Our Home Theater

Well, the home theater project we undertook is finally starting to come together. Here are some pictures of the progress along with descriptions and details.

First we have the Guts of the opperation, the media “closet”. Right now all we have is our DVR cable box (top), home audio controler (middle), surround sound receiver (middle), Subwoofer (bottom), and computer (bottom). I’m not sure if we’ll add anything else to this, but for now this works. As you can see I need to mount that speaker, it is the back right speaker in the surround sound system.

The home audio controler basically has 6 switches that can turn sound on or off to the 6 rooms in our house that are wired for sound (master bed, master bath, living room, garage, back porch, and home theater).

You’ll notice on the left that ther are wires running to a few plates on the. The back on is unfinished, that is why it has newspaper stuffed in it for insullation purposes. When it is finised it will have audio plugs for the wired rooms in the house and the surround sound speakers in the theater. The front plate has all the video inputs that go to the projector. They are all wired with cat6 wires and are punch down style keystone jacks. As of now I have run, vga video, composite HD video, and 15 pin vga (computer) video. I’ve got an extra wire hanging out there that is for s-video, but I don’t have the punchdown connectors for it yet.

The 15 pin vga computer video is acutally ran over a normal cat5 jack. However, on each end I have a patch cord that has been cut and a 15 pin vga connector soldered on so it can connect to the computer here and the projector at the other plate. Instructions on how to solder this can be found here!

Here are some pictures of the projector and mount that I made and of the plate with the video connectors that connect to plate in the media “closet”. The mount is made of 2 pieces of white veneered particle board I bought from Lowes. It is connect to the ceiling by toggle bolts. Threaded pipe nipples were screwed to each board and a piece of 2 ince steel pipe was used to drop the projector down below the ceiling fan. The projector (a Infocus 4805 ScreenPlay) is connected to the bottom board using all-thread which was also used to adjust the projection angle.
Here is a picture of the screen in action. I’ve paused the game so I could get a nice clear shot. This is a HD channel so it looks super clear. Compared to HD, standard definition (SD) channels look crappy.

Below are some other photos of the screen. It was constructed using 1×4 oak boards which I cut at 45 degree angles and joined with a wooden biscuit. I then wrapped the frame in black velvet cloth then stretch the screen across the back. The screen is made of blackout cloth that I bought from a local fabric store. Apparently it is used a lot by photographers for backdrops and such. It totally exceeded my expectations. When I was building this I figured I would use it for a while and then buy a real screen in a few years. I might still do that, but only so I could get a motorized screen, not because I think the picture quality of my homemade screen is lacking. The picture with the lights on was taken with a flash that is why you can barely see the picture on the screen. With the lights on the picture is viewable, but with them off it is stunning!

And last, but certainly not least, is the seating. The main seating component is the 3 recliner hometheater seating that we bought from Ashley Furniture, accented by the all-important honey roasted peanuts and sippy cup. It is sweet! We’ve also got a footon, an old lazyboy recliner, and a stuffed chair and ottoman that were salvaged from the living room when we bought new furniture.

That is it! I hope you are able to use some of my construction ideas and the ideas that I gathered off the internet. This project is definatly on going. Someday I hope to add another couch and rising platforms to set the couch and hometheater recliners on. A paint job/wall treatment would probably help, and movie theater accesories would look good too. But for now it serves its purpose, and its all ready for Super Bowl XLI!!!