My new Home Theater Setup

Spacy9

Spacy9

Scotch is my Lord and Savior
Joined
Oct 13, 2000
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We bought a new house in May and I finally had enough space for a dedicated Home Theater. The space is 12' 2" X 17' 4" and the hardware specs are:

7 Lane full power recline seats
110" Dragonfly screen
7.2 surround sound (HTD Mains and Surrounds, 2 X Episode 500 watt dual 8" subwoofers)
Denon 3312ci receiver
Denon BP1611 Blu-Ray Player
Epson Pro Cinema 6010 2D/3D Project
MX780 Universal RF remote
Remote controlled swithes for lighting and sconces
X-Box 360
PS3
HTPC with 452 Full Rip Blu-Rays and 1300+ DVDs

Here are some pics of the build out. This room was finished by the builder so we had to do some adjustments after closing - paint, riser, sconces, remote lighting, etc...

Pre-wiring

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All the wiring and tubes go to a little walkway along side the room where the rack slides in.
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Equipment showed up
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Front Speakers going in
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Back Speakers going in
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Bracket for the screen is up and Kinect is in place
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Screen is ready to go up
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Riser is starting to go in
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Scott from Image and Sound (near Denver) working on putting the screen up
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Riser almost finished
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Everything in the rack
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Screen is up
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Chairs are arriving and walls / ceiling are painted
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The rack is the only thing left to go in the wall
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All the chairs are in and the speakers have their final coat of paint
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Bad pic of the screen
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The rack is in the wall - finally
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Movie time - feel free to make fun of Kung Fu Panda - my girls love it :)
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That's it. Let me know what you think.
 
Looks great. Look forward to doing the same sometime in the future.

You sure all the lights from the rack won't disturb your movie experience? (only saying this because some LED power indicators can be blinding)
 
NoTrigger said:
Looks great. Look forward to doing the same sometime in the future.

You sure all the lights from the rack won't disturb your movie experience? (only saying this because some LED power indicators can be blinding)
Click to expand...

Thanks! I was a bit worried about all the lights from the rack as well, but they aren't really even noticeable. The rack is sunk back a bit in the wall so that helps and with it being in the wall your never really looking at it, your looking away from it at the screen.
 
If in the future it were to bother you, you could always have a glass company make a custom smoked glass door. We used to do that on occasion when I did professional installs. It's not cheap but looks nice.

Sure looks like a nice theater! I'm sure it will bring you years of happiness! :)
 
timta2 said:
If in the future it were to bother you, you could always have a glass company make a custom smoked glass door. We used to do that on occasion when I did professional installs. It's not cheap but looks nice.

Sure looks like a nice theater! I'm sure it will bring you years of happiness! :)
Click to expand...

Thanks!

Scott, the guy who did the install, he suggested tinted glass as well. I was worried about the reflection of the movies off of the glass. I thought that might be worse than not having glass. Was reflection a problem on any of the installs you did?
 
Spacy9 said:
Thanks!

Scott, the guy who did the install, he suggested tinted glass as well. I was worried about the reflection of the movies off of the glass. I thought that might be worse than not having glass. Was reflection a problem on any of the installs you did?
Click to expand...

i would go with a solid door and an IR extender...
 
Procyon12 said:
i would go with a solid door and an IR extender...
Click to expand...

I have an RF remote for everything already, the door makes me worry about heat.

We'll see how it goes for a while. Thanks for the idea.
 
That is awesome. I love Kung Fu Panda too. Me and my two kids... LOL

What rack is that and where did you find it. I am thinking of going with a rack like that.
 
Spacy9 said:
I have an RF remote for everything already, the door makes me worry about heat.

We'll see how it goes for a while. Thanks for the idea.
Click to expand...

hmm...i assumed you had some sort of cooling duct installed. glass would stop airflow same as wood though. maybe a grill cloth framed into a door?
 
climber07 said:
That is awesome. I love Kung Fu Panda too. Me and my two kids... LOL

What rack is that and where did you find it. I am thinking of going with a rack like that.
Click to expand...


Thanks. It's a Holo Vision RAK-46. They make other sizes as well. It pulls out from the wall and swivels for easy access to the gear.
 
Procyon12 said:
hmm...i assumed you had some sort of cooling duct installed. glass would stop airflow same as wood though. maybe a grill cloth framed into a door?
Click to expand...

Well I guess cooling wouldn't really be an issue. The Rack goes into the wall and there is a 24" walkway down the entire side of the room. The Rack is open on the sides and back. Plus we are in the basement so that should help in that walkway to keep it cool. I'm just used to worrying about it :)

We are actually thinking about some fabric panels for the walls to cut down on some of the bounce the sound gets. If we do that we are going to put one over the Rack. The chairs and carpet seems to help a lot but the side surrounds have some bounce to the sound, nothing major, and you can really only tell when you run the Denon's acoustic optimizer and they play by themselves.
 
Spacy9 said:
Well I guess cooling wouldn't really be an issue. The Rack goes into the wall and there is a 24" walkway down the entire side of the room. The Rack is open on the sides and back. Plus we are in the basement so that should help in that walkway to keep it cool. I'm just used to worrying about it :)
Click to expand...


Yea you put 7 warm bodies and all that equipment in the same room above ground, and you'll need a dedicated unit or it will be hotter than hell after 20 minutes. Basement... no problem.
 
Spacy9 said:
Thanks. It's a Holo Vision RAK-46. They make other sizes as well. It pulls out from the wall and swivels for easy access to the gear.
Click to expand...

Man that is a nice rack system. I went to their site and noticed that the weight capacity is only from 150 - 185 lbs max. I have a 50 lb receiver and an 81 lb amp. Planning on a second 81 lb amp and that takes the weight way above 200 lbs. I guess I need to look at stationary heavy duty racks.

Thanks for the information.
 
Very nice setup. I still dream of my own dedicated theater room. Could you give a little more info on your HTPC setup, such as the specs and software you are running. Do you have a dedicated file server?
 
That looks absolutely amazing. The perfect size room and everything.
 
Very nice. Thanks for posting. How much storage in the htpc?

Is your place single story? I ask because my house is two story and I think it would be hard to mount a projector off the ceiling.
 
Nice set up. Only change i would make would be to add some room treatments for the sound.
 
AQ_OC said:
Very nice. Thanks for posting. How much storage in the htpc?

Is your place single story? I ask because my house is two story and I think it would be hard to mount a projector off the ceiling.
Click to expand...
I assume you mean on the first story, since you're thinking about attic access? The OP stated that this was in his basement so its the equivalent of installing it on the ground floor of a 2 story house. There shouldn't be any major difficulties in mounting, you just need the bracket to hit the studs.
 
climber07 said:
Man that is a nice rack system. I went to their site and noticed that the weight capacity is only from 150 - 185 lbs max. I have a 50 lb receiver and an 81 lb amp. Planning on a second 81 lb amp and that takes the weight way above 200 lbs. I guess I need to look at stationary heavy duty racks.

Thanks for the information.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that might be pushing it :) I can see why they have that limit, when it pulls out of the wall the metal rails on the bottom could tweak if it was to heavy.
 
Shoop said:
Very nice setup. I still dream of my own dedicated theater room. Could you give a little more info on your HTPC setup, such as the specs and software you are running. Do you have a dedicated file server?
Click to expand...

The HTPC itself is nothing to really talk about. It is the same one I built about 5 years ago, but it works well. It plays back full ripped Blu-Rays with no issues.

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The real part that matters in my setup is the software. I use My Movies for the management of the DVDs and Blu-Rays. It plugs into Windows Media Center and basically makes it very easy for anyone in the family to find what they are looking for. You can set up categories, ratings, limits, etc... I also use Sharky007 for the codec pack to get AC3, DTS, DTS-HD, etc... coming over the HDMI cable.

As far as storage goes I started out using a DLink DNS-343 and have that filled with 2 TB drives - so 8Tb there. I found out as I got into Blu-Rays that it had no where near enough speed for the larger rips - pretty much anything over 25Gb it would have issues with skipping and FFwd. So I purchased a Synology 4 bay device and have that filled with 3 Tb drives so I have 12Tb there. I have these all setup with no RAID (yell at me :) ). I have the exact same amount of drives as backups. So I have about 40Tb of drives used for this at this time and it's always growing.

This computer acts as the Server for the Database of movies and I have 2 other HTPC around the house so people can watch movies from other locations.

Let me know if you have any other questions.
 
AQ_OC said:
Very nice. Thanks for posting. How much storage in the htpc?

Is your place single story? I ask because my house is two story and I think it would be hard to mount a projector off the ceiling.
Click to expand...

In the actual HTPC itself I have a 120Gb SSD that I just put in last week.

As far as movies go I have 2 NASs that have 20Tb of storage at this moment - but I always need more.

It is a 2 Story house with a basement and the Home Theater is in the basement. It's actually in a corner and between the garage so 3 of the walls are concrete.
 
kemist1117 said:
Nice set up. Only change i would make would be to add some room treatments for the sound.
Click to expand...

That is still an option. We are looking to see what types we can buy, or if it's cheaper to make them ourselves. Not sure if we will get some or not.
 
Activate: AMD said:
I assume you mean on the first story, since you're thinking about attic access? The OP stated that this was in his basement so its the equivalent of installing it on the ground floor of a 2 story house. There shouldn't be any major difficulties in mounting, you just need the bracket to hit the studs.
Click to expand...

Yep, it's in the basement.

As far as the mounting goes that is probably the easiest part. The hard part is getting power to the projector and, unless you buy one of the new one with wireless HDMI, getting the HDMI cable to the projector.
 
J Macker said:
Where did you locate the subs? Are they in the wall?
Is it this sub ?
http://www.snapav.com/p-1093-kit-sub-iw-dual8.aspx

That's a very nice clean setup. It makes mine look like frankenstein. But I don't think I could ever downgrade to dual 8" subs in the wall.
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That would be them.

They are in wall. The AMP is in the rack and I have one of the dual 8" subs in the front left of the room and the other dual 8" sub is in the back right of the room (facing the screen on all directions). The 5th picture down shows the one in the back and the 6th shows the one in the front.

The size of the subs was my biggest worry - I put my old 12" sub up in the living room now. But I have to admit having 2 sets of subs, split up like they are, is AMAZING. You cannot tell where the bass is coming from and they have no issues shaking the room. :eek: I am impressed with these subs. I would imagine having them against concrete walls helps some, but I can't say for sure.
 
You might want to look into XBMC now that suports HD audio with bitstream. I was using the same setup as you before. I really like XBMC alot better then trying to use all those programs. I just use MakeMKV to strip off everything but the Video and lossess audio track(No loss in quality). Like the interface alot better on XBMC and it runs really well. Also like in XBMC that it is easy to turn on and off subtiles and change audio tracks. Nice thing about XBMC you can just name your moives and toss them all in one folder and just scan when you drop new ones in. Only thing it doesn't do is netflix but I can just load up media center for that if needed.
 
How much room is between the kinect and the first set of chairs?

Also, that looks really clean and a great use of the space. How big is the room total?
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
You might want to look into XBMC now that suports HD audio with bitstream. I was using the same setup as you before. I really like XBMC alot better then trying to use all those programs. I just use MakeMKV to strip off everything but the Video and lossess audio track(No loss in quality). Like the interface alot better on XBMC and it runs really well. Also like in XBMC that it is easy to turn on and off subtiles and change audio tracks. Nice thing about XBMC you can just name your moives and toss them all in one folder and just scan when you drop new ones in. Only thing it doesn't do is netflix but I can just load up media center for that if needed.
Click to expand...

I might have to take a look at that, I'm spending way too much time getting the Blu-Rays onto the HTPC.
 
irishBoiler said:
How much room is between the kinect and the first set of chairs?

Also, that looks really clean and a great use of the space. How big is the room total?
Click to expand...

Thanks.

There is 7 1/2 feet between the Kinect and the first set of chairs. Everything seems to work well. I was a bit worried that the extender would give it some lag but it has no issues.

The room is 12' 2" X 17' 4" so a little over 200sq ft.
 
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