There are many sites out there that review TV’s, projectors, screens and so on. At HDTVScene we are not going to repeat what has already been repeated many, many times by various sites.
In this article we are focusing on the steps and knowledge required to
build an awesome home theater that will have your friends drooling over
Monday night football or hiding in the corner of the room from the
explosions in Saving Private Ryan.
How much will this cost you?
The budget is evenly split between Audio and Video. You may pick and choose which items you desire, but one thing we assure you, you will be amazed!
The cost of the video in this article is no more than a high quality high definition TV, around $5,000. The audio is focused on excellent audio with minimal visual impact into the room, also costing around $5,000.
Total cost of the home theater $10,000.
You may if you wish cut out or replace any item recommended here, if "stealthy" speakers is not a requirement then floor standing or satellite speakers may be substituted for reduced cost.
Who is the target audience?
There is no prerequisite knowledge required to build the home theater proposed here. All you need is simply the desire for a large screen with awesome sound. If you are handy with basic tools like drills and screw drivers, then you can probably complete most of the work yourself. Otherwise the installation aspect of the home theater may be outsourced to home theater installers for a reasonable cost.
Basic Requirements for your Home Theater:
-
You must be able to reasonably darken your prospective home theater room. This means your room must contain curtains, shutters or similar for the windows to keep out light and little or no light coming in from other rooms. The closer to darkness you can obtain, will only reward you with superior picture quality. For daytime viewing it is recommended you keep your regular TV and only watch the BIG screen when reasonable darkness can be achieved.
If darkness or near darkness can not be achieved then the picture will generally produce grays rather than blacks and colors may look a little washed out.
- A dedicated home theater room is not required. The home theater in this guide is the living room in a regular house.
Video
To achieve any sized screen larger than around 65 inches does require that a video projector and screen just like that in a movie theater be used. Of course this comes without the screaming kids (unless you supply your own), chewing gum on the seat and a $5 cup of Coke.
In this guide you have a wall or ceiling mounted remote controlled electric screen with a ceiling mounted projector. At this point you are allowed to start drooling at the prospect of pressing a button and a screen filling one of your walls.
We are recommending the following screen to provide an excellent picture, ease of install and good pricing.
Electric Draper Salara Plug & Play with Fiberglass Matt White 1.0 Gain screen HDTV Format (16:9)
What do I get?
This screen comes complete with wall and ceiling mounts, power cord and built-in infra red receiver with remote.
Type of screen and Screen Gain
This screen has a 1.0 gain screen. What does gain mean? Well gain is a measure of how much light is reflected back to the viewer. 1.0 gain means that the same amount of light is reflected back to the viewer. You may here people quoting 1.5 gain or 2.0 gain etc, this is generally not required unless you are going for a massive screen like 140 inches or if you have allot of ambient light in the room. The Fiberglass Matt White screen has a woven textile based backed screen that helps to maintain the flatness of the screen.
Screen Format
You should go with the HDTV 16:9 format screen (1:78). This would mean that all HDTV broadcasts will fully fill the screen. You may have noticed that some DVDs have different aspect ratios. Usually they are either 1:85 or 2:35. 1:85 formats will almost entirely fill your screen. The 2:35 will leave bars at the top and bottom of your screen.
The black drop is the amount of non reflective black material above the visible part of the screen. The Salara screen comes standard with 12 inches of black drop and any amount may be added for a small additional charge. The amount of black drop required depends on the height of the projector. See Installing the HD81 below.
Warranty & Cost
Draper provides a 1 year warranty against defects in materials and workmanship. The MSRP for a 92” Electric Salara Plug & Play is $969. Typically local retailers will provide a 10% discount and possibly less online.
Installing the screen
Tools required:
- Power Drill
- Wood screws
- Level
You will need an electrician to install a power outlet at the location where the screen is to be installed. Draper provides detailed instructions to the installation, but it is relatively straight forward. Simply attach the two brackets to wall or ceiling studs with sufficient length wood screws and clip the screen to the wall brackets. Ensure the wall brackets are attached to the wall or ceiling so as the screen will be level.
Optoma HD81 Projector
The Optoma HD81 is the latest 1080p resolution projector from Optoma. What does 1080p mean? 1080p is one of the 3 primary formats for HDTV. The other two are 1080i and 720p. 1080p provides the highest resolution of 1920 x 1080 and will provide you a crystal clear, sharp and flicker free picture.
Brightness (Lumens)
The HD81 provides 1400 lumens of brightness which is plenty for our target screen size of 92 inches and up to 120 inches.
Contrast
The contrast ratio of the projector is 10,000:1 usually the higher the number the better, but like Mega Pixels on digital cameras does not necessarily translate to a better picture. The contrast ratio is a good representation of how black the blacks will look. For example in Star Wars space should look black with lots of stars. Someone dressed in black clothes should look black but you should be able to see their clothing detail.
Achieving the desired screen size
The projector has a power zoom to allow you to shrink and expand the picture to your desired size. One very important consideration is the distance from the projector to the screen. In our set-up, we have a 12 feet “Throw” distance. To calculate the range of distance that the projector must sit from the screen you can use an online calculator, there are plenty available online. The Optoma provided calculator is below:
The “Throw” range for the HD81 with a 92 inch diagonal screen is between 10.7 feet and 14.4 feet.
Projector Inputs
The projector has 2 main inputs that you should consider.
- 3 HDMI
- 2 YPbPr Component
- 2 BNC component
- 1 VGA Port
Component Video is analog, DVD players and Projectors are both digital. Therefore the signal must be converted from digital to analog and back to digital again.
This conversion process does adversely affect the picture quality usually resulting in some noise. Note that most people cannot really detect the noise.
HDMI are both digital signals and therefore no conversion is required. HDMI is newer, the cable is smaller than component and is capable of carrying audio as well as video. We recommend that you use HDMI when possible.
In this installation the sound will be handled separately so is not required from the HDMI signal.
DVD Player
At a minimum your DVD player should support 480p. Fortunately this should not be an expensive part of your home theater. Blu Ray of course is preferable, if you can spend the extra $400 and will provide up to 1080p.
DVD supports a resolution of 720 x 480. Ideally you should purchase a DVD player that can up convert your 480p DVD to 1280 x 720p. In order to take advantage of the upscaling in your DVD player you would need to use the HDMI cable. Up converting is not usually supported by component video.
Wiring your Cable Box and DVD player to the projector
You will need to run one or preferably two cables from your Cable and DVD player to the projector. This means you will need to install cables into you ceiling and repair the drywall. This may be performed by any local audio/Visual installer and dry wall professional. If you choose our Audio option then this may done at the same time the audio cabling is installed.
We recommend you wire Component Video (This is the cable with 3 plugs Red, Green and Blue) and HDMI to your projector.
Since the HDMI cable is smaller and the latest technology, this should be installed.
Even if you do not currently own an HDMI device at this time. We recommended you add the wire at the same time as the component video for future expandability.
In our set-up we use the component video from the cable box to watch TV and HDMI to from the DVD to watch movies. You can run component video from both the cable box and DVD player into your audio receiver and use that to switch between the two signals. See the audio section for more details.
Installing the Projector to the ceiling
The projector should be installed to the ceiling and a power outlet installed by an electrician at the same location. You should install a surge protected power outlet to protect your projector such as the Panamax in-wall power.
View Panamax's Site
We installed the OmniMount PMD 2 that allows a drop of up to 18 inches with tilt adjustment and the ability to hide cabling inside the pipe. The projector should be installed such that the projector lens is directly opposite the top of the visible screen and the projector lens is centered.
There is no lens shift. Instead, there is a built-in fixed throw angle that places the top edge of the projected image about 35% of the image height below the centerline of the lens when ceiling mounted. This translates to a 17" drop on a 100" diagonal image
You will need to work out the desired screen black drop and projector drop that is required to achieve this ideal set-up. If this cannot be achieved then you may need to tilt the projector so the image appears in the correct place. If the projector is tilted the image will be distorted. To correct this, the projector has a feature called Keystone correction that may be used to correct the distorted image. This is not recommended as excessive use of this feature can degrade the image quality.
Video Calibration
There are many tools available to calibrate your home theater. For most purposes either the AVIA Guide to Home Theater or simply the THX calibrators available on some DVDs like Monsters, Inc. (Collector's Edition) are sufficient. These calibration DVDs assist you in setting the correct brightness and contrast settings to obtain the best picture possible from your equipment. The tests should be run at the same lighting levels that you would normally watch the theater.
Component Furniture and Storage Racks
You will need some furniture to store your nice new shiny components. Your choice of furniture will greatly depend on your room layout. If you have a media niche in your home then you can probably find a local furniture builder to custom build a really nice cabinet.
There are several quality manufactures that provide pre-built furniture to house your components. SmartHome for example has some really nice pieces for a contemporary look.
One item to consider when purchasing a component cabinet is there must be a way for the infra red signal to reach the components. This is often achieved by either a mesh grill or a glass door.
Good Luck!
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