Badger's Theater Upgrade

[Badger3920]

I'm doing a bit of a seating overhaul. The next phase (this fall/winter) will be a sound upgrade. For now, I'm adding new seats in two rows, so I need to go to 'stadium-seating' and had to build an 8" riser for the 2nd row.

Sorry for the atrocious iPhone pictures.

Here is what it looked like to begin with, minus a matching and missing couch on the left, I'm using a weird iPhone app called Photosynth to sort of get a panoramic shot:



Lateral support



Finished Riser




More to come on (hopefully) Tuesday to round out the first phase of the overhaul.

[Favelle]

Risers are awesome....truly. One day....one day...I WILL make a riser that is also a subwoofer.

The blue rules, as does the cherry trim.

[Badger3920]

Thanks! Cherry trim came with the house and im ambivalent about it, but I definitely like the blue

[Badger3920]

Just got the new seats into the theater, need to take the tags off now

[CorruptedDragon]

Is that a door behind the riser and chairs? Like a closet? How does it open with that there? lol

Otherwise, looks pretty good. Would love to build a room like that but unless I do it in the basement (which is 75% finished) I have to wait until we move to a bigger house in a few years,

[Badger3920]

Is that a door behind the riser and chairs? Like a closet? How does it open with that there? lol

Actually, that other room is my office where I keep the PC and all the theater components and kegerator etc. All the stuff required for work or play that I dont want taking up space in the theater

The door actually opens into the office, so you just push on it to exit the theater that way; the door is totally functional - it's there to block out light when I want the theater to be dark

Otherwise, looks pretty good. Would love to build a room like that but unless I do it in the basement (which is 75% finished) I have to wait until we move to a bigger house in a few years,

Thanks. I think the key to getting into this sort of thing is to do it in phases (unless you feel like paying a ton of cash to finish your entire basement and then install a theater on top of that.)

When we moved in here 3 years ago, that was a storage room that was promised to me as a "man cave." Obviously, I refused to allow it to be a storage room for very long. First step was evicting anything non-manly. Next step was a projector/screen/receiver. A couple years later, I finally have appropriate seating. Next phase, in late fall, I will enter the final phase of installing a quality 5.1 surround system. I have a receiver ready to go for that already

[Favelle]

Beauty!!!!

[hdinred]

Very nice.. but I don't see a proper play area for Kinect???

[TheAnalogKid]

Very nice.. but I don't see a proper play area for Kinect???

Figured that would be obvious, as he already made mention of it being a man-cave, not a man-child cave.


Anyway - looks good dude. I'd hate to be the dude getting squished against the wall in those 'window' seats, though!

Where are your light sources? Are they pretty controllable, as far as being able to keep them away from the screen?

[Badger3920]

Beauty!!!!

Thanks

Very nice.. but I don't see a proper play area for Kinect???

Lol. I was trying for that, but it's really hard to play kinect games in front of a projector. I lost some sleep over it, but I'm better now

Anyway - looks good dude. I'd hate to be the dude getting squished against the wall in those 'window' seats, though!

Well, because the room isn't that big but the seats are all far enough back from the screen, even on the wall - you still have an arm rest between you and the wall and you can see the whole screen without any real strain. Before, I just had two love-seat type couches in there - so anytime we have more than 4 people over, people ended up having to sit on the floor, which is a lot worse than sitting in a chair while off-center from the screen.

Definitely have limited space in there, but I did go with 'space-saver' theater seats and I think that, while there are certainly compromises, it'll be well worth it given the other tradeoffs.

Where are your light sources? Are they pretty controllable, as far as being able to keep them away from the screen?

The room was tough given it's original light sources. It had two skylights, two french sliding doors to the backyard, and that door leading to the office. So, i installed metal shades on the skylights, blackout curtains on the french doors, and a door between the theater and the office.

It doesn't get pitch black, but it does get decently dim, and the panny projector has more than enough lumens to make a dark flick look good during day hours.

[DaveS1138]

If you dont mind me asking how big is the room and how big of a projected picture do you get?
I have a smallish room that I got to use as a man cave and just kind of assumed it would be too small for a projector. Just curious how yours is working out?

[Badger3920]

I dont mind at all Dave. The room is 14' long by about 10' wide, but I can't use the full 10' width for seating because I have a climate control unit (heat/ac) and a door that I have to contend with (as you can see from the pictures). My screen is a 110"

Usually with a projector you're going to be more concerned with the 'throw distance', the distance from the front of your projector to the wall you're throwing the image onto. This is because width only matters insofar as how many seats you can fit across. One guy in this home theater forum recently built a home theater and only put one seat in it (that's a true man cave lol). Even with my narrowish room, I had no problem fitting 2 love seats side-by-side originally, and now I can seat 6 pretty comfortably.

Even with a "smallish" room, front projection is still a very viable option. If you only had, say 10 feet for a throw distance or something like that, what you do is simply take the screen down a size or so and maybe look into something in the 90-100" range. Sitting closer to a smaller screen (and these are still very large screens) will obviously serve to make the screen seem huge and recreate that great movie theater feel/illusion.

We have a great group of guys here that enjoy helping plan out or make suggestions for a home theater build on any given budget, so feel free to keep asking questions here or even start your own thread.

Also, if you're starting with very little projection knowledge, here is the post from when I first started asking my questions - and you'll see all the simple advice and very helpful links I got. One is a calculator that even suggests size ranges for screens given your room size etc. If you click through that for a minute or two, you'll see a couple pages of advice, and my idea go from just an idea to an operable home theater.

Just keep in mind that there are TONS of options available for rooms of any size

[Favelle]

Ditto what Badger said. Also, visit here: http://www.projectorcentral.com/proj...ulator-pro.cfm

That site has an app that will calculate the EXACT space you need for any given projector with any given screen size. Its magic.

[DaveS1138]

Thanks for the links I will certainly check those out.

My room is only 10x10 (with the option of building out to about 10x14 if I can find a good way to move a washer/dryer or else box them in). I have a 60inch rear projection TV at the moment but would love a way to replace that with a front projector. For some reason I thought that would be too little space to project much bigger than the screen I already have.

I do have to warn you both that between this and the advice you offered in the PC thread I am going to have to pass your details onto my wife.......she may want a word

[Badger3920]

Haha I'm not responsible for wife-retribution. I think you can definitely do a projection system in a 10' room. You just have to run some of those formulas and figure out if it's something that you're excited enough about. If a 60" is cutting it, then maybe you dont want to bump up to 90" if it's going to cause marital strain lol

Going to 14" is definitely more desirable as it buys you a larger screen, but it's not required