Have put together a bit of a home theatre in
my garage:
From Costco: Sharp PG-b10s $750
The Sharp compares favorably to
other under $1k projectors, this is
a LCD rather than DLP, but I do not
find the screendoor effect to be very
noticable. I project from about 12 ft
away from the wall, and sit just in front
(and below) the projector.
From CompUSA: Sony STR-DE595 5.1 receiver $150
From CompUSA: Philips DVD642 $70--hackable.
And plays divx and everything else under the sun.
Home Depot: Behr Silverscreen, three parts of
this to one part of opal pearlescent mixed in.
I found this somewhere on the internet, I did not
to a very fancy job, the wall was already sheetrock,
I just did a little more filling and sanding. Not
a perfect screen, but only used up a third of my
paint. Advice: Be liberal with the mud and sanding,
be sure to get rid of any tape lines. Then be sure
to do primer. I used an enamel paint, and it is
really gooey. My screen had to be expanded over an
area of the wall that I'd already painted flat black,
I had to scrape it clean, and do primer.
Oh, make the side of the garage flat black, obviously
do not paint the screen area. I used something called
kettle black which is not super dark, but I like the
way it looks.
I liked playing around with primer, different
rollers and brushes, and managed to spend $50
on paint and painting supplies.
Fabric Store--Black velveteen, eight yards, $80.
You can probably do the job with less, I have
not planned it out much. The fabric tears straight,
so it is easy to tear and tape onto the boards.
Just be sure to put the velvety side out and duct
tape it. I screwed the boards up and painted the
heads flat black.
Sales tax put me over $1000, but I have plenty
of speakers to move around the house and shuffle
so not cost there.
I may end up spending some money on a better
center channel speaker.
So far this really looks good for the price.
An S-video image splashed on the wall about
eight feet wide, and bordered with the velveteen
fabric on cheap cedar bender board looks great!
Since the garage is completely dark, I put the
projector into economode, and this is supposed
to push the bulb up to 3 or 4000 hours life from
2000 hours. But more importantly, it really seems
to decrease the noise level of the fan a lot more
than stated in the manual and in reviews.
A complete success. I have a full screen border set
up, but still have to make additional panels to
cut off the top and bottom greyish areas so that
a widescreen image is surrounded by the velvet.
Have not figured out how I am going to do that without
too many pins or screws. But I should have enuf fabric
left to do it.
If money is no object, I do not think this competes
very well with plasma and LCD screens. But great bang
for the buck--a really big image is nice sometimes.
It is just a different experience, I am sure that I
watch a movie differently when I sit in front of
my 32" teevee.
I have a Sting concert DVD--the fullscreen image was
surprisingly good, colors amazing. I watched a widescreen
DVD of Braveheart--colors were not so good, very washed
out. I think I have noticed that on teevee as well,
just not a great DVD. Great movie though.
I joined Netflix and have Once Upon a time in the West
coming to me soon. One of my favorites. |
