The Frey Theater - DIY, but better every month (1 Viewer)

[FreyTheater]

Yep, already working on it... I was planning to connect a small strobe light via a 24v relay to the doorbell circuit, that would certainly get our attention! Only problem, my guests would probably think it was a fire alarm and start running for the exits!

 

[jzabel]

This would be my very post on any forum- ever- so take it easy on me (This site appears to have a very friendly demeanor so I'm not too worried) I originally planned on posting in regards to the bass issues you were having, but it appears that your new sub setup took care of that. Awesome Vegas btw! However I have browsed your pictures quite a bit and have not noticed anything that lends itself well to sound absorption (aside from the nicely done curtains and carpeted stage in front of the screen).

One's opinion: I would consider adding some acoustic panels at your reflection points. The rear wall of your HT looks like it could really benefit from such an addition. I prefer to avoid the expensive pre-fabricated ones, so I go with homemade action. A sheet of foam insulation [from home depot, lowes, etc] 1 to 3 inches thick covered in a fabric of your choice could do wonders- especially in an odd shaped room. They look pretty sweet, and help prevent echoes from your front channels. You might even be able to crank up the volume a little more to enhance your bass without giving your guests cauliflower ear

 

[FreyTheater]

Hello, welcome to HTF, Justin!

Wall treatments are in the plans for this summer, during the down time in my theater - I don't schedule my regular Monthly Movie Nights over the summer because everyone is so busy with outside things then...

I have a quantity of Art Deco style wall sconces that I will be mounting on the side walls, but I will need to add colums to the walls first (about 4" deep by 16" wide) to give clearance behind the lights for electrical boxes - the current walls are just paneling tacked to thin furring strips on the cinder block walls, so there's no space behind the paneling even for shallow boxes... The columns will break up the smooth wall surfaces, and then I plan on putting some padded panels on the wall spaces between the columns...

 

[Adam Gregorich]

Welcome to HTF Justin!.
I never made it to your site Troy, I just enjoyed the pics you had here. I really like your theater schedule you have on your site: http://freytheater.com/movie/movie.htm

 

[FreyTheater]

Thanks Adam! Haha, that page is quite a sight right now, with all those attendees listed for the 5 Avatar showings I've scheduled so far - Showing #4 is tomorrow night and #5 is Saturday night. who knows how many more Avatar Nights I'll have to setup. I'll probably be sick of seeing Avatar after all my trips to the IMAX plus these showings in my theater...lol.

 

[FreyTheater]

Update: This new addition to the Frey Theater may be a little late getting installed, now that the hype has subsided somewhat from the BD/DVD release date now a month past, and after my 5-Movie-Nights marathon is over, but...

I purchased this 6-sheet poster from an eBay seller in India about a week before the BD release date. Amazingly, it cost me only ONE dollar (plus $23 for shipping). It took 3 weeks to arrive, so that's the main reason for the delay in getting it installed. And, after looking at the pieces laid out together on the floor, I thought it was such an awesomely colorful image that it warranted something better than just taping the 6 poster sheets together and pinning it on a wall. So I bit the bullet and ordered six 24x36" narrow-profile aluminum frames with plexiglass overlays to mount the individual sheets in, and hung the fully-assembled 48"x108" poster by mounting the frames tightly together on the wall behind the motorized movie screen. The screen itself is only 105" wide, so just under 2" of the poster sticks out on either side when the screen is lowered; fortunately, that visible portion is just black frame and black poster border, so it is not noticeable in the darkened theater and does not interfere with movie watching at all.

Total cost to hang my $1 poster: slightly under $200... ouch. /img/vbsmilies/htf/eek.gif
But, I'm very pleased with the result...

Sorry, but I really loved this movie! /img/vbsmilies/htf/drool.gif

 

[FreyTheater]

After completing the installation of the huge Avatar poster on the front wall on Thursday, I spent a good amount of the following weekend adding a few new components to my AV cabinet; I also installed a slew of new 1/4" TS patch cables, so I basically ended up re-wiring and re-organizing the entire rear area of the cabinet. New to the AV stack since my last photos is an updated Directv HD23 receiver, a second Rane SM26 mixer/splitter, and a Behrenger compressor/limiter to regulate the power to the seat shakers in the sofa, so I don't accidentally overdrive them. Here is my equipment rack as it stands now:

Above, starting from the top of the rack:
- An RF remote for the motorized movie screen is permanently mounted in the upper right corner of the cabinet - no need to point an RF remote;
- Digiview HM-501 5-port HDMI switch;
- Directv H23 HD receiver, which now has 5.1 digital audio outputs my previous H20 receiver did not have;
- Furman PL-8 power conditioner with pull-out rack lights;
- Pioneer Elite DV-46AV DVD player with 16MB PAL Converter and all-region upgrade.
- Oppo BDP-83 bluray player;
- Two Rane SM-26 splitter/mixers - the top Rane setup as a splitter for the LFE channel to direct the signal to the two subs and the seat shakers, and the bottom Rane is configured as a 5-in/5-out buffer to control line level gain of the remaining surround channels between the processor and the power amps;
- Parasound 7100 7.1 Preamp-Processor. Currently, I am only using 5.1 surround in my system - I really don't see a huge need for the extra two channels, considering the size of the speakers and the amount of power I'm running in my theater!

Below, under my Parasound pre-pro are my amps:
- Carver Premier 705AV 5-channel THX amplifier, which drives my center and rear channels, with 2 unused channels, available if I ever decide to go to 7.1;
- QSC Powerlight2 PL218 in bridge-mono to drive the Peavey dual-18" sub (my other sub, the 15" Nuonic, has it's own internal 1000w amp);
- QSC MX-2000a, also THX rated, in two-channel mode to drive my two front mains;
- Behrenger compressor/limiter to limit the peak power going to my seat shakers - since you can't really hear the shakers, you can't easily tell how much power is going through them!;
- Crown Powerbase 1 amp in bridged mode which drives the three seat shakers in series.
Not seen in these photos is my HTPC with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, which currently sits on top of the cabinet due to lack of space inside. Guess I either got too much stuff - or, not a big enough cabinet, lol!

 

[FreyTheater]

Well, that AV Cabinet didn't last long... Lol!
 
I've been busy this summer, so I've also been absent from the HTF for awhile... I just installed a new metal 36U rackmount cabinet in the rear of my theater room, in place of the nice oak cabinet I scratch-built. Much of my equipment is rackmount now, so it made sense to do it up right. For the few pieces that aren't mountable I installed rack shelves for them to sit on. Here are some updated pics:
 
 
My "new" 36U Rack cabinet gets a few coats of satin black paint in my garage, to cover its original blue color. Wow, what a pain - don't ever try this at home, Kids - Took forever!
 

 
 
 
The Rack is finished and is partially populated.
 

 
 
 
I added a new Furman PL Plus C power conditioner near the top of the rack, which replaces the older PL-8 unit that was on loan from a friend, and a Tripp Lite LCR2400 Voltage regulator/conditioner in the middle of the rack, for the power amps. I also installed my daughter's Dell PC and a Tripp Lite slide-out Keyboard/Mouse/LCD display in the remaining open rack space. The PC was moved from the computer table next to the rack - I need the space where the table is sitting, for another DVD/BD shelf for my growing collection!
 

 
 

 
 

 

 
 
 
Here's a side view of the new AV rack, with the panels and doors removed, showing all the hardware and cabling now populating the rack. The removable doors and side panels make it SO much easier getting to the cabling behind the units, whenever I need to check or change anything around.
 

 

[Robert_J]

The poster is an awesome addition to your room. That gives me some ideas for my one wall with nothing on it. Now I have to look and see what movies have similar multi-poster setups.
 
I've see a lot of those $1 buy now sales with huge shipping prices. That just gets around Ebay fees. I was going to ask if it was a licensed product but James Cameron isn't going to miss that licensing fee.

 

[FreyTheater]

Robert - that particular 6-sheet poster was going for between $50 and $99 in the seller's other auctions at the time, I just happened to get mine for a buck because the seller decided to take a risk and start one of his auctions at $1 instead of $50 like all his others, and no one bid against me. So it wasn't a cheap poster with a jacked-up shipping fee, I just got lucky on the auction price. I'm fairly certain these were official release posters in India, and not some cheap aftermarket copy; but even if it isn't an original, it really doesn't matter, since I only paid $24 shipped for a big attactive poster. If it IS an original, I most likely destroyed any collector's value it would have, because I had to trim off all the borders along with the manufacturer info, and even parts of the image between the sheets, so the sheets would fit and line up inside those 24x36" frames... But for me, all that counts is that it looks good hanging on my wall! /img/vbsmilies/htf/smile.gif

 

[Robert_J]

If that is the case, I need to get my co-workers in Mumbai to get me one and send it via inter office mail.

 

[FreyTheater]

This past weekend, I removed the two computer desks my daughters had been using, which were located just to the right of
my AV Rack, to make room for a pair of home-built media shelves. Below, I have cleared out the space where the desks were sitting...
 

 
 
Here I'm ready to setup the first of the two shelf units. I constructed these from 1x6 Grade A pine stock, purchased at Lowe's. It only took me about two hours to build each of the two shelf units. Each unit is 3 foot wide and 6 foot tall, and features 8 shelves spaced for DVD cases.
 

 
 
The second shelf is now in place, and I have loaded up the shelves with all my DVDs and Blus... Each of the 16 shelves
can hold 72 BD cases or 125 thinpack DVD cases, or up to 1150 BDs or 2000 DVDs total... Now I just have to re-arrange
and organize my collection, something I've really been needing to do!
 

 

[FreyTheater]

I just obtained a handeld barcode scanner to enter my DVD and BD movie collection into a DVD Profiler
database program on my PC. Just a quick swipe under the barcode reader, and DVD Profiler pulls all the
movie data down from its online movie database in just a few seconds. This is SO much easier than entering
all my movie data manually! This is the computer rack and scanning setup at my desk I am using for
scanning DVD and BD barcodes; all this is situated just to the right of the two new wood media shelves
I installed last weekend:
 

 
 
A closeup of the barcode reader and the DVD Profiler program, displayed on a 26" Samsung monitor. I scanned
over 800 DVD and Blu ray movies into my database in just a few hours - awesome!
 

 

[wang888]

Actually, efficient speakers play with less distortion so there is an advantage to using large, 'loud' speakers.

 

[Adam Gregorich]

Nice looking shelves and true DIY. I really like DVD Profiler. Here is where you find out that entering them is easy, organizing them on the shelf is hard. There are multiple threads discussing the various ways to organize. I am on the verge of needing to categorize my Blu-rays and not looking forward to it. I did the DVDs years ago.

 

[homer2121]

How far away do you sit from your 120" screen? Also, did you do the scrren yourself? I have only seen the blackout cloth in 54" wide rolls so didnt think you could build one that big without having seems in it.

 

[Bobofbone]

Homer;
You might want to check out www.buildyourownprojectionscreen.com especially their online store. They have projection material from 60"x87" up to 85"x 200". I haven't tried any of their material yet, but I'm keeping them in mind when I get around to building a screen.

 

[homer2121]

I am somewhat hesitant to do the screen myself as I have heard mixed reviews on it. I have also seen split screen shots of manufactured screens vs diy screens and sometimes certain colors and the overall quality of the picture don't look as good on the diy screens. I am looking to do this right and not sacrifice any quality if I can help it.

 

[FreyTheater]

Originally Posted by homer2121
How far away do you sit from your 120" screen? Also, did you do the scrren yourself? I have only seen the blackout cloth in 54" wide rolls so didnt think you could build one that big without having seems in it.

Homer - I like sitting close, my front row seating is about 8-9 feet from the screen - I perfer a 1:1 ratio sitting-distance-to-screen-width over the more common 1:1.5 ratio... but, no one who has come to watch movies in my theater has ever complained about being to close to the screen - it still doesn't come close to filling the field of view in front of your eyes, so you don't need to turn your head to watch one side of the screen to the other.,.

The screen itself is a Richview 120" motorized retractable screen with both IR and RF remotes; I did not build it myself. Picked it up on eBay about 3 years ago, new for only $80, plus about $100 for shipping. I use the RF remote so I don't have to point it directly at a sensor, and have it mounted vertically on the inside of my AV rack door for convenience. I sure can't complain about the price for a 120" screen, and it has given me very good service so far.

 

[FreyTheater]

Just received my new Oppo BDP-93 3D-capable Blu-ray player last week, an upgrade from my Oppo 83... It's very nice.
This is a pre-release unit Oppo shipped out early to customers on their waiting list; it currently has a beta firmware on it,
and is still undergoing some tweaking to get it ready for general release to the public sometime in 2011. But, I've had no
operating or performance issues with it, so I am very pleased with the player so far...

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/image/id/411952/width/1000/height/800

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/image/id/411937/width/1000/height/800

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/image/id/411940/width/1000/height/800

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/image/id/411950/width/1000/height/800

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/image/id/411942/width/1000/height/800

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/image/id/411944/width/1000/height/800