Project: Projection (Update)

Bloody hell time has flown and not posted in ages.

Anyway the entertainment room upstairs is, for the most part, complete.

Late May/early June, I cleared out the room and, with the aid of my parents stripped the wallpaper off the walls, repaired some of the artex, put some lining wallpaper up on the intended projection area and completely painted the room in 2 shades of grey (matt Dulux Grey Steel 2 & 3) with the lighter shade for ceiling, projection wall and opposite wall, darker for side walls plus the woodwork in white gloss.

As curtains in dormer bay windows tend to let in a lot of light around the sides I decided on a temporary measure of purchasing blackout curtains, cut them to size and use velcro to cover the window when a darkened room is required. Just a temporary measure though til something better is worked out.

I then laid 3 lengths reasonably flat speaker cable (Gale Symphony 300) under the carpet (which will hopefully be replaced some day) from the front of the room to the back for the front left, front right and front centre speakers.

I purchased and put together a basic 2m high white painted metal shelf unit to go at the back of the room to put equipment on.

Onto this shelf unit I then put my Optoma ThemeScene HD70 Projector, my 40GB Sony PlayStation 3, my Microsoft Xbox 360, a cheapish multi-region Philips DVD Player (with HDMI output), a cheap freeview box from Maplin (again with HDMI output) and my newly purchased (and very excellent) Onkyo TX-SR606 a/v receiver.

I still lacked speakers so I popped round to Richer Sounds in Liverpool as I remembered they were selling the KEF KHT2005.2 5.1 speaker set for £400 and they'd received good reviews. Fortuitously, their home cinema demo room had them hooked up to the same receiver as me and I was treated to a demo featuring Ice Age 2 on blu ray and I was sold on them there and then. So I bought a set of them along with 2 pairs of stands (for front & rear left & rights).

A day or two later they were delivered and after setting them up, my home cinema system was now complete.

After that it was to tidy up (a bit anyway still need to do some more) and set up my hi-fi separates system which was placed between the front left & right home cinema system speakers and has the centre speaker on the hi-fi shelving at the same height as the other speakers. I decided to retain my hi-fi system because for music it sounds much better.

Will try and get round to posting some pictures.


Still need to:

a) replace uncomfortable sofa bed with something more comfortable for watching long movies;

b) build a quiet PC that is capabable of gaming to hook up to the system with a wireless keyboard & mouse or maybe trackball) and to also hook up my Blu-Ray drive to it for US Region A films;

c) ceiling mount the projector;

d) get second Sky HD or HD freesat box for room;

e) get a better blinds solution to darken room;

f) replace carpet;

g) get a 40" LCD TV for shorter gaming sessions;

h) tidy up;

i) sort out computer room next door so drinks fridge can go and be noisy in there instead!