Suggestion for Home Theater location

ahuang · Sep 27, 2007 11:15 pm

I have 2 possible places to have a small HT installed, like to hear your opinions about which is better and see if there's anything I missed or should be awared of. I will be using 7.1/5.1 ceiling mounted speakers, other details below.

1. At the front of the house, using the area of formal dinning room + lounge.
a. Size is about 3980x8970.
b. There's a "corbelled shoulder arch" at about 3100 from the screen, and there's an opening to the family at the side of the screen. Might need to install a curtain there to block it.
c. screen will either be fixed on the wall or slide down.
d. Not sure where's the best location to put the projector, due to the arch, might need to put it in front of the arch, as shown in diagram below.
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2. At the back of the house where the family room is.
a. size is about 3700x5410.
b. windows at the side and bay windows at the back
c. will be dual purpose, screen will only be in slide down as there will be a plasma tv installed as well.
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What do you think? Any suggestions or comments welcomed!!

Casa2 · Sep 27, 2007 11:49 pm

ahuang,

Of the two options presented, I would go for the second option. The first option is using up two rooms and results in a narrow long theatre, with the back half of the room being very uninviting.

However, if it was me, I would use the Lounge room. The screen would be at the opppsite end of the room in the bay window area. The plasma should fit into the bay windows and the screen can be somewhat further out. This way the theatre room is just the right size and you get to keep the Dining room.

Cheers,
Casa

matt walker · Sep 28, 2007 1:00 am

Allan,

Personally I would want option 1 but would go with option 2.

Having 2 displays in the one area is fine.

If you really want to "hide" the screen away you might need to look at engineering it into your design before the plaster goes up!!

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Matt

ahuang · Sep 30, 2007 11:08 pm

Thanks for the information. After some long discussion/arguments with family, unfortunately due to "political" reason, at this stage we might settle for option 1 ... Life is always full of compromises...

Any way, for option 1
a) is 3100 from the screen enough for the projector or is it too close to the screen?

b) as the wall is about 3980 wide, what would be ideal screen size?

c) due to budget, I might just get the speaker wires & HDMI for project installed. Then after handover, purchase & get all the ceiling speakers, receivers & projector all connected, and use the wall as the screen for a while. Later, get the screen installed. Does this order sounds reasonable?

Rodda · Oct 01, 2007 8:26 am

Hi Allan.

Regarding screen size, the industry says ideally you want to be sitting back a distance of 3 times the height of your picture (H), with minimum recommended seating distance of 2 x H. Now, 3.1m is not a long way back, but even if you went with the industry recommendation you could still run an 84" 16:9 screen (H = 1046mm), and I'd go as far as saying you could go with anything up to a 100" 16:9 screen (H = 1245mm) as that still puts you above the minimum recommended seating distance for the 100".

We recently installed a 95" fixed screen in room where the viewers sit about 3.8m back from the screen and it looked great. A 90" might be the go for you (we tend to like bigger screens

ie. industry might recommend an 84" but we say why not push it to 90"

).

As far as room width goes, even a 100" (overall width of a fixed 100" 16:9 - including the frame - is 2375mm) will leave you plenty of room on either side - appox. 800mm each side - for speakers.

The best thing for you to do would be to pop in to a home theatre shop and have a look for yourself - sit/stand back the same distance you would be in your new theatre and judge for yourself what screen sizes are too big/too small/about right (it's not an exact science, and personal taste and confort play a part in making this decision).

As far as running the cables now and getting/installing the gear later - sounds OK to me. Just try to have some idea of what gear you want to end up with (and where) to try to make sure you cater for it now (don't forget, you can place a subwoofer anywhere in the room - just remember to put it near a power point and to run a sub cable to it also).

ahuang · Oct 02, 2007 11:37 am

Thanks Rod!

Is there wall-mounted version of subwoofer so that I can just put it under the screen? Does that still require a power point?

matt walker · Oct 02, 2007 11:43 am

Hmmm wall mounted subs!!

Available - YES

Any good....Rod has the answer for that!

Rodda · Oct 02, 2007 12:28 pm

Hi Allan.

I experimented with In-wall subs in my theatre when I first built it nearly 3 years ago. I went with 2 because I knew 1 wouldn't be enough. They are passive so you need to get their power amplifier separately (and house it separately with speaker wires running to the sub(s)). Turned out to be quite expensive and in the end not very effective!!! (Learnt my lesson - ouch).

Now I run a stand-alone active subwoofer (400W RMS) in the rear corner of the room and am much, much happier (and my wife doesn't really mind because you can't see it unless you're on top of it).

You get so much more bang-for-buck out of a stand-alone active subwoofer, and in our experience this is the only way to go.

You can still build it into the wall, but would need room behind that wall to do it (like my built-in A/V cabinet. Even without the alcove/bulkhead/whatever to build it into I still had the broom cupboard behind my theatre's front wall and still would have built it into that).

Many higher-end home theatres have stand-alone active subwoofers recessed into the front wall like that. You just put some acoustically transparent cloth over the front of this cavity to hide the sub behind it.