[timtimes]

Hi all. I read/scan almost all the posts daily and haven't seen the type setup I'm considering ever having been discussed. I have also not seen this concept in any of the home theater photos I've perused.


I have an extemely small room I'm going to convert to a mini-theater. I'm guessing it's 10-11 feet by 12-14 feet. The smallness of the room was a definite factor in my choosing a projector over a 'furniture sized tv".


Now here's the deal. The room right next to the home theater room is my home office. The closetspace for my home office shares the wall with the theater room. I'm considering mounting the projector in the closet of the home office (It's an open closet about the width of two normal sized bedroom closets so no heat issue), cutting a hole in the wall (it wouldn't need to be very big) just like they do in the movie theaters. This way, the projector isn't even in the same room as the theater.


Solves any noise issues, although that's not a problem for me with my PJ (Benq 6200) I know a lot of folks build hush-boxes etc. I'm more interested in (a) a little added throw distance and (b) mimicking the 'hole' that you'd see in a normal movie theater. When not in use, I can cover the hole in the home theater room with a picture/poster that is hinged/movable/removable.


This will also make my cable management a little easier since the closet for the home theater room is where my equip is going and it abuts the office closet where the projector will be mounted. The only downside I can think of is that I'd have to go into the office to focus the projector, but that's not something that needs to done that often.


What do you guys think? Anybody else out there doing this?


Enjoy.

 

[No Clue]

I don't see any problem with it but you may want to keep your closet doors open while the projector is running. It seems like mine will raise the temperature at least a couple of degrees in a large room. If heat becomes an issue, there are ways of venting the room or course and you could cross that bridge when you come to it.

I have seen several theaters with a similar setup of the projector not being in the same room. You should be ok.


Steve

 

[mike4434]

You can use a speaker port (black round tube at partsexspress) cut to wall depth, It will have a lip on one side for a clean look. Take some fine grit sandpaper to remove the shine from the inside of the tube.

 

[timtimes]

I had considered the plastic trim thing mentioned here because I've got them on my desk at work. They trim out all the holes where the wires go under the desk, but the speaker port hole tubes would work well also. Don't really have to worry about heat in the closet since it's only technically a closet now that I removed the door and expanded and trimmed it out.


I'm surprised that more people don't do it this way because you can totally hide the projector in another room. Since I've got 8' ceilings, having the projector in the same room as the seating would make the projector too obvious as well as possibly being in the way.


Since reading this forum, I have gone from my original idea of TOTALLY camouflaging the media room (which has to double as a living room BTW) to doing some type of theme. One thing I've decided to do is to build a raised 'stage' flanked on either side by columns. The 'stage' will be as high as what normal seating would be. The area between the columns will double as seating when I'm not projecting an image on the wall. So my 'stage' will double as a bench seating for times when I have people over and we're not watching movies. At this point, I'm leaning towards just painting the wall between the columns (no special screen). I'm not sold on spending a bunch of money on a special screen sinced I'm pretty much overjoyed at the image quality I'm getting projecting now (and that's projecting on a sculptured wallpaper - off yellow color wall!)


I've got to be REAL creative with my use of space because I literally don't have any to waste. Equip goes in closet. Speakers will all be flush mount. Plan on mounting subs in the front of the stage I'm building to use as extra seating. Also have to squeeze front channel in there. Like most of you, I've got more ideas than time, but I hope to have it all together someting this summer. I'll post construction pix etc. when the time is right.


Enjoy.