a very reasonable price (call them rather then order online and you can likely get them to knock off another 10 to 20% I always find what I want online then call and barter )

I don't know if they still carry it I think it was replaced with the newer model the 2407 but it will still be basically the same just have a different looking stand to match the newer style like the 20" you see in the 1st picture with a LCD (4th one down) in post # 819.

Cheers
Calvin

Minor update: Basement HT solid core door and threshold seal.

I'm currently out for bid on getting my custom door built for the basement HT and I'm asking for a standard "drop and seal" type of system.
I'm looking at combination of the first or second seal combined with its matching plate shown below (click to enlarge). I haven't spent much time on this area so I'm trying to do some learning on the pros and cons of the different types of seals.
Anyone with real world experience that could share their thoughts, please do





I'm still looking for more info and ideas as well as a good supplier for this type of material in Canada and the US so if anyone has any info please let me know.

Thanks,
Calvin

Stick4legs

Welcome to thread thanks for the post and the kind words. It is also nice to see some local people reponding to my build
I have purchased 85% of my electronics from the US almost everything that went into the 3 HT's with the exception of the 46" LCD and 71" DLP and the PE VSX 82 those items I picked up at Visons (displays) and Double Diamond electronics (AVR).

I still look at purchasing virtually everything from the US before I entertain the idea of local spending. I did pick the display due to their shipping and warranty as a local item and the AVR as DD gave me an excellent price even compared to US.

Cheers
Calvin