The Awkward Lounge and a Bang-For-Buck Home Theatre

[wild_quinine]

Thought I'd share some experiences of doing my lounge up as a HT. Couple or three reasons:

1) Everyone likes to show off. There are many better projects out there, but this one is mine.
2) Came up against a bunch of problems whilst trying to install. Some were my own stupid fault - some just threw me for six. I'll relate the most critical ones - might help people who find themselves in the same boat.
3) I did quite a bit of research on what to pick up in the value-for-money end of town, and I think that a bit of debate on that would be no bad thing.

I'll start out with just a couple of pictures of the lounge, and post more over the next couple of days.

We have a long thin lounge, in an old house. It's 26 feet long, but only nine feet wide. Before we moved in, it looked like a bloody corridor. The reason for this is that it used to be a long thin lounge, and a box room, and some previous occupant had the bright idea of knocking a wall in, and turning it into a REALLY LONG, THIN lounge.

We divided the lounge into an office area (behind a media screen) and a lounge area, with a high backed media centre.

Two photos of just the lounge area:

[wild_quinine]

OK,

So our lounge is awkward. It was awkward to set up - every time you had one good idea about what could go where, it would be thwarted by some obstacle or another.

But in the end we came up with something laid out like this:

[JAMESTB]

Not a bad idea there. Fom your sketch i was under the impression that the divider wuld've been floor to ceiling length. But it's an inspired choice.

[wild_quinine]

Originally Posted by JAMESTB

Not a bad idea there. Fom your sketch i was under the impression that the divider wuld've been floor to ceiling length. But it's an inspired choice.

Thank you - I have to say it has worked well for us, and even if it hadn't, we considered just about anything else we could try.

So the plan was, because of this divider, we'd have the screen coming down from the ceiling, effectively hanging in the middle of the room, but in practice coming down just in front of the media center, where the room was already separated.

The projector was going to have to go on the rear wall, because there's a floor to ceiling window bay, with a window that opens inwards. So the only option was a side mount with lens shift, or considerably reducing the throw distance by ceiling mounting some distance into the room.

As it turns out, neither of these things would have been possible.

But here was the plan:

[wild_quinine]

Right, I'll chat about my kit for a bit. I wanted a big screen, Full HD projector, and a decent 5.1 system. I also wanted to tie it all up through a single AV receiver unit, but didn't have anything in mind when I started.

I have a PS3, 360, Media PC, and an old school Virgin cable box, so that's a bunch of sources which can output everything over HDMI, and one old school Virgin box.

Sorry, where was I? This might end up being a long post... Oh yes!

Here's what I came up with:

Projector...

had to be an LCD for two reasons: I'm very susceptible to the rainbow effect, and DLP projectors tend to have a lot less flexibility when it comes to placement. There was no question but that placement flexibility was paramount.

The Sanyo z700 is a great all-rounder, and whilst it doesn't truly excel in any way it met all my requirements with aplomb, whilst almost nothing else came close for price. So that was a quick decision.

Screen

I wasn't sure about this at all, I spent ages looking at stuff on here. I didn't know the first thing about screens, and spending hundreds seemed extravagent to me, given the success I'd previously had with just a wall.

But I was swayed by compelling arguments about screen quality being important, and since I definitely needed a screen, the question became how cheap can I get a decent screen, not how cheap can I get a screen.

I decided I wanted a grey screen to balance out the relatively poor black levels of my chosen z700, and because of the lightness of my walls. The Projecta ProCinema range just seemed to have everything I wanted on paper. I paid 350 for 104" screen, which was, overall, good.

I'm very happy with it.

Speakers

Speakers and Amp were kind of a chicken and egg situation, since it doesn't hurt to pick one to complement the other... In the end, the speakers got picked first, because there was a big price difference between my two choices: so I went for the cheaper ones.

I had been looking at some end of line Tannoys from Richer Sounds, but at 200 quid the Jamo A102s were half the price, and people on forums mostly raved about them. There didn't look to be anything close in that price range, so they won me over easily.

They're quite pretty, too.

AV Receiver

Well, the reciever really needed to have 3 HDMIs, because I have three sources I want to be able to use all the time. That cut out a surprising number of budget-midrange systems - I was quite surprised how many.

Onkyo were out because the model I had been looking at turned out to have HDMI but only do pass through requiring separate cables for audio - disgusting, IMO. Don't even bother putting the ports on there, if that's all you're going to do with them. Here's me hoping for upconverting analog sources to HDMI, and the 506 doesn't even handle the bloody audio!

I've got an LCD telly, so in an ideal world there would have been 2 outs as well... but when I found out how much that would cost, my jaw nearly dropped, so I gave up on that. (The Marantz SR6003 was the cheapest I could find, but was still close on 800 quid. Most were double that.)

I really fancied the Sony STR-DA2400ES, but it was out of stock everywhere with none expected in for weeks. Places that claimed to have stock often didn't, and those that did were charging well over RRP - so I started to look at other things.

That's when the Denon 1909 started to creep into my subconscious... I have a lot of faith in Denon's ability to upconvert and upscale, having seen my Dad's setup, but it seemed from reviews like they were going out of fashion a bit.

Looking into it, though, it seemed like that's exactly what was going on - it didn't seem like their quality had suffered lately, just that their traditional, somewhat reserved sound had given way in the audiophile world to a brighter spanglier sound, courtesy Sony, Onkyo... so I thought, screw it. Denon it is - it'll hold back some of the brightness of my tiny Jamos, and I'm not such a dedicated follower of fashion anyway.

This was the one piece of kit I didn't buy new - again, couldn't find it even if I'd wanted to, there's a real midrange shortage on AV receivers! But I found one on ebay for just over 300 including postage, and that was fine for me.

Link to GIGANTIC piccy of 1909, because it's so damn pretty.

So that's the kit that went in there!

[wild_quinine]

Having gone through my post, I thought I should mention prices, so that you can see how much it would cost to set this up, and comment where appropriate, suggest alternatives, etc.

Sanyo z700 = 950
Jamo A102 5.1 speakers = 199
Denon AVR-1909 = 325 (S/H)
Projecta ProCinema 104" = 350

total = ~1800 quid

Plus:

Vogels EPW 6565 wall mount = 95
Misc fittings, unseen costs, etc = 100 ish

So, remembering that I already have all my sources, the whole setup cost just the right side of 2000 pounds. That's taken me from a telly with some games consoles and a Warcraft-capable PC, to a full home theatre.

This is not an amount of money I would spend on a whim, but I think it probably offers around the best bang-for-buck out there.

If you want a budget home cinema, but you don't want it to feel cheap, I think that you could do a lot, lot worse than this setup.

I'm just a hobbyist, but I did some reasonable research, read between the lines, and I'm confident in my selections! Not only is this great kit for the money, but it's a good combination.

You might pay 100 more for the Denon new - Richer Sounds have it at 369, but none in stock when I last checked. Many places are asking 400-450.

Comments welcome!