New Orangery - Basic Set Up

R

riskym

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We are having an orangery built which, to all intents will be a separate room. The orangery is going to be approximately 5m * 6m and will have full width bi-fold glass doors at one end (East). In addition to this there will be a 3.5 * 3.5 glass atrium in the roof.

I will be buying new kit for the room so have a lot of choices to make and want to make sure that I make the best informed decision.

The first question is related to the TV. The options are LCD / Plasma or projector. My initial though is that a projector will be a mistake given the large amount of glass in the room, especially as we will have a glass atrium.

The TV will be mounted / projected onto the North wall. I'll be looking to install a surround sound system and will have the oportunity to put cabling in for the speakers etc. I'm assuming that it makes sense to go for a 'proper' surround sound system as opposed to a sound bar given that I will be starting from scratch.

I also want to install a sound system and would like to use the same speakers (although I appreciate that this may not be optimum). However, If we're having a party and have the bi-fold doors open I think that it would make sense to have the speakers on the West side of the room as the 'front' speakers (so that the sound is projected out towards the East). This would require some mechanism for changing the orientation of the speakers - front would be on the North for TV and West for music. I'd also like to put a set of speakers on the outside or near the bi-fold doors so that sound could be projected into the garden.

The sound system will be something like a Sonos which will be connected back to a music library held on my computer network.

All of the AV equipment will be housed on the West side of the room in a cupboard. I'm almost certainly going to cater for the wiring by putting a 'letter box' type wall plate behind the TV to give flexibility.

In terms of equipment that will be housed in the cupboard there will be : DVD / BluRay player, PVR (Freesat), XBox, media player (possibly) and a PC or connectivity for a laptop as I will, at times want to display output from a PC on the TV screen.

Ideally, what I'd like to do is to be able to control as much as possible from a single device and was thinking of using an iPad (as well as iPhone) to do this.

Apologies in advance for having so many questions / options but I guess that's how it is when you're new to this and are starting from a green field site.

Any advice / guidance that you can give would be very much appreciated. Especially with regard to changing direction of the speakers when moving from surround sound TV to music.
 
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If you cannot have a fully darkened room, I would rule out a projector setup. As for which is better e.g. LCD/Plasma and so on. This question has been asked and answered numerous times on the forum. There is a "What TV should I buy?" forum elsewhere, so I suggest you go there. I'm a big fan of Panasonic Plasma so that's where I would start.

Which TV Should I Buy? | AVForums.com - UK Online

I'm afraid having your display on one wall and the fronts on another doesn't make sense. If you are going for an AV Receiver, you could use the 5 channel stereo sound modes. These are excellent for parties and large rooms. Therefore get 4 x identical speakers for the fronts and rears. Problem solved.

For control options, I would look at a Logitech Harmony. Phones/Tablets can be used to control network enabled devices. I believe the latest Sony tablet can also do IR. Most equipment uses IR for control. If your equipment is hidden away you would need some form of relay for the IR. This can be IR exenders e.g. Keene IRBKIT or an RF option such as one of the Logitech Harmony remotes.



There is a lengthy thread on using iOS devices as a remote:

http://www.avforums.com/forums/remo...pod-iphone-ipad-universal-remote-control.html
 
Thanks very much for the post. I'll digest the contents shortly. I have edited my original post as it wasn't very clear. The intention is, of course, to have the front speakers on the North (TV) wall when watching TV. However, I'd like to change the front speakers to the West wall when playing music (or at least have the option of doing this).
 
What bit did you edit?

I'm afraid there is no easy solution and as I said with a large space, using 5 channel stereo mode would enable you to have the same signal sent to each speaker. This mode is ideal for large rooms and parties.
 

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