CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Ben851 · Joined: 13 Sep 2008 Posts: 218 Location: Ottawa, Ontario

So since I can only really work on my HT on weekends I figure I'll start a log on here so that I can fuel my thirst to do something with it during the week....

I have a smaller room that I was able to dedicate as a home theater, it measures 11.5'x15'x9'. Unfortunately there is a large amount of duct work going through the ceiling effectively making it an 8' ceiling.

Attached are my design pictures (Real quick and dirty).

A rough mockup of the side wall (Screen wall, ceiling will be flat back, opposite wall will be the mirrored version of this and the rear wall will be red.)

A few (Mostly) to scale 3D mockups (first time with google sketchup... a little quick and dirty)

You can see that the equipment rack is up on the rear riser, simply no other place to put it. My primary seating is the 1st row anyways.

At the moment (before actual projector placing and mounting) I'm looking at a 106" 16x9 screen. Projector is a fairly stock Marquee 8501.

This weekend I knocked out the closets to get the room to the proper size, and I did the electrical and put the drywall up. I've never mudded before so I'm stuck waiting on my dad for that next weekend...

On a related note, for now I'm leaving the ceiling open and unfinished. I was originally going to drywall it but am having second thoughts. Has anyone had success painting ceiling tiles? I'm not hugely worried about the rattling of the tiles as I don't tend to CRANK the sound and prefer less bass than others... I just don't want it to look like crap.

Questions and comments welcome!

Thanks
Ben

**kal** · Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 1:38 pm Post subject:

Nice Ben! (And local to me too!) Smile

One comment: Keep some more room between the L & R speakers and the side walls. At least a foot or two. More is better. Toe (angle) them in a bit will help too.

Can you project sideways? Probably not as 11.5' is probably too narrow for the right throw for an 8' wide screen? If you can, look at shooting onto the wall opposite the door. One way to make a longer throw would be to cut a hole in the wall beside the door and put the Marquee on the other side of the wall. This'll keep the projector noise mostly out of the room too. Not sure what's on the other side though.

An 8' ceiling shouldn't be an issue. Mine's 7.5' and has some lower hanging (7') areas and it doesn't get in the way though the Marquee does hang down pretty low.

Kal

nuttall_chris · Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 1:54 pm Post subject:

I had my Marquee projecting through a cutout in my wall with the lenses 12' from the screen and had no problems filling an 8' screen. With HD144 lenses I was projecting from 9' and filled an 86" wide screen.

I'm also local and have had lots of experience with Marquee projectors, let me know if you need a hand with setup.

Chris.

Ben851 · Joined: 13 Sep 2008 Posts: 218 Location: Ottawa, Ontario

Thanks for the replies guys...

Unfortunately for me projecting sideways isn't really an option. This would place the projector into the hall of the basement and through a load bearing wall (not to mention the WAF would go down significantly)...

Thanks for the input on the speakers - I haven't actually purchased any speakers yet. I'll be upgrading my current ones - Quests (hey they were free!) I'm tossing around the idea of getting lower profile speakers that I could mount further in and underneath the screen - I may also be able to mount them BEHIND the screen in the laundry room but at that point I start to worry about correct stereo imaging..

Chris, thanks for the offer and I may take you up on that once I get things to a reasonable state - I've owned 4 CRT PJs but this is the first one that has the environment to make it worth it to really dial in the picture...

Another question that I had (and perhaps this would be better suited for the actual CRT forum) is regarding inputs. Currently the Marquee has an original moome DVI card in it - I've heard mixed reviews about this card but as far as convenience goes it seems to be a total winner for me... What are your thoughts on the PQ of this card? I'm also trying to figure out how I'd add gamma correction into the video chain... A box 1020/gammax won't work I don't think?

I have an original HD Fury that I used on my old projector (XG 135 - nice PJ but it needed a green tube, and at $600 for my Marquee I got 3 good tubes, ACON, and the ease of serviceability).. The HD Fury seems to have an issue with a bad solder joint or something as I lose R and B on an intermittent basis so I'm tending to steer away from that option. Sounds to me like my only option is to spring for the Moome HDMI card?

btw my source is primarily a PS3

Thanks
Ben

Ben851 · Joined: 13 Sep 2008 Posts: 218 Location: Ottawa, Ontario

Here are the pictures of the closet coming down and the new drywall coming up...

Before: Closet up, similar closet on the other side of that wall in the laundry room (think a small rectangle of space between two rooms cut in half).

Wall on one side down!

View from laundry room into the "Closet" that is now the HT (that would be my dad making that face)

Rather than reframe the entire wall, we just filled in the door gap

Here it is with drywall up... we also had to rip down drywall on the left hand wall there to take care of wiring issues.

Here's the back wall of the theater

The baseboard heater is being moved closer to the door to allow for a 4ft deep riser in the back. There are two windows in this room, luckily there are huge deep window wells so I'm going to make a 2x4 frame with some drywall and handles. Removable window fillers that should blend in nicely with the rest of the wall...

Next is mudding!

Thanks
Ben

Ben851 · Joined: 13 Sep 2008 Posts: 218 Location: Ottawa, Ontario

Whew well it's been a while since I've updated, I'll grab some pictures tonight...

The projector is up, the riser is built, the drywall is done (save for ceiling, more on that below), the painting has started! I'm getting married in just under 2 weeks so this past long weekend was really my last chance to get stuff done for a while.

I've been thinking a lot about the ceiling - I was originally going to do a drywall ceiling but didn't like the thought of losing access to everything up there. Obviously a traditional suspended ceiling was out of the question but my dad and I were brainstorming and came up with the idea of a drywall suspended ceiling. The idea being that we make same frames out of strapping for the drywall, and hang them from the joists. We figure that this will address the rattling issue with a traditional suspended ceiling while allowing me to have easy access to the joists should I need to. The ceiling is going to be flat black anyway and we figure if we can get them close enough/equally spaced it will look semi-nice without the need for mudding...

Any input on this idea guys?

The other idea I had was making a frame like I would if I were to do traditional drywall, but have the drywall on hinges so I could "pop" them open as needed (also eliminating the need for mudding)

Thanks
Ben

drice1234 · Joined: 07 Oct 2006 Posts: 1309 Location: Allen, Texas

I can't make out much of what your current ceiling looks like but many restaurants just opt to paint everything a flat black including joist, duct work, conduit, etc. or maybe attaching some sort of fabric to the joist or build a frame work for the fabric to hang from.

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

I have a suspended Ceiling and it doesn't rattle at all, If you get the heavy black tiles they wont rattle and absorb lots of noise from going to the other room.s also they make a rubber isolation hanger for the rails to also help with noise transmission and rattles.

this is the hanger i used:

Athanasios