Doug and Debby's Home Theater

[DougMac]

Originally Posted by Aerodude73

That is one Sweet looking HT and that 120" Screen is incredible dude!Are you running 5.1 or 7.1 (or 5.2?). Great rack idea as noted.

I wired the room for 7.2. The fronts are bi-wired, but not in use at the time. There's 275' of 12 AWG speaker wire! All wiring is run through conduits to allow changes/additions.

Right now I'm running 5.1. I'm using an older NAD T-762 receiver. It really sounds good and I'm not quite ready to give it up. While a receiver that does EQ would be nice, sweeps of the room show it's not bad.

Input is Dish Network, OTA (through the Satellite Box), PS3 for Blu-ray and games, WII, and a older Pionneer CD player capable of SACD and DVD Audio.

Projector is an Optoma HD70 (720p). Video is fed straight from HDMI sources through a switcher (Satellite, PS3) or component through the NAD (WII).

Speakers are:

L/C/R: Ascend CMT-340 SE's
Side Surrounds: Ascend CBM-170s SE's
Backs: Ascend HTM-200 Classics (currently dormant)
Sub: SVS PB-12 NSD

After watching "Dark Knight", I had to put 1/4" foam insulation strips in the door jambs to control the rattle! The SVS in the room measures pretty much flat down to 17HZ.

I'm happy with the equipment I have. Of course, there's always upgrade-itis and I'm not sure what I'll do first and when. Conceptually, I like separate amps and pre/pro. I'm looking forward to reviews of the new Emotiva pre/pro once it's released. I'd team it with some of their amps which get great reviews.

A 1080p upgrade from 720p seems logical. I'm waiting for the prices to fall. I sized the screen with 1080 in mind. From our viewing distance, we're right on the edge of seeing the screen door effect. Two feet closer and you can see it, but it's fine at normal viewing distance.

The original plan was to use an acoustically transparent screen. I did a lot of reading over on the Home Theater Shack site. I also ordered a sample of the screen material. At our normal viewing distance, the weave of the fabric was noticeable and distracting to my wife. In order to get the speakers behind the screen, she felt we would have to place it too far into the room. I read at Home Theater Shack about Sherwin Williams Grey Screen being a nice moderate gain paint. We actually use Pratt & Lambert paints, so I took a Grey Screen swatch and matched it at our paint center.

I went to extra care when framing and dry walling the front wall. We primed it with Kilz, then hung the projector and framed the screen. The image looked pretty darn good on the primed walls. I zoomed in just a hair when marking the screen area. I then painted on the screen color with two careful coats. We then checked the image and were amazed at how much better it looked compared to primer. There was more snap and the darks significantly improved. Now came the scary part. Again, I marked off the screen. I then carefully taped the border, then covered the screen area with plastic. I then painted the surround with Black Watch Green, which for all intents and purposes is black. Once the paint dryed, I removed the plastic and carefully peeled the border tape. There were no runs or paint lifts! Whew! All in all I guess I have about $20 in materials in the screen.