Home Theater

Somehow I caught the Home Theater bug. Probably after going to our local Audiophile store and watching the 12 foot Sony projections system at Audiocraft.

I had just a basic 12x26 foot basement that was only being used for storing junk and old stereo equipment. It has a fireplace and was the perfect size for a home theater project.



I did a ton of research on front projections systems, mainly on avsforums.com, endless amounts of info! After a few weeks of poking around the internet and finding out what was the best setup I came up with the following:

I didn't want to spend 20k on my system so I searched for the best quality for the money. I found that the Mitsubishi HD1000U had won a bunch of awards for picture quality, brightness, and general good value for the money.

I know that BlueRay and HDDVD are out and 1080P is what I should be buying but I want to wait to see what pans out in the HighDef market. I am a child of the Sony BetaMax fiasco and dont quite trust the consumer market.

I do know that HD looks great on a 720p projector and will sacrifice the 3k more for the eventual better resolution.

So, my project consisted of the following steps:

Repaint the complete room in Home Theater friendly colors. This would generally be flat dark colors such as dark burgandy, green, blue, brown, etc. I chose dark green for the upper part of my walls and Java Brown for the lower.



Replace nasty flourecent lighting with halogen lighting. Home Depot



Next I wanted to build my own projection screen. Being that it would generally cost about $1700 to buy a good quality fixed projection screen, I could bring myself to spend more than my projector! So after much research I found that you can build your own screen for about $100 using material from JoAnne Fabrics and Home Depot.

First I built the frame from 1x3 boards of poplar wood. This would make up the top, bottom, sides, and one vertical support.



2x4's are used in the corners for added support.



Corners are put together with 2 wood nails and some wood glue



Next you will need "Black Out" Fabric from JoAnn's. I found the whitest and thickest blackout material I could find. I also used my fiance's 50% off coupons to spend around $4 a yard x 4 yds. Next I purchase some black velvet to frame the bright white screen.

Stretch the white blackout material over the frame using canvas stretching techniques

Staple the material on using a staple gun and style 50 staples pulling fairly hard on all sides.



This is painflul! When all done, this should be very tight like a drum. Be careful not to tear the corners, sanding them first helps.

Next you need to staple the black velvet around the 1x3 poplar boards making sure to keep the corners very free of folds, since you will eventually be butting them up against each other.



After everything is nailed together you should have a very sturdy frame that is straight.

I found 2 wall studs and drilled long sturdy nails into them, and hung the whole screen on those. Probably a better way but I thought it was adequate.



Next I puchased some carpet from Home Depot 12x26 and some padding from a local carpet store. Home Depot prices on padding were double what they should be.



Fixed up the fireplace (tuck pointed and painted)




And here is the final product in all her glory


Full AV compenents include:

Yamaha RX-V2600 Receiver
Vandersteen 1C Fron Speakers
Vandersteen VCC-1 Center Speaker
Design Acoustic PS10 Surround Speakers
Mitsubishi HD1000U Projector
JBL Powered Subwoofer

Here are some shots of the screen in action: