[stuartbrown21]

Hi there

I've been a forum member for over a year now and have had some stunning input into almost all areas of my set up, which is as follows:

Panasonic PT-AX100 LCD projector.
PS3 for games and Blu-Ray.
HD-EP30 for HD DVD (arriving this week, previously owned an E1).
Denon 2307 amp.
Mordaunt Short 902i front surrounds placed on......
Atacama Nexus 6 speaker stands.
Mordaunt Short 905i centre speaker.
Mordaunt Short 302 rear surrounds.
Mordaunt Short 309i subwoofer.

As you can see it's a fairly respectable set up which I'm very happy with, and there is no way I could have put it all together and avoided lots of potential banana skins without spending (at my best estimate) not far off a thousand hours almost living on these forums!!

At present I watch the pj in my living room which isn't ideal. The throw distance is about 10 feet and I project onto a beige wall. The room is considerably wider than 10 feet which I know is bad for room acoustics, but I have compensated as best as I can by having the speakers only as wide apart as the screen. The picture is in fact quite acceptable, and I can achieve total backout in the room thanks to blackout blinds, although I appreciate that the light beige walls and white ceiling are killing the contrast to a certain degree. Probably more annoying is having the whole room light up whenever there is a reasonable amount of light on screen.

Anyway, cutting to the chase, in 3 months time I will be getting married and so in the meantime I have a nice window of time to research and plan the perfect cinema room, which we hope to install into our new home (which we haven't even started looking for yet!!). Below I will detail what I am planning so far including a few areas where I am a bit unsure which route I will take, and I'd be really interested for the thoughts of those of you who have planned your own HT's.

Main objective. Maximise potential of room to provide perfect viewing and listening conditions for watching movies / playing games, all achieved at minimum cost. Essentially, cosmetic considerations when pj are not in use are unimportant to me, and I wish to achive quality results for very little outlay - I will not and quite honestly cannot spend £000's on this project - functionality is everything.

Room dimensions. My current 10' throw can give an image of 120" diagonal. I probably won't go this large anyway, but would ideally wish to sit a little further from the pj than I do at present. Also, I understand that the room should be longer than it is wide. I was therefore hoping to convert a room of approxmately 13'x11' - although slightly larger would be even better.

New equipment. The only new addition planned will be a fixed frame projector screen. May try out a few different materials, but is most likely to be a matt white screen with a gain of 1.0 to give the most natural colour balance. Hoping to go for a 106" diagonal, or if not then a 92". Screen will have a black velvet border to soak up any light overspill.

Room decor.............BLACK!!! Intending to paint all the walls and the ceiling in matt black emulsion. Any skirting boards will be painted in matt black gloss. The carpet will be BLACK as the night!!!!, and probably have a nice plush underlay. I will probably have spotlights fitted into the ceiling, but nothing that's going to show or reflect when the pj is in action. Any windows will be fully blacked out also.

All my equipment will be behind the main seating area which will either be a black leather suite, or some black leather recliners, or maybe even some proper cinema chairs. DVD's etc will also be here. Any furniture will be...........you've guessed it.............BLACK!!

Areas where I'm a little unsure at present are principally in terms of the audio side of the room.............not sure if to stick with my current speaker set up, or to shift the 902's to the rear, and the buy some 904 or 906 floorstanders to use as the fronts. Either way, will probably stick to a 5.1 rather than a 7.1 set up. I have considered going for an acoustically transparent screen and mounting the centre speaker behind it, but I decided it would probably add considerably to the cost and effort required, could only reduce PQ, and I've never honestly had an issue with the centre speaker being located below the screen. Anybody think accoustically transparent screens should be given more serious consideration?

My second audio query is...........where would be the best place to locate the sub?

Thirdly, given that the room would essentially be carpeted with painted walls, will this likely give good sound, or is there a risk of it being echoey etc etc? I have heard that it may be necessary to place many soft furnishings in the room to 'soak up' some of the sound, but don't really understand this?

Fourthly, I was hoping to avoid soundproofing as this appears to be a big and expensive task. Obviously, I will have to if the house is terraced or a semi, but I was just wondering whether paying attention to this side of things brings any other benefits other than preventing the sound being audible to those outside the room ie does it being benefits to the sound reproduction inside the room?

AND FINALLY!!...............cables. My initial thought is to just route all cables around the edges of the room, but ensure they are tidy and not visible when watching the pj. The other option is obviously to build them into the walls, just wondering how much of a task it tends to be to do this, and is it expensive to do?


I hope I have given a reasonable impression of what I am aiming for - basically a veritable batcave of a HT!! I'd be very interested to hear the thoughts of you gents, what with you all being far more experienced at this whole HT malarky than I am. From viewing a large number of the other HT builds documented on these boards, it would appear that most other people build far more aesthetically pleasing rooms than the one I have planned, and so it does make me wonder whether going for black everywhere is necessarily the right way forward. I'd certainly also love to hear back from anyone that has gone for black everywhere!!

Thank you and all the best to everyone.

[virdi]

It sounds perfect!! and your rig is good.

Please please please post pics during the work and once finished!

Thanks