Four Home Theater Room Projects

Four Home Theater
Room Projects
THREE HOME THEATER ROOM PROJECTS Copyright 2002
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Four Home Theater Room P rojects
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Four Home Theater Rooms
• The Frank Family Home Theater Room -------------------------------------------• The Doyle Home Theater Room ----------------------------------------------------• The Freeman Family Home Theater Room ----------------------------------------• The Fiorentino Home Theater Room ----------------------------------------------oing things together comes naturally to the Frank
Family of Medfield, Massachusetts. Richard (Dad)
runs Frank Marketing, a successful public relations
firm specializing in the marketing of consumer products.
As a consumer electronics enthusiast for more than 25
years, he’d seen a number of exciting home theater
installations come to fruition and decided the time had
come for his family to get involved.
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Richard contacted several custom electronics specialists
and got quotes on installed ready to use systems. “The
people we dealt with were very professional, but the
quotes we got were substantial, well over 20 thousand
dollars,” Richard recalls. “While we realized that we could
have saved money by putting in a smaller (60”) rear
screen television, we knew that that would defeat the
purpose; a real home theater, with a cinema-like 100”
picture, and nothing less.”Presented with a not so
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uncommon dilemma, The family considered their options;
they didn’t want to compromise on their dream home
theater, but with daughter Tracy in college, and son Wes,
in high school, this was not the time to spend $20,000
plus. After mulling it over for a while a solution presented
itself. Built it themselves!
After spending some time researching, ordering and
receiving the equipment, the Frank Family’s first task was
to install the motorized projection screen. The location for
this screen was unique. Richard wanted to hide it in the
soffit above the family room’s picture window (see diagram
on the next page.) This was important to him because he
wanted the room to do double duty; first as a comfortable
family room, but, with the push of a button, converted into
a full fledged home theater room. Building the screen into
the soffit allowed this, because it could be rolled up when
the home theater was not being used.
Four Home Theater Room P rojects
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The Completed
Home Theater Room,
3D view
After the screen was mounted in the soffit, the next step
was to physically mount the projection monitor. “I was
concerned that this would be difficult,” Richard recalls, “but
the process wasn’t hard. We read through the installation
guide step by step, and then simply went to it.”
The next step was to do the mechanical and electronic
alignment of the front projector to the screen. This
procedure involves focusing the projection lenses and
adjusting convergence controls. Richard explains:
“Traditionally the electronic alignment of a front projector is
done by professional video firms, but CinemaSource
The Franks’ Family Room During The Day
supplied me with a highly detailed manual that took me
through the procedure step by step. I would say the
procedure is roughly equivalent to tuning up a car;
certainly not something every person should tackle, but
easily within the reach of a do-it-yourselfer.”
The final step in the Frank family installation was to install
the audio and video equipment and run all the cables.
Although this did take a few days, Richard took time to
build the equipment into a custom bookshelf and hide the
wires, behind the walls and under the floor. This gave his
home theater room a professionally installed look. The
photographs below show the completed system in action.
The Franks’ Family Room At Night
Four Home Theater Room P rojects
The Doyle Home Theater Room P roject
he photos here illustrate the Doyle Family’s
finished home theater room.The walls are covered
with maroon pattern wallpaper and a gold art deco
stripe encircles the room. A comfortable couch is the
primary audience seating location and dark velvet
curtains not only give a theater-like atmosphere to the
room but function as acoustical treatments. Around the
perimeter of the room various framed theater posters
and other theater signs can be seen. The primary video
display device, a DWIN HDP-500 front video projector, is
hung via 2” threaded pipe from the ceiling. The
remaining Audio/Video equipment is mounted in a
recessed rack located in the left corner of the room and
wires to the speakers and video projector are concealed
in the ceiling and in the walls. For speakers the Atlantic
Technology 350 system was chosen for true home THX
sound quality. This room is a good example of what can
be done on a modest budget with a good dose of sweat
equity.
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Four Home Theater Room P rojects
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The Freeman Family Home Theater Room P roject
efore a single hammer was lifted,Dave freeman of
Holbrook, MA did several months of research into
home theater design. By purchasing the equipment
from the right paces and utilizing some A/V components he
already had, Dave figured he could build his entire room for
less than $6000. The following steps document the
installation and calibration of the equipment.
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Equipment used: A Zenith video projector PRO851 ($3500
retail, $2800 street), a Vutec 100” Vu-Easy flat screen
($491 retail, $442 street), an Atlantic Technology 250.1
home theater speaker system ($1826 retail, $1299 street),
a Pioneer VSX-505S Dolby ProLogic surround sound
receiver ($549 retail, $399 street), and a Panasonic
PV4664 Hi-FI VCR ($449 retail, $349 street) and Misc.
Liberty wire and cable interconnects and speaker wire (
$138 total). The grand total: $5427
The Proposed
Home Theater Room,
3D view
The Proposed Home Theater
Room, Overhead View
Four Home Theater Room P rojects
The first step was to draw a sketch of
the proposed room and decide the
audience seating position and best size
projection screen (see our article,
Optimum Room Dimensions, on page 22
for guidance on this). Dave decided to
use a 100” diagonal screen.
After the screen size was
determined, the installation
charts supplied by Zenith were
consulted for the screen
mounting dimensions. As the
diagram shows, the screen should
be mounted 3” from the ceiling.
L-Brackets
Next the screen was mounted on
the wall. The actual mounting of
the screen assembly was done by
attaching four small “L” brackets
(provided by Vutec) to the wall with
toggle bolts, and then bolting the
screen onto them.
The next dimension to be obtained
from the installation charts was
the projector mounting distance.
For a 100” screen, it turns out
that the distance from the
screen surface to the center of
the projector bracket is also 100”.
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Four Home Theater Room P rojects
Care must be taken to make sure the
projector is mounted “square” to the
screen. In this diagram, the screenprojector system is square when
X1 = X2 and Y1 = Y2.
Suspending the ceiling mount
bracket requires some handiwork.
The Zenith PRO851 projector is
heavy (110 lbs) so it must be
fastened securely to structural
members above the projector. The
diagram shows the method used.
Because the ceiling in Dave’s home theater
room is a standard suspended ceiling,
attaching the ceiling mount bracket
securely to the floor joists above was
relatively easy
Six heavy 5” drywall screws were used to
attach each 2x4 support beam to the floor
joists. Threaded rods were then suspended
from the 2x4 beams and into the projector
ceiling mount bracket.
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The actual wiring of the
video section of Dave’s
home theater system is
rather simple. The diagram
shows how the video
components are
interconnected.
A local electrician was called in to install an AC
duplex box above the projector mount. The
projector’s power cord was simply plugged into the
outlet. Once the ceiling tiles are put back in place
the duplex box and plug are completely hidden.
After the wires are routed, then the
projector is hefted up onto the ceiling
mount. After it is securely bolted to the
mount, the power and video cables were
connected to the projector.
The audio system was the
next thing to be installed. This
diagram illustrates the
routing of the speaker cables
to the speakers.
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Four Home Theater Room P rojects
The VCR, cable box and Pro-logic receiver
were placed in the wall unit and all
connections between components and to
the speakers were made.
Sometimes simpler is better. The center
channel speaker was just placed on a
small wooden shelf. The shelf and
brackets were painted white for minimum
The left and right front speakers were
placed on stands that flank the screen.
This allows the sound stage to closely
mirror the screen action and allows the
speakers to be angled at the audience
for optimum sound reproduction.
The subwoofer was placed up in the
right hand corner next to the wall unit.
This location takes advantage of wall
boundary near field conditions so that
bass frequencies are reinforced.
Four Home Theater Room P rojects
The dipole surround speakers were hung
on the rear walls flanking the audience
seating area. This creates an acoustic
null in the seating area that eliminates
localization of the rear surround
information.
The surround speakers were hung via
supplied clips on the walls. The speaker
wires were snaked across the
suspended ceiling and down inside the
walls. They exit through a small
unfinished hole right behind each
surround speaker.
Now that the physical installation of
the projector, speakers and all the A/V
equipment is complete, the aligning
procedures can start. First, we power
up the system and verify that all
systems work.
Since the PRO 851 lacks a
built-in test pattern generator,
The Imaging Science
Foundation’s Video Standard
disc was used as a source. (A
RadioShack SPL meter was
later used to adjust the
Prologic speaker levels.)
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Four Home Theater Room P rojects
The projector was aligned using
the instructions in the PRO 851
Installation instructions in the
CinemaSource Guide To Home
Theater Construction.
The lighting in the
room is controlled by
X-10 modules wired
directly to each lamp.
Dave in his completed home theater room.
Four Home Theater Room P rojects
The Fiorentino Home Theater Room P roject
The home theater room profiled here was built b y
Gilbert Fiorentino, the CEO of TIGER Direct. It differs
from the standard high-end, custom-installed, home
theater room in that Mr. Fiorentino built almost all of
it himself .
The equipment in the room is all high level. A NEC
graphics projector projects on a 4:3/16:9 automatic
masking Stewart screen. The audio system is Krell,
Lexicon, Velodyne and Martin-Logan. The system
includes a separ ate A/V equipment room (with
dedicated 150 amp service) and the main room, itself ,
features elabor ate acoustical treatment and tactile
transducers under floor surfaces. Because of Mr .
Fiorentino’s occupation (Tiger, Direct is one of the
world’s largest computer resellers), this room also
features full integr ation to digital sources; Internet,
computers, video games, etc .
Conduits were laid under the concrete slab...
... and terminate in the equipment closet.
An overhead view of the
room showing the
acoustical treatments
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Four Home Theater Room P rojects
An inside view of the room showing
placement of the screen, speakers
and other components
An overhead view of the room
showing placement of the screen,
speakers and other components
Four Home Theater Room P rojects
The finished room, front view
The finished room, rear view
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