Pictures Of Previous Home Theaters

 

These are pictures from my first attempt at home theater in my previous apartment. The projector is a Sony VPH-D50Q being fed video by an HTPC (on the right side, bottom of the stack). There is a Yamaha RX-V440 on top of the HTPC that powers the 3 NHT SuperOnes for the front and the 3 NHT SuperZeros for the rear, the sub is a JBL 10". I'm using a DIY 80" 4:3 screen made out of blackout cloth. Stretching the cloth was quite a pain, but I was pretty happy with the results. As you can see from the picture the windows were covered up with a blanket. This window ran the length of the room which really made daytime watching difficult. The stands holding the SuperOnes are DIY made from red oak and filled with sand. I was pleased with the results at the time, but again, it was my first attempt at home theater. The biggest lesson I learned from this attempt was that I did NOT want a CRT projector. I bought the projector from a local government surplus auction house for $125 and after reading the CRT section of AVSForum I decided to keep it and make a home theater with it. They are not worth the trouble in my opinion. I couldn't have installed a ceiling mount for the projector because I was renting the apartment and also the size of the room made it difficult to fit all the equipment in. I decided to buy a futon bunk bed from a local bed store (about $200), remove the top rails, and use the bunk bed area as an equipment rack. A 1/2" thick piece of MDF was cut to fit the bunk bed area and painted black to create a shelf. The size and weight was a big obstacle, but it wasn't what I disliked most about the D50Q. The picture it threw was very dim, sometimes even at night. I'm much happier with my digital projector now. Now my D50Q was not ISF calibrated, I did it myself and I'm sure lots of people will fault my bad CRT experience to this. I looked into ISF calibration, but the lowest price I would find was about $400, it just wasn't worth that amount to me. I spent a very long time (somewhere to the order of 35 hours) reading about CRT calibration, learning the menu system, tweaking the focus and flapping, and in the end I was much happier with a DLP projector.

 

These pictures show the same theater once I replaced the Sony VPH-D50Q with an NEC LT-150 DLP projector, the HTPC with a Liteon LVD-2001, my 80" 4:3 screen with a 73" 16:9 screen, and my JBL subwoofer with a DIY subwoofer. The LT-150 is inside of a little projector stand I made out of MDF. It allowed me to easily mount a Hoya FL-DAY lens filter in front of the projector lens (which I no longer use) and I was hoping it would also quiet the projector a bit (it didn't). Even though the LT-150 is a 4:3 projector I choose to use it in cinema mode at all times making it act like a 16:9 projector. In this mode it's effective resolution is 1024x576. I much prefer the LT-150 picture to the D50Q picture, it's much brighter and sharper. Setup for the LT-150 was very simple which was also a plus. I got tired of having to use a wireless mouse and keyboard just to watch DVDs so I decided to get rid of my HTPC. I replaced it with the Liteon LVD-2001 because it supports MPEG4 (aka. DiVX, XViD, WMV, etc.) and because it will scale output via component video to 1080i or 720p. Once I got the new projector I thought I should make a screen using gray material instead of white (to help improve the contrast of the DLP projector). I hardly ever watch 4:3 material, so I decided that a 16:9 screen was the way to go. I made that screen out of 1/4" plywood that I sanded and painted with a HVLP spray gun. After reading on the AVSForum for a while I decided on the color Misty Evening (this is a much talked about color in the screens forum). I was very pleased with the outcome of this screen and used almost the exact same technique to make the screen for my current theater. The DIY subwoofer was created because my roommate had an extra Infinity 12" car driver that he sold to me for $20. I decided to make a subwoofer for the theater using that driver and a plate amp from Parts Express. This was my second speaker and I'm still pleased with the outcome although I do plan on building a replacement subwoofer at some point.