Help me design my Home Theater

[Carlucci 705]

That's where the genius builders terminated all my pre-wire orders for the in ceiling speakers. They are such a racket. You either pay them to install the in-ceiling speakers they sell, or when they pre-wire, they only terminate against a ceiling joist or stud with a full gang box. I found out too late it was in the fine pint of the contract,and I wasn't here on the day they did it to stop the installer. Since most in-ceiling speakers can't accommodate an installation right up against a joist, I couldn't use that exact spot, which is actually kinda ok because those spots are not in a direct line with the main L/R speakers as Atmos recommends. I put them in exact alignment.

 

I'll have to decide whether to remove the gang boxes, patch, tape, and float those holes, and repaint. That's a lot of work. I'll probably just leave them.

 

 

Carlos.

[Robot Monkey 510]

Gotcha.

 

Honestly 99.9% of people will never know those covers are there.

[Carlucci 705]

Got 'em all lit up!

 

This is really something special! Just watched Mad Max in Atmos and never stopped smiling. No theater has even come close to how perfect this sounds.

 

There's only one reason I will ever go to the theater again, and that's to see a movie before it would get ruined by spoilers, like Star Wars.

 

 

Carlos.

[JFo 1,864]

That's where the genius builders terminated all my pre-wire orders for the in ceiling speakers. They are such a racket. You either pay them to install the in-ceiling speakers they sell, or when they pre-wire, they only terminate against a ceiling joist or stud with a full gang box. I found out too late it was in the fine pint of the contract,and I wasn't here on the day they did it to stop the installer. Since most in-ceiling speakers can't accommodate an installation right up against a joist, I couldn't use that exact spot, which is actually kinda ok because those spots are not in a direct line with the main L/R speakers as Atmos recommends. I put them in exact alignment.

 

I'll have to decide whether to remove the gang boxes, patch, tape, and float those holes, and repaint. That's a lot of work. I'll probably just leave them.

 

Carlos, in the words of your favorite president, I feel your pain. As you know, my wife and I just bought a new construction townhouse which just broke ground yesterday. Because it's all new, we get to customize it the way we want. One of the things the builder offers is speaker installation. There's a pre-wire option, which lets you install four speakers across two rooms, and a full package that comes with speakers fully installed. Of course, to get the full install, you have to buy the contractor's speakers, much like what you dealt with on your project.

 

Our plan is to install two in-ceiling speakers in the living room to act as the left and right surround channels in the 5.1-channel home theater system and another two in-ceiling speakers in the kitchen to act as a separate music system. Since I have a set of B&W 600 series speakers for my HT in the front, I ordered the CCM662s since the metal tweeter would probably best match tonally. Then we're going to install a pair of CCM664s in the kitchen since I don't need to really point the tweeters at a specific listening space and I don't need them to match any other speakers.

 

But like I said, the contractor would only install their own speakers, which means we'd have to go with the pre-wire option. After reading your post and talking to the contractor, it sounded like I was going to have to do something similar to what you did. That is, we would have a box with a blank plate in the ceiling with the speaker itself installed somewhere next to it. I explained this to my wife and showed her a picture of your setup that and was the end of that plan. Under no circumstances was she going to have additional holes in her ceiling for anything other than the speakers themselves.

 

Fortunately, after several emails and phone calls with the contractor, I have a better idea of what they plan to do. The box they use is from a company called Box Buddy, and this is what it looks like:

 

 

Even better, check out this PDF, which shows how it attaches to the truss. You can see the box sticks out from the truss by 1 1/8" along where that seam is. The idea is that you run the speaker wire to the box, then when you're ready to install the actual speaker, the box easily breaks off at the seam, allowing you to insert the speaker far enough away from the truss for it to fit.

 

I'm not sure if the guys who did your wiring used something similar, but if they didn't, I would say they're a bunch of fucking dumbasses and you should send this catalogue over to them.

 

At any rate, it looks like we'll be able to get everything we want and have it done in a way that satisfies my wife. Frankly, I'm glad too. If we're going to do this, I want to do it right.

[Carlucci 705]

That is genius, and no, that's not what we got. We got the standard blue, hard plastic gangboxes.

 

Glad you got that covered early. I wouldn't have let them put the boxes at all if I could have stopped them, but I wasn't able to be there that day.

 

Congrats on the new home! I look forward to hearing the details on your adventure.

 

 

Carlos.

[Angry the Clown 4,327]

Great room, Carlos. I'm sorry for not checking back in on this thread sooner.

 

Out of interest, what prompted the decision to go 16:9 over 2.40:1 with your screen?

[Carlucci 705]

 

Out of interest, what prompted the decision to go 16:9 over 2.40:1 with your screen?

 

TV and movies in 16:9.  We have spent almost as much time watching TV/Sports up there as movies.  I wouldn't have been able to get a much larger widescreen in there, so there would have been very little net gain in real-estate to be had for widescreen movies beyond a few inches,.  I'm not one to be distracted by the lighter black bands when watching letterboxed movies, after having gotten used to them on my LCD TVs.  And I can only imagine the horror of having to repeatedly explain to my wife why there would be side bars on her TV shows.

 

 

Carlos.

[Angry the Clown 4,327]

Gotcha. Makes sense in those respects. 

[Robot Monkey 510]

I'm going with Academy aspect.

[JFo 1,864]

I'm going with Academy aspect.

 

Enjoy your black bars, loser.

[Angry the Clown 4,327]

In an ideal scenario I'd have a scope ratio screen with horizontal left and right masking for 1.33 and 1.85, but then a dedicated screening room for me would be exclusively for movies so I completely understand Carlos' preference for 16:9 since he enjoys the room for TV content as well.

 

I do find myself really intrigued by what are known as constant image area (CIA), or constant area screens however. The big hangup with the wider ratio screens at home is what you do with some of these damn "IMAX" discs like Dark Knight, Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar. I don't know if the 2.39:1 versions of those films extracted a central crop from the IMAX negative because if they did, you could crop it via something like a Lumagen Video Processor and have it fit to a consistent 2.39. It kind of makes me think a constant area screen could effectively have the best of both worlds though, as you could enjoy the fullscreen portions of those discs and still have it feel bit, compared to how those scenes would look uncropped/zoomed on a wider screen.

 

One could achieve a CIA with either a custom cut screen or by actually having two screens. Below is the two screen constant area solution that I found via Googling (though it only covers you for 16:9 and 2.39 having two screens, as 1.33 would be framed smaller on the 16:9 screen vs how it would be on a fixed constant area screen *see second image*).

 

 

Being able to do the above should be possible with multiple image/zoom profiles in the projector.

 

 

The single screen constant area solution would be like this, the black area being the screen size and ratio you install, then (ideally) you'd have 4 way masking for 2.39 (red), 1.33 (blue) and 1.85 (green) within that frame. 

 

 

 

 

A dedicated video processor like the Lumagen Radiance (not cheap) has a really sophisticated non linear stretch mode too. In this video below you can see the user using it to stretch 16:9 content to his 2.39 screen without distortion. Now, this is a step too far for me personally as I think OAR should be respected, but it is neat. You also get to see him crop the Dark Knight and Tron Legacy to a consistent wide ratio as well (which is not disrespecting those movies as they were intended for multiple AR releases and framed accordingly, but I as I wrote above I am not 100% sure if for their 2.39 theatrical releases they were straight centre extractions or whether the frame was ever repositioned in some scenes).

 

[Carlucci 705]

I finally got around to some video game time in "Massive Dynamic", my current pet name for the media room.  I'm re-watching Fringe and the name struck a chord with me, I need to see if I can make a large 3D "M" symbol.

 

I continued my campaign in Halo 2, and promptly got motion sick as all hell.  Seriously, that was not fun.  It took me about 3 hours to feel normal again, after only playing for about 20 minutes.   I know the cure, small doses, so that's what I've been doing. I've got it built up to about an hour, depending on the game conditions. The wide open areas of the game definitely cause more discomfort than the corridor parts. 

 

Years ago, through perseverance, I trained myself to be able to read books on the bus, by doing so in small doses until I acclimated.  I'm sure it will work for FPS games on a 120" screen, too, just have to be patient and be ready to go outside for fresh air until I get my sea legs.  In the meantime I finally finished Limbo, and toyed around with some of my Xbox Arcade games that came available with backwards compatibility.

 

 

Carlos.

[Jordan_E 284]

I've gotten that feeling after playing Call of Duty in my HT.  Takes some getting used to, but being able to see those bastard snipers on a screen that large does make up for the slight discomfort up front!  LOL.

[Angry the Clown 4,327]

 

Years ago, through perseverance, I trained myself to be able to read books on the bus, by doing so in small doses until I acclimated.  I'm sure it will work for FPS games on a 120" screen, too, just have to be patient and be ready to go outside for fresh air until I get my sea legs.  In the meantime I finally finished Limbo, and toyed around with some of my Xbox Arcade games that came available with backwards compatibility.

 

 

 

Interesting. I've never been able to read on a bus or a train or as a passenger in a car. I've often wondered how I would adapt to playing games projected.

[Robot Monkey 510]

I can get sick reading in a car, but have no problems at all playing games on the projector.

[Carlucci 705]

Finally having some luck in not getting nauseated when playing FPS games. I finished Halo 2 on Heroic, but I'll be damned if those bastards didn't give me credit for the Sacred Icon level, so I had play it again. That's the one with all the tight corridors, elevators, and falling. Near-puke inducing. Also it's no fun whatsoever.

 

Now I started Halo 3, bumped the difficulty down to Normal, and had a blast with the first few levels. Only time I felt like tossing cookies was when in the Scarab to blow it up. That's progress.

 

 

Carlos.

[JFo 1,864]

Seeing this thread again reminds me... We'll be closing on our house soon, which means I'll be installing the in-ceiling speakers in our our living room and kitchen within the next couple weeks. I have to admit I'm kind of nervous about it. It's a brand new house and I would hate to do any damage to the ceiling in the living room or kitchen that would need to be repaired. My wife is pretty confident we can get it done, and I'm sure we will. It's just we've never cut a hole for a speaker before and so this is new territory for us. I really wish we could have gotten the builders to install the speakers we wanted, as I'd feel loads better knowing a professional was doing it.

 

Based on Carlos' comments, it sounds like it won't be that hard, but I won't be happy until the holes are cut, the speakers installed.

[Carlucci 705]

Seeing this thread again reminds me... We'll be closing on our house soon, which means I'll be installing the in-ceiling speakers in our our living room and kitchen within the next couple weeks. I have to admit I'm kind of nervous about it. It's a brand new house and I would hate to do any damage to the ceiling in the living room or kitchen that would need to be repaired. My wife is pretty confident we can get it done, and I'm sure we will. It's just we've never cut a hole for a speaker before and so this is new territory for us. I really wish we could have gotten the builders to install the speakers we wanted, as I'd feel loads better knowing a professional was doing it.

 

Based on Carlos' comments, it sounds like it won't be that hard, but I won't be happy until the holes are cut, the speakers installed.

 

I had three things going for me that made me supremely confident, which I suspect you do as well:  A) I had pictures of the pre-drywalled house under constructions which made me sure I would not be hitting any pipes or wires.  B ) I was just cutting into drywall,  and was able to go into the attic with the templates that came with the speakers and inspect to make sure I wouldn't hit any ceiling rafters/joists, and C) I watched a few youtube videos.

 

Buy a drywall hand saw, cuts like butter.   Good luck.  Post pictures!

 

 

Carlos.

[JFo 1,864]

I had three things going for me that made me supremely confident, which I suspect you do as well:  A) I had pictures of the pre-drywalled house under constructions which made me sure I would not be hitting any pipes or wires.  B ) I was just cutting into drywall,  and was able to go into the attic with the templates that came with the speakers and inspect to make sure I wouldn't hit any ceiling rafters/joists, and C) I watched a few youtube videos.

Well, you're right about having pictures of the where the speakers are to be installed before the dry wall went up. I can't go inspect the area above where the speakers are going though because they are on the main level. They'll be located below my two sons' bedrooms upstairs, so unless I to rip up the floor in their rooms, that's probably not going to work.

 

Thanks for the heads up on the YouTube videos though. I'll take a look and see what I can find. Of course if you have one in particular you'd like to share, I'd be happy to watch it!

[Robot Monkey 510]

Carlos is right -- a dremel is a lot faster, but a drywall handsaw is a better bet for a novice. A dremel can get away from you if you aren't used to it.

 

And if you aren't already an old hand at patching drywall, learn. It's easy.

[JFo 1,864]

I just wanted to follow up on this post from last year regarding the in-ceiling speakers my wife and I were going to install in our new house.

 

Long story short, we installed the speakers for our 5.1 home theater system yesterday. Overall, the installation went really well, and the speakers look and sound great. My wife took the job of cutting the holes in the ceiling and I handled the wiring and installation of the speakers themselves.

 

The Box Buddy mud rings worked as well as I could have hoped. With just a little force, they snapped off cleanly, leaving enough room to cut circles in the ceiling for both speakers without bumping into the truss. This made it a lot easier to install the speakers once the holes were cut, and resulted in a really, clean look when all was said and done.

 

Now all that’s left is for us to install the speakers in the kitchen for our separate stereo system. The only problem there is I’m not exactly sure how we are going to connect the speakers to the receiver in our living room. I have to contact the contractor that did the pre-wire install and figure out how it’s supposed to work.

[Carlucci 705]

Just acquired this. Can't say how. Its going on my door outside my home theater. So excited!

 

Carlos. 

[Robot Monkey 510]

That reminds me of a sticker I put on an old computer:

 

[Robot Monkey 510]

And to complete the threadjack, I put this one on a tool case:

 

[Carlucci 705]

When I first started building out the home theater room, really low, wide media stands were very hard to come by, and when you found them, they were in the $2-3K price range.

 

Now, they seem ubiquitous, and cost much less.

 

I got rid of my home made solution, and man it looks fantastic. 

 

This is a wide angle shot taken from my sitting position. 

 

I never got around to replacing the carpet with a darker color, but with the lights off, it doesn't matter one bit. 

 

Carlos.