A Woodworker's Home Theater

Our 1922 home has a full basement.  Fortunately, my wife is not a "basement person", so it's mine to do with as I please.  One of the three rooms is unfinished: a utility room.  The other two have the original 1922 Terrazzo tile and stucco walls.  The game room has a pool table and exercise equipment.  The remaining 12 ft. by 25 ft. room has remained unused for the two years that we have owned the house.  A project waiting to happen.  And so begins our story.

(A Work in Progress...)

We have always loved movies.  With two little ones at home, it became a chore to see one - baby sitters, schedules, time  and, of course, the associated cost and inconvenience of all of these.  And renting VHS just didn't provide the "movie experience".  My wife came up with the idea.  She's the creative one and she's great at ideas.  My job is usually the execution. After much research via www, this is what we came up with.  We hope this helps others who are considering the same idea.

The Room The 12ft by 25 ft space begs for a theater setup.  The only window is small: 3 sq ft.  Even in mid-summer at midday the room can easily be made pitch black.  The cieling is a suspended acoustic tile cieling with a 10 inch drop from the exposed joists.  Entry is from the rear.

The Comfort Zone The seats are Lazyboy recliners.  One of my wife's great ideas.  Each is a love seat with separate leg extenders and separately reclining backs.  They were much cheaper than any advertized theater seats and are incredibly comfortable.  For the back row, I built a 12 inch platform.  I carpeted it to make it quieter and more confortable.  Among many future projects is the addition of subtle foot lights to highlight the steps.

At one end I built a moulded enclosure with a backdrop of flat black paint.  I included stained cabinets to house remotes, IR keyboard, manuals, DVD's VHS tapes, etc.  I then added a Stewart Filmscreen Grayhawk 100" by 56" screen (1.78 aspect ratio)

I made the drawers full extension drawers for easy access and optimal DVD/VHS sizing.

The Sound Six M&K speakers provide Dolby Digital 5.1.  The center and front are housed in the cabinet (see pic earlier).  The surrounds are suspended from the cieling (see above pic).  The large sub works best behind the back row on the floor, under a table.  Bass shakers installed in all four seats are fed by a split LFE signal from the receiver.

The Picture Now to the heart of the system.  Much thanks to members of the AV Science home theater forum.  If you're not familiar with the site, it's a must if you are considering this type of project.  Check out www.avscience.com. The projector is a JVC G20 D-ILA.  I cannot emphasize enough the quality of picture this amazing thing produces.  It truly does blow you away.  I mounted it inverted from the joists, 19 feet back from the screen with the center of the lense even with the top of the screen.

If you're bored with technical details, you'd better skip to the next section.  The space produced by removing two tiles was plenty to provide for the projector, cords, etc.  I added a duplex outlet to an unused breaker and located it on the cieling next to the projector. The next step was to deal with noise suppression.  If you review the threads in the AV Science forum, much is said about the noise this projector makes.  In truth, the noise level is not that bad.  But because I'm a nerd and am always looking for projects, I decided to build a hushbox.  The solution I'm about to describe has worked better than I imagined, and cost less than $75 but did take some work. I used 1/2 inch plywood to construct a box that would attach to the 2 ft by 4 ft opening in the cieling, enclosing the projector.

By lining the edge with ordinary weatherstripping, an airtight seal is created when the hushbox is snugged up to the cieling.

Placed into position, the hushbox blends in well with the cieling.  The fan noise is almost non-discernable.  The small square window is for the IR remote censor.

This projector creates alot of heat.  Potentially, enclosing the projector could cause it to become excessively hot.  Interestingly, this was not the case.  The space between the cieling and the joists is 10" by 12 ft by 25 ft.  This turned out to be sufficient to dissipate the heat produced by the projector.  A temperature probe was used to monitor the air surrounding the projector inside the hushbox and it never exceeded 85 degrees F, even after continuous operation during a 3 hour film! But alas, I am truly a nerd.  To protect the projector, and to fulfill my need for another challenge, I added a cooling system.

The four inch flexible conduit seen in the photo above is a standard 7 dollar dryer vent hose.  I rigged up a 70 CFM fan (from Radio Shack) to suck ambient room air from a vent placed through the acoustic tile cieling in the back of the room.  That air is shunted to the intake vent of the projector.  The fan is triggered by a simple device bought at the tool department at Sears (part number 00924031, $19.95).

The brown cord is from the Radio Shack fan and is plugged into an accessory outlet in the Sears Auto Switch.  The fan turns on when the projector's own exhaust fan is on, even when the current-sucking bulb is not on!.  The sensitivity of the this device is perfect.  Since installing the fan, the maximum temperature I have recorded is 78 degrees.  That may not seem like a big difference, but it helps me sleep at night.

The AV Equipment The equipment stack is in an adjacent room.  The whole system is IR controlled using a Pronto universal remote.  In order for the remote to reach the adjacent room, I used an IR repeater from www.smarthome.com (part number 8210, $49.95).  This cone-shaped device is located at the top of the screen, inverted through the acoustic tiled cieling as seen in the pic of the screen above, and in the close-up below:

The IR signal from the Pronto is recieved by the IR repeater and is then transmitted to the equipment stack in the adjacent room.  Not only does this get rid of the ambient equipment noise of the stack, but it gives the theater a cleaner look.

The equipment stack is relatively simple compared to what older stacks would have looked like.  This was the most surprising thing to me and is secondary to advances in home theater PC's.  A wireless IR keyboard is used.

You'll notice the only components necessary are (from top to bottom) an A/V receiver, Quadscan scaler, HTPC and VCR.  That's it.  No more! The receiver is a Pioneer Elite 26TX.  I use a Pentium III 733 MHz with Radeon AIW to run the system.  The software is Windows 98, WinDVD. PowerDVD, DVD Genie, Powerstrip.  With this setup, not only are DVD movies stunning, but of course the Windows system allows us to use word processing, video games and the net ( via our home's LAN DSL system).  Future applications should include HDTV through a HiPix card. For those of you familiar with the D-ILA, I am using the VGA out from HTPC to Computer 1 input.  I'm using Computer 2 for the Quadscan output from Cable and VCR.

Future Expansion This is a work in progress.  A functioning one.  For those of you who haven't experienced D-ILA, you'll be stunned when you do.  I never thought that this experience could be reproduced at home. There is more to do.  Future projects include DILARD (if you don't know, it's tough to explain in this setting), HDTV, etc.  The fun part about this type of project is the versatility and adaptability to a variety of entertainment formats.  I also have cosmetic changes planned for the theater room itself.

Disclaimer I am by no means an expert at this stuff.  I like to dawdle in it.  Experts do exist, however.  They are found in the forum at AV Science.  If you have questions, check out www.avscience.com (no, I don't work for them and I am not associated with them in any way - I'm just appreciative of the help they gave to me).  I'll be there under the name "woodworker".  More importantly, the real experts will be there, too.

(Projector shown is a G11.  I have since upgraded to a G20)