First time Home Cinema build - please help!

m00se

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Hi!

I am currently in the process of having an extension built which will leave me with a brand newly-constructed front room. This gives me all sorts of options for adding a home cinema, which I fully intend to do! After a decent bit of research I have come up with the below setup, which I would be grateful for your opinions on please. The kit I have listed basically tops out my budget for the room, and I'm not a cinephile or audiophile by any means - I just want to have a good noisy experience that beats out my current setup of a Yamaha soundbar connected to a 42" LCD!

The new room will be large (5mx6m), with a vaulted ceiling (with flat centre section) along the long dimension. I have toyed with various ideas for setting out the room but after initially thinking I could get away with putting my projector on the back wall, then discovering most wouldn't throw 6m to any sensible sort of sized image, I have decided the projector needs to be ceiling hung from the flat section of the vault (i.e. 3m from the surface to be projected onto). Hopefully I can find a ceiling mount with a long enough bracket as the ceiling will, at this point, be about 2.6m high.

Anyway, the hardware I have so far figured out should be decent enough is...

Projector: Optoma HD131xe. Currently £499 in Currys (weirdly, seems to be the cheapest around). Appears to be well-reviewed and throws a good-sized image at 3-4m.

AV receiver: Sony STR-DN1040. I have heard nothing but excellent thing about this, and while I'm opting currently for a 5.1 system, it has the option to add more speakers later for a 7.2.

Speakers: Tannoy HTS201. Again, I haven't found a bad word written about these. I was originally planning on doing an in-wall setup (given that the room is new-build), but it seems I won't get as good sound without spending a metric crapload.

Screen: This wall will also have a TV on a short stand (this will also be my casual front-room TV room and frankly I think my son putting Fireman Sam on the projector, or the news, might be overkill! For this reason I need a retractable screen for the projector, so it can be used for movies. I have found this - PCW120GE 120" HD Projector Screen Glass-Beaded 16:9: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics - on Amazon, which seems to be well-reviewed and is cheap (and massive!) This may actually be too big for the throw from the projector at 3m - but there are smaller screens available by the same manufacturer. This is just an example.

I haven't come up with anything else yet that I need - all media will be streamed from my HTPC / NAS. The only other thing I thought of was that I should get some cables run to the projector from the AV unit and that these should probably be a HDMI 1.4b and a Cat6? Can you even get HDMI 1.4b cables in 10m lengths?!

I realise I've probably overlooked some stuff, and maybe made some dodgy choices, but that's why I've come to ask some people who know what they're doing. Thank you all so much in advance for your help.
 
Projector - try and get to view some moving images with high contrast scenes to ensure you are susceptible to the rainbow effect some folk see with DLP.

Screen - glass beads are best avoided' usually too sparkly, show hot 'bright' spots, and damage easily.

HDMI Cables - ignore version numbers they are irrelevant. At 10m you are looking at a Standard Speed cable (won't cost more than £40-£50). Ensure you can replace the cable should it ever fail - CAT6 is a good backup.

Joe
 
It is advised to use a High Speed as opposed to Standard Speed HDMI cables when conveying 1080p video and/or sequential 3D content.

High Speed HDMI Cable
The High Speed HDMI cable is designed and tested to handle video resolutions of 1080p and beyond, including advanced display technologies such as 4K, 3D, and Deep Color. If you are using any of these technologies, or if you are connecting your 1080p display to a 1080p content source, such as a Blu-ray Disc player, this is the recommended cable.

HDMI :: Manufacturer :: HDMI 1.4 :: Finding the Right Cable
 
Which then limits you to a Max cable length of 8m or you have to go with an Active cable (which may not play nice in your system), or go with an HDMI over CAT Extender.

Cost wise I'd give it a go with a Standard cable and have CAT6 as the backup plan.

Joe
 

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