Sunbeam Cinema Starting to Come Together!

Hello all! My name is JJ and wanted to share my HT build. I have been enjoying the threads in this forum. Many of the theaters being built that I have seen on this forum are great!!! I have been in the process of finishing the complete basement and I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on my HT room.

Here are some brief explanations and progress of the build to date.

Here is my initial layout that I decided on when I was planning the build.



Here are some pictures of the 2nd row seating platform being built.




Here are a few pictures with the stage being built. I used right at a half of ton of sand to fill the stage.




checking out the fit of the curtains for each side of the stage.



Being so excited, I started building the stage and screen wall and platform before I put up the ceiling drywall. TIP for people that are doing the work yourselves... Get all your wiring done and put up ceiling drywall before putting in a stage and second row platform. This way you don't run into any problems with a drywall lift.

Here are some pictures of where I am at to date.




On the left side of the picture is a cubby hole made for my Harmony 1000 remote with the charging station. Then is a picture of my A/V rack that I built. To the right of the A/V rack is my DVD slideout, which comes straight out of the wall about 18" and will hold approximately 300 DVDs.



The first picture here is looking in the back of the home theater room and the second picture is looking at where the concession area will be.



That pretty well does it for the pictures at the moment.

Equipment List Updated As of 2/2/10
Here is the list of equipment that I have purchased so far:
-Panasonic PT-AX100U
-Elite ezScreen 120" High Contrast Grey w/velvet frame
-Onkyo TX-SR805
-Klipsch RC-62 Center Channel
-Klipsch RF-82 Fronts
-Klipsch RS-52 Surrounds
-2 - 15" Exodus Audio Tempest Subs (Infinite Baffle Setup)
-Behringer Amp EP-2500
-Behringer DSP-1124P Parametric EQ
-Monster Power conditioner and surge protector HTS-3600
-Buttkicker Amp and 4 Transducers
-Insteon Lighting system and software
-Harmony 1000 w/ RF extender
-Dish 622 HD DVR
-Sony Playstation 3
-Toshiba HD-A2 DVD player
-Buffalo NAS Terastation (2TB Network Attached Storage) for streaming media to the PS3 or HTPC

I will also be looking into getting a new satellite reciever for HD content. I am also working on building an HTPC to play movies, music, and pictures.

I am looking forward to getting to know everyone here and getting some advice and answers to questions that will arise during the remaining portion of the build. I welcome any thoughts on my whole project, especially if you see me heading for a pitfall. I would like to Thank everyone in advance for any future feedback to any of my questions and or responses. I will try and keep my build updated on a regular basis to let you how I am progressing.

Cheers,
JJ

Thanks for the comments everyone! I have been working hard trying to get the room finished up, luckily I have had a lot of vacation time that I could use to work on the room.


I was going for something different plus it worked out better with the size of the love seats in the back to have the ilse in the middle. I know the people in the back row might suffer a little as far as sound quality but that was a small sacrifice to make. Most of the people that I know that will see the system will not notice. If it is someone that I figure should know the difference I will have them in the front couch anyway!

I have been thinking of accoustic treatments. I wanted to hit at least the first reflection points and still try to make the layout look nice. I will probably be doing a search on the forum for the threads about acoustic treatments to get some ideas.


I have been happy so far with how everything is turning out, i.e. the stage, platform, and DVD storage. I like looking at designs and trying to put my spin on them, such as the DVD storage.

Cheers,
JJ

Thanks for that information, I will definately look into that. I didn't want to drop an obscene amount of cash for an HD player quite yet and $200 is what I was looking at dropping on the Oppo DVD player.

To find the sweet spot will I need to test a couple different positions or is there another way to find it.

Thanks,
JJ

Thanks for the comments! I am hoping that the 2 - 15" subs will be enough for the room. If not I have plenty of room to expand. The only problem is I would have to change to different subs, since they are not making the ones that I have anymore. A curved horn enclosure would definitely be interesting!!!

Thanks Big Worms!


That is a pretty cool design!!!

So Eckhore, where do you live in Illinois? I live in S. IL about 30 miles east of St. Louis.

Next time you come down this way you will have to swing by. Your sister is about 15 to 20 minutes from us. I have another guy on the Home Theater Forum that is from Mt. Vernon that has offered to help dial in the sound.

Well here are some of the latest pics of the concession area. I plan on having the rest of the drywall up in this area by tomorrow so it can be taped and mudded.



Another shot of the concession area




Here is a shot of the wall that was added to close off the stairwell.



Here are some pictures of the Infinite Baffle sub that I am working on. I am using two 15" subs with a behringer ep-2500 amp and parametric EQ.





I will hopefully have more pictures by the end of the weekend and keeping the fingers crossed the walls will have some paint or at least primer on them.

I will also be ordering cabinets this week for the concession area along with purchasing my mini fridge.

Cheers,
JJ

I hear you there, I am not looking forward to the sanding part. I will be glad when that is done!!!

I wanted the higher ceiling height in the concession area and this way I can raise the wall cabinets closer to where they should be.


On a side note...

I have been thinking about what I am going to do for acoustic treatments in the theater room also. I am looking at putting in linacoustic on the walls and GOM on over that. I have been reading up on Bud's thread "Blazing Ridge Cinema" on how to do it. The way my room is setup I think trying to just put a panel here or there isn't going to look very good. So I figured that I will run this up the wall to at least ear height or even up to the ceiling height.

Can anyone recommend a place where I can get GOM at a decent price along with linacoustic? This should do the trick for keeping the sound from reflecting off the walls.

Another question would be if you would refer to my very first picture in this thread of the entire basement, notice where the IB sub is located. The actual sub will be closer to the stage than shown in the picture. Should I place a deeper panel across from it right in front of the stage to act as a bass trap?

Thanks for any thoughts on this!
JJ

Thanks Max for the compliments on the room, I know my family and I are very much looking forward to using the room!!!


I was actually in the process of purchasing 2 more of the 15's, but the place sold the last couple of pallets to a person over in Europe. So I would have to sell these to get a matched pair. If I am not happy with these I will eventually upgrade to either 2 - 18" subs or 4 - 15" subs. Actually, this is an upgrade compared to what I was planning on running in the first place. I have a 150 watt 12" RCA sub that I was going to use, so the 15s are a big upgrade for me. I don't think that I will be able to use all that bass anyways since I have a 2 year old daughter. Her room is directly above the storage room where the IB is setting now. That was kind of the reasoning behind getting the buttkickers to help supplement the feeling of the bass.

Ok, It has been a while since I posted last and I am happy to report progress!!!

Well, it has been a long time coming but I can finally say that the drywall is all done!!! So far the ceiling is painted and looking at having the HT room along with concession area and bathroom finished being painted tomorrow.

I have been working on putting in OC703 behind the screen on the wall and will be cutting 703 for the corners for bass traps.

Once painting is done, I will be working on finishing out the A/V rack and DVD slideout i.e. getting both painted. Finishing the screen wall is also on list for this week.

I will get some pictures posted by tomorrow night once I get everything situated down there.

I am also finishing up the IB sub and will try and get it mounted yet this week.

I am getting close to having an early Christmas! I can't wait till I get to start unpacking all the gear I have bought within this last 6 months or so. I also was able to pick up the Toshiba HD player at Wal-Mart a week or so ago for $98. I might be getting a PS3 for Christmas this year, then I will have both formats covered then.

I will post more when I get the pictures updated.

Cheers,
JJ

Thanks for the compliments! When I first started planning the room out I didn't think that I would be going into as much detail as I am. Looking back now, I would have planned a few things differently. If you are in the planning stages, this is a great area to get ideas and get a good idea how to do the room correctly. I hope your room build goes well!!!

As far as the formats go, I couldn't pass up the HD-A2 since it will also up convert. I have been ranting about the new Rock band coming out to my wife and she asked if I would like to have it for X-mas. So I told her that I would need to get the PS3 also to be able to play it, plus it plays Blurays! So hopefully Santa will have it under the tree for me!

I can't wait to see the finished product to!!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers,
JJ

Thanks Bryan!!!

I am hoping to get the GOM samples in the next day or so, I get a hold of you when I do. After measuring things out, it looks like I will be putting up about 12 panels in the room.

Thanks again for the help!
Cheers,
JJ