Christof Holland's Home Theater

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Hi everybody, My name is Christof, I'm 35 years old and I'm living in Geldern, a small town in "Good Old Germany" close to the Dutch border. My wife and me are big movie lovers and so I started with my own home-cinema about two years ago. It all started with a new Dolby Surround Receiver to replace my 10 years old Stereo Amp, a S-VHS VCR and three additional speakers to complete my existing B & W 600 series front speakers which I bought in 1989. Last year I bought a DVD player with an built-in DD decoder, which gives a great sound experience. After the upgrade from simple stereo to Dolby Digital within one year my wife and me realized, that our standard 23" TV did not provide an appropriate picture to the fantastic sound of DVD's with Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks. First we were looking at some 16:9 TV sets, later for some RPTVs but they are quite expensive here in Europe, so the next step up to the CRT beamer class was not that much anymore. Finally we bought a CRT projector and a retractable screen so that we could complete our own home-cinema by adding the right picture to the nice sound. You might miss a subwoofer in our set-up, but in order to keep our good relation to our neighbours in the house we decided to do without. Our flat (approx. 830 sq.feet) is located on the top floor in a 2 storey apartment house and the biggest problem to overcome was the sloping ceiling in our living room. Therefore the projector had to be hidden underneath the couch-table, which I made myself. In order to overcome the sloping ceiling on the right side I made a small suspension device from some square steel tubes so that the housing of the retractable screen is swinging to the right when it is lowered down. Otherwise the screen would have been out of center. Recently I borrowed a digital camera and here is the result:
	This is my view onto the screen, I'm watching a soccer game, but I had to switch on some light in order to take this shot so it does not look so good with the ambient light. The widows of the room are equipped with roller blinds, so ambient light is normally no problem.
	This is my remote control fiasco, I'm planning to buy a Pronto remote control soon. It's just coming out here in Germany.
	This is my projector, hidden under the table. By the way, the table top is a glass covered carom game, which is an Indian board game. It's also called finger snooker, you have to snip the stones with your fingers into the holes in the corner.
	This is the equipment rack and the small video and DVD selection we have.
	Here you can see the suspension I made for the screen housing.
	Here you see a total view of the front wall with an the cabinet hosting my television and the other equipment. When we bought the furniture we chose a cabinet with a 42" wide TV rack, so that we can put in a 16:9 TV in future.
	One of the B&W DM302 rear speakers between the sofa and the small bar. On top of the speaker you can see a baseball which my wife bought as souvenir when she was on holiday in the USA more than ten years ago.
	This is the rear view of the room with the two speakers left and right from the sofa. Sitting on the middle of the sofa gives you best listening and viewing position during movie play.
	This is the view from the dining area into the room, showing the two sofas and the projector under the table. If we move on to a bigger house in the future it is our wish to have a dedicated room for our home-cinema.

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