3.9m x 3.6m room too small for dedicated HT? * now 4.5! :) *

Hi guys,

I was hoping you could help me here. We want a dedicated Home Theatre room.. but the house as it is designed means that we can only get one that is 3.8m x 3.6m (12.83ft x 11.81ft).

Do you think that would be enough for :
- Epson TW3000 mounted to rear wall
- 100" screen fixed screen
- One row of chairs approx 3.5m away
- componentry to be hidden cutout in the stairwell
- possibly one arcade machine in a corner



What are your thoughts? Too small?

Cheers

Howie

I would reduce the size of the formal lounge and increase the size of the theatre. Better still, do what I'm doing; combine the formal lounge with the theatre. You are unlikely to want to use the informal lounge, theatre and formal lounge all at the same time. I'm having four chairs around a round table between the back wall lounges and the screen. You could use the room as either a formal lounge or theatre at any one time.

That will work fine IMHO... in 1 or 2 weeks I will post pics of my mini theatre with epson TW3000 so you can see what it looks like..

I've thought about moving the wall between the home theatre and the lounge, but worried what it might do to the upper floor as my builder has been trying to keep walls ontop of walls to make the design economical. I'll speak to him about this, as I really don't need a formal lounge to be that big.



Sounds great andy, please keep me informed won't you.

Anyone else want to weigh in on this issue i'm having? I would absolutely love to get two rows of chairs in that would be godsend for me.

I'm sure it can be made to work structurally. Worst case, a beam where the current wall is.

Thanks Casa.

I'll chat to the builder about it this week.

What do you guys think about entry from the garage.. should the door be in the HT, or should it stay in the Living room? I went to a display home which had a door from the garage into the HT, and I think it worked quite well.. but the wife prefers the entry to be in the living area, so we can just zip straight upstairs.

If you are going to keep the wall I would leave the door going into the living room because you don't want car noise/fumes/light disturbances while you are trying to watch a movie.

However I am a +1 for removing that wall between the two rooms. At the very least perhaps set of folding doors so you have a choice. If it was me I would set up the lounge room with a poker table or bar with popcorn machine or maybe even a pool table.

Something like these:

http://www.mybadpad.com/fun-stuff/12-man-tastic-man-caves

That'd be great, but i'd really like to keep a small formal lounge.. it's where I plan to do light reading and sit down with clients etc. Plus having a separate home theatre and separate formal lounge means I can have separate themes for both rooms. I really would love the HT theatre to be a 80s-90s arcade style theme, dark walls, dark carpet, cheesy neons etc. It'd be a great contrast with the rest of the house hopefully.

I reckon I can pull another .5m or 1m forward on that wall, making the room 3.91 x 4.1m. Probably won't be able to get a second row of chairs in but I might be able to get a really long couch.

That room really is small, and definitely too small for a 100" screen.

Think i'll get away with a 90" Rod?

thx recommend 110" from 3.8m viewing distance.. so I don't think 100" is too big... if anything I think THX are conservative... Most ppl with 1080p projectors say that they wouldn't sit further away then 1.5x screen width.. most say between 1-1.5 screen widths is perfect for an immersive 1080p experience.

Thanks andy I did a quick and dirty calculation on the avsforum site, and from the epson tw3000 manual calculated the optimum seating position to be 3.5m from the screen, in other words probably half a metre from my back wall which should be enough to get a nice long sofa in there. Might be stretching to get a second row in there with anything less than 4.5m wall-to-wall though. But i'm eager to try.

I've got another question... i'm sort of on a budget, so i'm thinking of re-using my current accusound speakers
http://www.accusound.com.au/theta.html



But my concern is they're quite bulky, so i might just leave the floorstands up front by the projector screen, but should I look at replacing the rear surrounds with some ceiling speakers (looking at krix), or should i just get wall mount brackets to mount the accusound rears surrounds.

definitely only room for one row of seating... I think you probably need 6m in length to consider two rows.

"Personally", I would remove the door from the family room and place it under the stair well (especially if you are having some understair storage) then I would take atleast another 600 from your fromal lounge giving you 4200 (seeing as you are going one row of seats) that way you can fit some extra seats in....
Having a hidden entrance, good security, talking point, makes yours unique, imagine a theif trying to work out what is going on, no light leak what so ever....

re your accusound speakers... try getting another two of the same rears to match and use them all... my old accusound speakers I love......and I use them still....

with room at 4200 and changing the door opening you could then change the orientation of your seeting and easily put a 100" or 110" screen in it....

I love your thinking mate. Hmm.. that's something I might have to seriously consider. If I had my way that's how i'd do it, I know the missus will hit the roof though, as this home theatre room will also double as a communal/kids/boardgames room so may not be too fond of moving the entry door.

Okay, just an update... my wife and I had a light hearted debate about our home theatre vs living room conundrum. And with some persuasion, here's our new HT room.

3.9m x 4.5m... but i couldn't convince her to do the secret door behind the staircase as much as I would've loved to have it.

Just did a quick model of the proposed HT setup.. I think it's coming together now.

yeah looks good mate... nice and easy for me to install..lol

(goes off to find a cours eon how to hang projectors....)

Cheers pugs .. We're gonna be pretty busy that day I reckon.
btw, if anyone wants to get networking done on their homes... pugs is the man!

Thinking I might get one of these to mount the projector to the back wall..

Or one of these to mount onto the roof (3.5m throw, or just above where the sofa is)

What do you guys think? Ceiling mount or wall mount.. i think ceiling is much neater personally.