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Feature:
Room Theatre System
By Imraneo
Re-published on Saturday, 17th June, 2006
From icorpCentral.com / revision required
Overview
Welcome to
my Room Theatre interest site. Basically, this section
showcases my "mini" theatre in my room, strictly for
personal use, and a couple of friends. It all started
when I got hold for an LCD projector at an affordable
price. Always wanted one, but was afraid of space
constraints and high maintenance. I shall start with the
equipment used:
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My
system (click
here to know
more)
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Sony
STR-DE535 Dolby® Pro-Logic Amplifier
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Sony
SS-V700 speakers (front 1)
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Philips
Magnavox OEM speakers (front 2)
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JBL centre piece (center)
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Kenwood
S-3M speakers (rear)
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Tamon
Passive Subwoofer UBS-900
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Philips
Astaire Deluxe LCD Projector
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Microsoft Xbox gaming console
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Rollerblind (screen)
Home theatre experts would say my setup is pretty lame, as the equipment is pretty old and low-end. All I can say is that this was meant to be a budget theatre, which was formed with everything I could find. The major add-on to my rig that turned my room into a mini theatre was the projector. Featuring a long lamp life and a short throw distance, I was able to project a 62" wide image on my screen.
Amplifier
Here you'll see my Sony Pro-Logic amplifier, STR-DE535, which I bought it for second hand over the net. I must say it was pretty hard to find as it has 5 discrete inputs and 5 discrete respective outputs. This feature allows my soundcard to decode all the signals (Dolby / DTS) and leave my amp to blow up the sound on my speakers. It even allows me to choose from a selection of 2 pairs of front speakers, or use them all. It has a built in FM tuner too, which I seldom use.
Speakers
My speakers were all passed on to me from old HiFi systems, and they work pretty well with the amp. The bass can be pretty weak, except for the Philips speakers, which has a built in woofer. On top of that, I have a passive subwoofer which evens out the bassline. One thing I've yet to upgrade in the future is my centre speaker, which is actually a piece from Altec ACS-45 set.
LCD Projector
This is the single most important equipment that makes my theatre. I got this decent baby at a Philips sale, and it works perfectly in my room. Like I mentioned earlier, it
 has a short throw distance, and that enables me to project 62" wide onto my screen. This creates a perfect size for the distance between the screen and the eye. The specs are pretty decent: W-VGA resolution, 1000 lumens, and
600:1 contrast. It's said to be super silent and has a 6000 hour lamp life.
Rollerblind screen!
You might ask, why use rollerblinds as a screen? You prolly
will think its because of cost. Actually, there are not
much cost savings in this. Main reason is due to fixture. If I were to buy a standard pull-down screen, I will not be able to fix it to my ceiling due to my storage cabinets. Other types of non-pull-down screens will take up too much space.
I was lucky to find the perfect colour and texture for this rollerblind. it's slightly grey for enhanced contrast, and has sturdy material, which will surpass the flatness of ordinary theatre screens. Fixture on this was simple. I just needed some strings to hang this onto my ceiling, and takes less than 5 minutes to set up.
Connections
My main challenge was to bring cables across my room, from the middle. My carpet has been very handy in covering all the cables while I wire them underneath it. The interface I use for my projector is VGA (D-Sub, to my PC) and standard composite video (for the
Xbox). The VGA signal that goes into my secondary monitor is split into 2, one going into the projector. A custom 16:9 resolution on my PC is set (usually 1280x720) so that my projector would display widescreen accordingly. My Xbox is also run in widescreen mode.
And to wrap up...
Of course, nothing beats going to the cinemas with a bunch of friends and some popcorn. But how about a
proportionally big screen, with more food and a couple of friends? The sound system could be comparable with the volume up! Not mentioning the low cost of running it, with downloaded DVD-quality DivX movies and rented DVDs. Playing games on the
Xbox will never be the same again. I shall leave you with the pictures of the final product.
For any inquiries regarding this article, feel free to
contact me.
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