I started this room with all good intentions of keeping a diary, taking lots of pictures and doing regular updates on this forum. This all went out of the window when my wife told my daughter she could have her friends around for a cinema party on her birthday on 20th December. This was mid-November and at that time the walls were bare, there was no ceiling and the room resembled a builders tea-room (which in reality, it was).
I set about clearing the room, and installed a suspended cieling with a bulkhead feature in the middle to break up the flat expanse of the ceiling and create the opportunity to install the obligatory hidden LED lighting.
My center speaker is upright so I went looking for an acoustically transparent electric screen and I finally tracked down a Screen Excellence RD90 which I recessed into the ceiling. To my horror, when fully extended the top 20 cms was obscured by the bulkhead. I didn't get any help from the screen supplier, and with the prospect of it going back to France to be fixed or replaced with the spec I ordered, I could see 20th December arriving and me nailing a sheet to the wall. Instead I had a couple of brackets made which suspends the screen below the cieling but above the bulkhead - not as elegant as the original design but it works.
I installed 4 CBus lighting channels which create some interesting dimming effects, but had to postpone using the Meridian signal cables I buried in the wall as I could not source the sockets and wall plates in time.
As there is underfloor heating in the room, normal (high TOG) carpet and underlay are not reccomended, so I am looking for low TOG dark carpet - if anyone can reccommend a source I would be greatful. In the meantime I have used some second hand carpet tiles.
The projector is a Themescene - I appreciate there are many much higher specification (and price) ones out there - but it does a pretty good job, and for a family that have never experinced home cinema before it is entirely adequate.
I am using my Merdian audio system with 3 DSP6000 at the front, an active sub and a pair of DSP5000 at the rear. I have another pair of DSP5000 to go at the sides when I can afford to upgrade the Meridian 561 to a processor that can handle a 7.1 setup. My elderly Merdian DVD has Scart and SVideo but no component and (obviously) no HDMI so I brought one of those Evesham DVD1000 "Hi Def Conversion" DVD players which for £70 gives pretty impressive results.
After the birthday party and Christmas I will get cracking to get the room fininshed with carpet, skirting board, proper wiring and hopefully some of those pucker home cinema seats. As you will appreciate, with hard surfaces, the sound quality is not optimal in there and I have one of these
http://www.silentsource.com/diffusors-rpg-siab.html kindly specified and supplied by Matt on this forum. It is still in three big boxes in the garage and for the sake of my marriage I think I will sneak it in bit by bit in the spring. The room ultimately is for playing and making music as well as cinema and while it will look a bit utilitarian I am confident the acoustics will improve no-end.
Also on the list is a VP50 and an PS3 when they arrive, and I will hook up Media Centre to grab video and audio off my server.
I have been a lurker on this forum fo a few years now, and have learned a lot about how to do this stuff from the incredibly knowledgable and helpful people on it. Please keep up the good work!
Sorry about the poor quality photos, I have had to muck about with them to get them below the 120k limit.
Linear Mode
