CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

MYoung · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 369 Location: Madison, WI

I'm in the process of retooling my basement home theater screen. It's consists of a large stand built of 2x4s and a frame built of 1x4s...

The question -- should I black out the screen frame and stand with flat black paint or affix black velveteen to it? I did some test painting of a 2x4, both with primer and without primer. I think I prefer it painted without primer, though the paint sure scratches easily either way. Dressing the stand up with black velveteen would be kind of a pain, but I imagine it would gobble up light better than paint. Perhaps I could stick with black velveteen for the frame and black paint for the stand.

Tom.W · Joined: 09 Mar 2006 Posts: 6635

IMO use black velvet on both screen and frame.

JustGreg · Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 3098 Location: Kenosha, WI

Nice work. Thumbs Up

I'm curious what your plans are for the center channel. If 'twer me, I'd continue building on the frame and add 'joists' off the base of the screen frame out to the foot of the assembly (you can hardly tell I'm not a carpenter eh? Laughing

) and cover the slopes to either side of the open center (~24") with BOC painted flat black, and put the center channel in the middle with black speaker cloth run at the same pitch as each side panel.

I'd go with black velvet for the exposed frame too. Just a simple wrap and stapling will make quick work of it. I've used flat black paint extensively and yup, it not only scratches easy, just running your hand over it strangely leaves a white scuff. But wiping it with a damp cloth restores it so it's not too bad a choice IMO as long as the scratch isn't deep.

Out of curiosity, is there some reason you couldn't affix the screen to the wall with the French cleat plans that were just discussed in another thread? (complete with an awesome GoogleSketch drawing!) Is it because of where the pj has to be mounted and throw distance considerations?
Do you plan to make the screen immobile (sp?) somehow? It would suck to get all the distances and axis' worked out and then have the screen accidentally bumped.

Nice project! It's nice to get out from under the hood of these things and the talk of electronic mods and see some good ole ingenuity in wooding. Thumbs Up

MYoung · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 369 Location: Madison, WI

Thanks for the suggestions. I decided to just paint the whole thing flat black. A single coat seemed to do the trick. It does scratch and scuff very easily, though once I get it setup is shouldn't get much wear. I think I might hang some velveteen on that back wall for a black curtain look. The room is starting to look like like a home theater now instead of my crappy basement room! I just bought $150 in black carpet yesterday. The only blacker than black carpet that the place had was sort of an indoor/outdoor carpet. The guy asked me if I was putting it on a deck. Not exactly! Home theater! The problem I'm going to be facing with this screen and nicely blacked-out room is wanted a better projector for my setup! Something tells me I'll probably be G70 hunting! If only I could trade my two 1031Qs, 1271Q, and D50 for a G70!

ecrabb · Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 1:46 pm Post subject:

Pics, man!

Wait... two 1031's, 1271, and D50? What happened to your 1292?

SC

MYoung · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 369 Location: Madison, WI

I'll throw a link to the Facebook album of the project soon! I'm having just as much fun building everything as I'll have actually using it! Yeah, I still have the 1292Q. It's in my living room and I think I'm going to keep it there. I shouldn't get greedy, I suppose. A 1272Q would make a good beater projector for the basement setup yet still look decent at 720p/1080i for HD DVD and Blu-ray. The D50 just isn't doing it for me though. Sure, it's okay for PS3 games where the true resolution is maybe 600p upscaled to 720p (Call of Duty 4, GTA4), but for Blu-ray and HD DVD, eh, looks too much like DVD. My 1271Q has issues too. The previous owner I think messed with the astig and G2. For a while I was trying to tweak it back. Maybe I should set it up and tweak it some more. Is it just me or are the CRT projector auctions on eBay significantly drying up? My killer source for CRT projectors, Univ. of WI SWAP, hasn't had a CRT projector for auction in quite a while. Sad

wallace123456 · Joined: 14 Aug 2006 Posts: 2236 Location: Northwest VA area

Might be too late to jump in here, but, I bought some Black Velvet Tape from these guys:

http://www.buildyourownprojectionscreen.com/catalog/c5_p1.html

The stuff is great! Very easy to work with, and sucks up light no "no tomorrow".

wallace

MYoung · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 369 Location: Madison, WI

Thanks for the link, Wallace. I just might check that velvet tape out! I ended up painting everything flat black, though I did so knowing that I could always try velvet over the paint if need be. The black paint doesn't do a stellar job of swallowing light, but it might be good enough.

I had another not so fun issue to deal with -- covering up some very reflective cold air return duct work that hangs not far from the screen. I ended up getting some black canvas/duckcloth material from Walmart, cutting it to size, and nailing it over the ducts. I still have to cover up some of the metallic tape used to seal the duct work (it's just metal sheets attached to floor joists to form the cold air returns. I originally taped black construction paper over the duct work but that looked very lame! That velvet tape might work pretty well for covering up the odds and ends of reflective duct tape.

Now the room is quite blacked out! I setup my D50 and my HD-A2 and popped in The Departed. Pretty nice! Though I think I'm going to try out my 1271Q in the setup. Thanks to my 1292Q, all my other CRT projectors aren't good enough anymore! Sad

MYoung · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 369 Location: Madison, WI

Here are the pics!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2452786&l=78aac&id=8623623

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 3:31 am Post subject:

MYoung · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 369 Location: Madison, WI

SC, I gotta thank you for mentioning in a past thread about how much you love Google SketchUp. I downloaded it last night and after some getting used to it, I'm using it to design a mini media tower. It's pretty utilitarian -- just 2x4s and some laminated pine planks. Damn, SketchUp is addictive! I want to model my whole damn house now and certainly my home theaters! I see there's a Barco CRT projector model in the 3D warehouse. I might have try my hand at adding some Sony CRT projectors to the collection! I even found a HD DVD player in the warehouse! I thought HD DVD was dead! Oh, right, it is. Actually, that model is kinda crumby. I think I might try modeling my HD-A2 a bit better. The HD-A1 would be pretty easy to model! Ha, ha!

My left and right channels could probably use more seperation. Maybe I'll build different speaker stands to sit over the feet of the screen stand. I cannot put them to the left and right of the stand because my room, well the half of the room I have partitioned off for the setup, is only about 8 feet wide! The screen barely fits in there!