Updating from a (very old) AE300 (yup 300 not 3000!)

[mikemag]

Afternoon all

Nice Pick ELV, are you going to post a thread on it? (I haven't seen one if you've done so already but then I've been busy with Work and the below, I'd be interested in your setup).

The Sony is bedding in nicely and after a weekend of room moving about and furniture building I thought it was about time for some pics.

First the beast straight out of the packaging before the tempting-tempting removal of the protective film...mmmm...peely.

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Little bit of a size difference to my trusty AE300, I do believe the Panny was worried it may get eaten at this point

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So as I mentioned in my original post, the Panny had been used on a tripod mount, well that wasnt going to work for the Sony. I looked at ceiling mounting it but the joists run the wrong way in this room and while we rent from family so have lots of leeway, the kind of structural gubbins I'd need to do to hang this beast was discounted. So firstly worked out the height that was going to be needed - was spot on the calculations I got out of Projector Central. Here's the Sony on a makeshift stand (occasional table on the main table - Mmmmm blends in with the room - what projector? - lol). The "new" well new to my system back 7.1 surrounds are there as well on my home made speaker shelves.

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So after a mid week Marvel movie it was a holding pattern until the weekend and a trip to Argos (well two due to stock being in different branches) for a couple of appropriate height storage units. These have been put together and bolted to the wall. Although they are pretty sturdy anyway didnt want to take any chances with a 12 year old and two kittens in the house as well as taking chances on my projector nose diving.

I also took the opportunity to sort out the speaker cabling into new conduit. Was pretty late on Sunday by the time I finished so apologies for the darker picture.

The LED / glass beads are turned off for movies obviously.

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So up with the current screen (its a homemade 300cm wide by 135cm high creation that attaches to wall hooks and is tensioned by turnbuckles - we just roll it up when not in use) and movie time.

Two movies Jurassic Park and then Titan AE. Just quick screen grabs while we watched from my Samsung phone here, actual picture looks a lot better. Jurassic Park is obviously 1.85:1 so uses no zoom at all just the lens shift to nudge it over a bit as the radiator stops me putting the projector unit dead center. Titan AE is 2.35:1 so I thought I'd try zooming it up to fill the height. The Sony had no issues with it even on low bulb and the space animations look very nice with dark blacks.

Im feeding the sony via an active QED HDMI lead from a Yamaha RX-V673 from a SKY HD, media PC running Kodi, (I dont have everything ripped to my back end 10TB Unraid server as it would soon fill) I do also have the option to play from my old but trusty PS3 anyway and it's still a pretty decent BluRay player even if it's not in the league of some of the new Oppos etc.

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So next step is to build a new screen. This will be a rigid framed screen at 300cm wide by 145cm high to allow me a number of framing options, it will be a wood frame and will have patterned fabic on the back doubling as wall art when not used. It will hang on the wall to the left of the TV wall and simply be lifted from one wall to another.

Due to the loft (again) an electric screen wouldn't work in the room without some serious changes and a large enough sized screen would be prohibitively expensive anyway. So for now some more DIY will be coming. In the meantime I will tweak the existing screen as there's a tension ripple in the bottom right side which does show if there's a block of light colour so I'll correct that until we can move the room around (including a bookcase which is full, reaaaally full, of books) to allow a large piece of "wall art" to hang there

Cheers all

Ed

Welcome to the club Sir ! Your pics remind me just how nice an image the Sony throws out with very little adjustment beyond Reference mode, low lamp and maybe Gamma 2.4.

 

[ELV]

Sorry been busy today lol.
I've taken delivery and more than happy. I'll post some pics when I get a chance. Had a quick watch of Revenant earlier and it looked fantastic. Hard to believe how much difference 1080 looks. Colors are vibrant I'm eco. Won't need anything more. I did have a little fiddle with the panel alignment as it was slightly out on the left and right sides. Much better now but I'll have a better look when I have time. I've tried to upload a photo but it keeps saying there's an error.
I'm keen to try 3d as I love it and have a good few discs that I've never played. Think I might look at the screen next as I am only using a white wall but it looks great and I can blackout.
The Sony looks great pal. Some pics are broken on my phone. I'll have to go as at work tomorrow. There is a thread I think on the 6700 so I'll put my penny's worth in.
Cheers Neil

 

[edz]

Hello everyone

Been a while since I updated as I was waiting to buy some bits.

So since the last update I started to look at making the screen better and making the whole usability much slicker than having to attach a large screen for each viewing.

As you can see here, the previous setup was a wall mounted 42" TV lined up just off centre of the room (due to furniture which made it look odd if it was in the centre of the wall).

The size of screen I want / need for the Sony to throw from the back of the room is 148cm tall by 263cm which would be expensive to say the least as a drop down, moreso as I would want it to be tensioned and coving (as you can see here) would mean it would need to be wall mounted.

In the short term I created a roll up screen which attached to the side walls via "turnbuckles" which meant it could be tensioned up. This was mostly successful as a prototype (you can see the rough edges below) but

(A) was a (small) obstacle to movie night
(B) was only really something I could do meaning no big screen if I was away
(C) this wasn't really slick and still harked to the old style "slideshow" type of evening.

So I did look at a nice tensioned drop down screen that would work but this was waaaay out of my budget. So Inspired by Kelvins1965 among others I looked at moving the TV out of the way using a lift. I have a very low set of units under the TV and they are shallower than the height of the TV (an older LG with a big bezel) so I did some hunting and found a TV lift which wasnt as compact as the one KelvinS uses but cost considerably less and allows the TV to drop down enough so its out of the way of the screen.

Speaking of which I built a Hybrid screen which is 300cm wide by 150 high so its plenty big enough for 16:9/1.85:1 and if I zoom up on wider aspect ratio movies. Its a simple screen material stretched over a home made wood frame with internal support.

TV up:

And down with a movie running (well Dr Who from Sky HD)

I've got everything working now after fixing an issue with the lift casing catching a few of the TV cables, I've also got the first chunk of cable tidying in place and the first part of the conduit work done. I have to finish that off and box in the lift behind the cabinets.

Once that's done I'll be adding backboard with black material between the bottom of the projector screen and behind the cabinets, I'll also be adding strip led backlights to allow the screen to be used as decorative lighting when not in use for movies this will be tied into the existing corner floor lights that are on a remote control plug at the moment.

Then will be decorative works removing the rawlplugs those turnbuckle hooks used to connect to and maybe a universal remote.

Coming along nicely

 

[Roku2]

Where is the Sony 45 at?

 

[edz]

Hi mate at the back of the room on cubes.

 

[Roku2]

Hi mate at the back of the room on cubes.View attachment 854473 View attachment 854474 View attachment 854475

That looks similar to my set up. I have an edge-free white screen and a 4K Oled TV on a wheeled stand in the same room

 

[edz]

Just a quick update, the LED lighting has now been fitted as well as some rewiring and further cable tidying.

More pics coming soon but a quick pic of the system running on TV (This is the HTPC running my "odeon" cinemavision intro for movies) the LEDs are in slow fade mode here.