FoooManChu
Established Member
Having been a member of AVForums for some time and been witness to some very inspiring self builds Id always wanted to have a go but never quite got it passed the missus. Now Im not saying she must be mellowing with age but to my surprise when I last plucked up the courage to broach the subject and show her a few pics from these pages she seemed quite keen
!
Once I got the green light I started to try and get a really clear picture in my mind of what I wanted to achieve with the refurb. I decided on these key objectives that had to be checked off:
A big thank you for all your work on both your DIY and Gallery thread Elootos - its helped me immensely. What spoke to me most about this build was how he had maintained an excellent cost/performance ratio. Proving you dont always need to spend MEGA MEGA bucks to get a very high quality finish.
There were a few significant differences that I had to accommodate. Firstly, my house is all solid brick so channeling cables was going to be a bit more of an issue. Im also a keen console gamer which meant my 360, PS3 and Wii had to be integrated into the system. I could get my HTPC and Sky boxes up in the loft but need access to the consoles. Therefore, it made more sense to keep the amp in the lounge and drop two sources down rather than extend three up Planned to use the existing hole in the wall and chimney as my main route to the loft and build the false chimney breast on the other wall which was a more suitable place for the LCD and screen.
Downloaded Sketchup and came up with this as somewhere to start for my 3.70m square living room:
Total cabling setup should look something like this:
And quite a large diagram of the build itself should be like:
In summary my main purchases have included:
Lastly, one of my greatest regrets to not going down the floating wall path is the lack of some real stand out feature lighting. There will be spots in the false chimney breast but Im currently looking at including Mitsis light trough idea into the design Need to do a little more work on this yet but its looking like a go-er!
Anyway Im going to get Christmas out the way then start works early January when many pictures and hopefully shorter posts will follow!
Once I got the green light I started to try and get a really clear picture in my mind of what I wanted to achieve with the refurb. I decided on these key objectives that had to be checked off:
- Not a dedicated room so had to be homely not too bachelor paddish nor looking like a showroom
- Cable free Absolutely! Also wanted to find a better way of dealing with the increasing number of cables I have snaking round the outside of my house too Looks like a patch work quilt!
- Fully integrated gaming, media centre, first time projector setup and feature lighting
- Probably most importantly it couldnt break the bank!
- To be as future proof as possible with hopefully no need for any major reinvestment within the next 5 years.
A big thank you for all your work on both your DIY and Gallery thread Elootos - its helped me immensely. What spoke to me most about this build was how he had maintained an excellent cost/performance ratio. Proving you dont always need to spend MEGA MEGA bucks to get a very high quality finish.
There were a few significant differences that I had to accommodate. Firstly, my house is all solid brick so channeling cables was going to be a bit more of an issue. Im also a keen console gamer which meant my 360, PS3 and Wii had to be integrated into the system. I could get my HTPC and Sky boxes up in the loft but need access to the consoles. Therefore, it made more sense to keep the amp in the lounge and drop two sources down rather than extend three up Planned to use the existing hole in the wall and chimney as my main route to the loft and build the false chimney breast on the other wall which was a more suitable place for the LCD and screen.
Downloaded Sketchup and came up with this as somewhere to start for my 3.70m square living room:
Total cabling setup should look something like this:
And quite a large diagram of the build itself should be like:
In summary my main purchases have included:
- Philips 32PFL9603D (replacing my 9830 Ambilight seems to be the Marmite of the AV world, sadly I cant get enough of it!) Main reasons for the upgrade included Spectra 2 Ambilight, 1080P, Smaller/lighter and VESA wall mountable compared to the 9830s proprietary bracket.
- Optoma HD65 Only 720p but handles 1080p well and Anibaps pics in the discussion thread convinced me of what this little projector can do. It is a little louder than what I would have hoped for but I still think that the HD65 offers the first time projector buyer (thats not susceptible to RBE) plenty of bang for an intro to HD home cinema.
- Onkyo TX-SR606 (replacing my old Sony HT-DDW880) 4 HDMI inputs, Dolby True HD/DTS HD, Upscaling all inputs to 1 HDMI with an option of throughput for audio as well (dont really like using the 5.1 for general TV viewing)
- Followed Elootos lead and went with the Mordaunt Short 5.1. Including a perfect 309i sub that I managed to get off ebay for £100 BARGAIN! Also not sure if its cause we were working at similar throw distances but I couldnt find any better option of screen than the Leader lwe5002 neither.
- Vista Media Centre Total out of the box function (well except for the DVD library registry edit) Not even going to worry about HD content till MS decide to build it in which I dont think they will for business reasons as I want to minimise going in and out of the VMC interface. I dont have many blu-rays anyway what I really wanted was to get the racks of DVD/CDs boxed up and out the way. Had never built a PC before so kept it simple and went for the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H as it had everything I needed on the board. Ended up with an AMD Athlon X2 5000+ and TB Samsung Spinpoint. Works a treat for what I need it to do but Im rapidly filling up that 1TB...
- Logitech Harmony One Needed something that pulled all this together so that the wife and child could actually watch the tele while I wasnt there
Lastly, one of my greatest regrets to not going down the floating wall path is the lack of some real stand out feature lighting. There will be spots in the false chimney breast but Im currently looking at including Mitsis light trough idea into the design Need to do a little more work on this yet but its looking like a go-er!
Anyway Im going to get Christmas out the way then start works early January when many pictures and hopefully shorter posts will follow!
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