muRte's Lounge Room, all the way from Portugal

[muRte]

I, there!
I'm from Portugal and I wanna share with you all my modest theater room that I've been, slowly, putting together
I have to thank all of you for inspiring me to embrace such a "project"!
Meanwhile, sorry for my english!

So, I leave you with some pics of the different stages of evolution of my media room:

• The projection wall (I still haven't got the time to build my own screen):

• Wall where the sofa will be installed, as well the projector. The projection distance will be arround 4 meters:

• My old fashioned home cinema system, a Sony TA-KSL7, with almost 10 years and still provides a decent sound (Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS):

• A test that I made with a borrowed 3LCD projector, the Sony VPL-BW7:

Image diagonal should be arround 100 and 110 inches. The DVD player is the Toshiba SD480E that does upscaling of DVD movies to 720p/1080p through HDMI.

As for the projector by Sony, is very quiet and really looks good, but the image quality is a letdown (on a white wall projection). It looses many details in darker scenes even with all the lights turned down.

 

[muRte]

Meanwhile, a month later, I've boughted an Optoma HD600X.
Besides the projector, I've aquired some extra material so that this project would be possible:
• 21 m of audio cable for the surround speakers;
• 10 m of HDMI cable:

• 10 m of electric cable;
• an HDMI switch:

• standard ceiling mount for the projector:

• 2 wall mounts for the surround speakers;

• some furniture and stuff from IKEA;
• a wireless adapter for my XBOX360:

Until now I'm very happy with the Optoma. Movies and Games (X360) have another "greatness" with a very good picture quality even being projected on my white wall.
I don't have a Blu-ray player. I think I will be tranforming one of my desktop PCs into a dedicated media center with Windows 7 and XBMC.

 

[muRte]

Here's some pics of the room and it's configuration starting with the unboxing of the Optoma HD600X projector.

The box delivered at my adress:

Inside the box we have.. another box perfectly protected!

The security stickers:

Once opened, we get the acessories:

Once more, we can see that they took in extreme care the protection of the contents inside:

Besides the normal stuff, we also get a carrying case (where the projector is):

At the end, all that we deserve!

Front of the projector:

Top view:

 

[muRte]

The connections:

After the unboxing, it's time to describe my media room.

The entrance:

What else is there to play arround with:

The surround speakers and some cubes (Ikea) installed:

Black Tupplur from Ikea installed (first photo taken with flash and the second one without):

The home of the DVD player, the XBOX360 (still waiting to be placed) an the Sony AV receiver:

The screen white wall:

The confortable mega-puff temporarily placed in the future sofa spot:

Projector installed:

 

[muRte]

Finaly, some pictures taken from movie scenes with my old fashioned digital camera Sony DSC-S80:

Star Wars IV: A New Hope

The Fifth Element (everybody takes a picture from this scene!)

First Blood
Look! It's Horatio!

Note: these images are from DVD movies. At this time, I still haven't got the time to put the HTPC together.

This room was previously planned to be the rehearsal "home" of the band where I used to play the drums. So, the ceiling and the walls are acusticaly isolated. A perfect place to watch some movies really loud!

 

[muRte]

More pics (DVD movies once again):

Gladiator:

300:

 

[muRte]

Meanwhile, I've putted together my HTPC
It plays, without any kind of issues, 1080p mkv files with DTS sound. The projector is 720p of native resolution (it does 1080p by upscaling). The majority of my collection of movies and concerts are in 720p.

My HTPC runs Win 7 64 bits with XBMC installed (Aeon MQ3) and has the following components:
• Asus P5Q-SE2 motherboard
• Intel Dual Core E6400 processor
• 2 GB RAM DDR2
• HDD: 1 TB + 2 TB Seagate
• nVidia Asus EN210 Silent 1GB DDR3 graphics card (HDMI)
• Asus Xonar DS sound card

 

[muRte]

And, finally, my "chill-out" room as it is nowadays:

 

[acgwilliam]

I must say I really like all the toys, and your English is great!

Top room!

 

[Richard Fenn]

Great stuff!

 

[warrenhewitt10]

Looks good, dont see you complaining about the black levels on that projector! I had an optoma that had the same shell as that a DW318, and it was so bad for the darker scenes that I bought a 50" plasma instead

 

[muRte]

Thanks guys!
warrenhewitt10, I love movies and a 50'' Plasma doesn't give me the "feeling" of the real thing. The daker scenes should be better with a plasma screen, no doubt about it! But, even for a 720p projector, I really enjoy the experience

 

[muRte]

The room that I've transformed into a theater isn't the main living room at my house. In the main living room (that is also a dinning room) I have a 5 years old 32'' Philips LCD that I intend to replace in a near future by a 50'' Panasonic Plasma

 

[warrenhewitt10]

Oh definitely the projector would be better for movies, and I loved the size of the screen, just it was annoying playing COD on the xbox and not being able to see anything when it was dark! I will get another projector in life, a better quality more expensive one! But for now in my bedroom the TV is a better choice for occasional movies/tv/xbox/apple tv things

 

[muRte]

I have played around with the settings of the projector, but I believe that there's other things I could do to enhance the experience when it turns to picture quality. One of them is to build a screen, but I'm having trouble finding the right fabric to do it You guys still use black out cloth? Or are other ways (besides painting the wall using special paint)?

 

[muRte]

Did some paint job recently.
This is how it tourned out:

 

[muRte]

It's been a while since my last post
So, I'll leave you with a small glimpse at my PixelTHING entertainment room:

 

[muRte]

And now, my effort on doing a kind of videogame review