Gavster's modest home cinema

[Gavster]

Herewith begins a series of posts detailing my new home cinema arrangement which occupies my lounge (no dedicated room for me I'm afraid). Although the job is more or less complete now ... each post will look at each phase in turn.

Your comments are welcome.

PHASE 1

I am currently in the process of modernising our house. It's a project that's been ongoing since my wife and I moved in five years ago and we've been working our way around on a room by room basis.

Well, I began work on the lounge at the beginning of the year and I knew then that I wanted a flat screen to mount on the wall to finish the job off. In order to accommodate the home cinema, a number of things needed to be taken into consideration.

1) The room couldn't be turned into a full-on home cinema. It still had to function as a lounge too. So, the home cinema components would need to be discrete.

2) The lounge is a comfortable size but not massive. Not only that, it's more of a long, thin room rather than a square room so careful consideration of the location of things and the best use of space possible was needed.

In the middle of one of the long walls is a chimney breast. It amused me a little to read about on the forums quite a few people installing false walls and chimney breasts on which to mount their TVs (and to good effect I might add) and that these were generally of a stud and plasterboard construction. Well, my chimney breast is real and it's made of hard red brick.

It was on the chimney breast that I decided to mount the TV. The breast had a fireplace in it but that was soon removed. The other problem was that we had a radiator mounted on the wall opposite the fireplace and originally, the sofa was up against that. The radiator consumed a good 6" of room space so that also needed to move. The problem with this was that doors existed on either side of the radiator so a channel needed to be cut into the concrete floor to take the pipes. The two attachements below show some before and after shots with the fireplace bricked up and the channel cut.

To summarise, both these jobs were necessary to make the home cinema aspect of the room achievable.

[Gavster]

PHASE 2

So most, but not all, of the grubby work was over. We had the entire room re-plastered, we painted the room, did second-fix etc. and I fitted a new radiator on the wall under the window.

I knew the TV was to go on the chimney breast. I also knew that I didn't want any cabling or wires visible at all from the front viewing position at least. My devious mind formulated a cunning plan ... and it went something like this.

I wanted to duct the cabling through the chimney breast so that the TV cables would go straight into the ducting behind the TV and then reappear at the left side of the breast. The intention was to house the DVD player etc. in some kind of cabinet to the left of the chimney breast and the TV aerial point and power were over this side too.

After much research and deliberation, I came up with this ...

I hired a 65mm core drill from my local tool hire place (Beaver Tool Hire ... who are very helpful, friendly chaps so I'm giving them a plug here for anybody who lives in Hampshire). This was used to cut dirty great round holes through the front (1 brick depth) and side (3 bricks deep ) of the fireplace. We decided that the middle of the TV screen wanted to be eye-height when we were sat in the sofa which equated to about 90-100cm. I cut the ducting holes at 80cm from the ground.

With the holes cut and the insides treated with concrete sealer, I threaded through some 65mm flexible aluminium ducting hose of the type used on car engines (pictured). This was obtained from a local motor factors. The ducting hose was fixed to the inside of the holes with nomorenails.

Finally, I purchased some desk grommets from these people. These are usually used at the back of desks to take PC cabling. I decided to use the 60mm ones to finish off my ducting holes ... also glued in place with nomorenails. The finished effect is shown below.

So now, my cables had somewhere to go and would not be visible at the front. The plan was coming together nicely.

We had the lounge carpeted and it was at this point that I realised I hadn't made any provision for cabling my rear speakers. A little panic set in so I turned to the avforums for some help ... Wireless system for rear speakers?

To be continued ...

[chelsea.tone]

Looking good Gav, the ducting is a nice idea. Cant believe how many ppl build false chimneys i would love to get rid of ours
(anyone wanna buy 1? lol). Looking forward to seeing more.

Tony

[Gavster]

Thanks for the support chelsea.tone. Well, here's some more ...

PHASE 3

During the whole lounge renovation phase, I spent many an hour reading these forums trying to decide which TV to buy. After much deliberation, I settled for the Samsung LE40F86BDX and I have to say I'm extremely happy with this purchase.

I also obtained a slim wall mount as discussed here ...

Ultra-slim wall mount for LE40M86/7

... pictures included below.

The brackets were attached to the TV first and then the wall plate was tried up to figure out the best positioning on the wall. Once the position had been decided, rawl bolts were used to fix the plate and the leads and cables were then pushed through the ducting.

The stand was removed from the TV. For anybody who may be interested, the stand is held to the body of the set by 4 screws which enter through the back of the TV. These need to be removed after which, the stand should just easily pull out. After this, the leads were plugged in and the TV was hung onto the bracket. Voila!

I hasten to add that I needed a scart lead where the cable entered the plugs themselves at the side as there's not a lot of clearance behind the set ... even with the recessed sockets. I also needed to use some of the white nylon spacers on the TV brackets to provide just a little more space for the scart cable. This was a little disappointing as it somewhat defeated the object of going for the ultra-slim wall mount but I can live with it ... we're only talking another 5mm or so.

At this point, I didn't have the DVD player rigged up so just spent the evening drooling and playing with settings ... looks like there was something good on Film4.

More to come ...

[Gavster]

PHASE 4

More of an interim phase really ... while I get some more pictures together.

My DVD player is a Pioneer XV-DV1000 ... it's a combined player/5.1 decoder amplifier and came with the sub and satellite speakers as a package. My plan is to continue using this for the time being as it produces a superb sound and can also generate RGB over scart for an excellent SD image.

Consequently, I haven't actually got any HD sources at present but wanted to test my HDMI ports to make sure they worked okay. Fortunately, I work for an IC design house and we specialise in producing chips for digital TV ... so I was able to borrow a TV signal generator that had an HDMI output. The results can be seen attached below, as always ...

All the test images shown were output at 1080p @ 24Hz and all 3 HDMI ports were checked.

Next phase: Installation of the 5.1 system

[The Ironduke]

excellent tutorial

[MarkP80]

Nice job Gavster. - the secret is of course those Screwfix worklights and the brilliant Ryobi power tools. I couldn't have done any of my projects without either!!!

Thanks for sharing the progress,
MarkP

[Gavster]

Originally Posted by MarkP80

Nice job Gavster. - the secret is of course those Screwfix worklights and the brilliant Ryobi power tools. I couldn't have done any of my projects without either!!!

Thanks for sharing the progress,
MarkP

Cheers chap. They certainly are excellent value for money.

[albriscoe]

Hi Gavster

from what I`ve seen you certainly seem to have it all under control and are doing a great job, the ducting idea is a beauty.

keep it up with pics as well mate

cheers Allan

[cramman]

Looking good!

Any chance of a pic showing how close to the wall the TV is with this 'ultra slim mount'. Need a mount myself.

[inzaman]

Looking great, and keep the pics coming

[Apone]

Looks good Gavster

That test generator is very useful, out of interest, how much do they go for?

Mahmood

[Gavster]

Originally Posted by mahmood batasi

That test generator is very useful, out of interest, how much do they go for?

Mahmood

Well, I was told that little box was £7k's worth which seems an awful lot to me but then again, professional test equipment can be a pretty penny. If you want more info then look here ...

http://www.quantumdata.com/products/802BT.asp

I notice that the web site says for pricing info to contact your local sales distributor.

Well you know how the saying goes ... if you have to ask the price, you probably can't afford it!

[Gavster]

PHASE 5

Well, the TV was up on the wall and looking good but I still had no 5.1 so it was time to get the HT system set up properly.

The plan has always been to purchase a sideboard that would be situated in the alcove to the left of the TV and to use one of the cupboards in this to store the AV quippy. So, we obtained a Thakat sideboard from a nice chap on ebay (along with some other bits and pieces). I made some small mods to the sideboard so the cabling could be routed in to the back of the cupboard space. The first picture shows the overall look that we have settled for.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I'd not made any provision for running the cables to the rear speakers. Originally, I was looking at a hideously expensive Keff wireless trasmitter/receiver but in the end I just decided to run the wires around under the edge of the carpet between the gripper and the skirting board. As it turned out, it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be ... the carpet went back with no fuss and it all looks good.

Inside the cupboard, the Pioneer HT system is just sat on a short piece of 6" soil pipe because that's what I had laying around that was convenient. Ultimately, I need to build in a small shelf. In the second image, you can also clearly see the cables exiting the ducting. These are a bit of a mess and the only idea I have for these at present is to use some of that cable-tidy stuff to bunch them together.

@ cramman - I've also attached some photos showing a side on view so you can see how close to the wall the set is. The pictures aren't great but hopefully they give you a good idea.

The other job that needed doing was to mount the front left/right speakers on wall brackets. I purchase what were described as ceiling brackets from a company called ChaseAV. I needed a small bracket that could be rotated through 180 degrees and still leave space between the side of the speaker and the wall ... believe me, there aren't many brackets that'll do this (well, not that I could find anyway). So, the brackets were fixed to the wall and the speakers attached ... pictures attached below. The last picture shows one speaker on the bracket and the other speaker before being attached. The PS3 was being borrowed from work over the weekend ...

You may also notice that the wiring to the right hand speaker just appears from the back of the TV and trails across the front of the wall which sort of looks a bit messy. I have plans to deal with this but I think I'll save it for the next post

The centre speaker is attached directly to the wall. The speakers have a threaded hole on the back so that they can be attached to brackets and the like but they also have the 'keyhole' holes. So, diligent use of a couple of round-head screws, 2 spacers from the TV mounting kit and the centre speaker attached very nicely to the wall.

The rears are still on their stands either side of the sofa facing inwards and the sub ... well, you can see that for yourself in the piccies. Simple.

[tojo]

I'm liking this a lot - really well explained - which is a boon for a novice about to dip their toe...