The cottage entertainment room.

[Brandon H]

I've been meaning to do this for a while, but now that the rack is made over with the new consoles, I figured it was as good a time as any.

 

My setup is in a two-room cottage behind my house; its bones are actually a cinder-block workshop that a previous owner used as a clock factory for a family business. The back room is used as an office; the larger front room, with vaulted ceilings, is a media room and entertaining space with a kitchenette. There's a full bath as well.

 

Here's the view from behind the back row. I'm using Polk Signature series speakers for the 7.1 base layer -- S55 towers in the front (with Aperion Audio ribbon super tweeters) and S15 bookshelves for the side and back surrounds, with an S35 center. The low end is handled by two HSU ULS-15 subs. The Atmos speakers are HSU HIW-1 in-walls. All powered by a Denon AVR-X6200W receiver and a newly added Outlaw 7000x amplifier powering the seven main channels. The receiver handles the top front and top rear Atmos speakers (I have top middle speakers for 7.2.6, but not a receiver capable of handling that many channels yet.) The TV is an 85-inch Sony XBR-X900F, 4k HDR but no HDMI 2.1 features.

 

And the view from above the rack (ignore the ugly ghost in the reflection.) The gargantuan size, and cooling requirements, of these new consoles required that they be out and proud, so you see my PS5 and Xbox Series X up top, then my Switch in its dock, then the Fluance RT81 turntable. The HSUs flank the stand on either side. You can also catch the edge of the PSVR sitting atop the right sub.

 

The left side "retro rack."

Top shelf, left: Gamecube w/Game Boy Player modded with the GCLoader PNP sd card loader, SD2SP2 serial-port adapter, and a GC-HD Mark II HDMI adapter feeding into a Marseille mClassic upscaler.

Top shelf, right: Wii U, and Dreamcast modded with GDEMU SD card loader, DCHDMI video output, and power-supply mod.

Next shelf down: My OG Xbox (with clock capacitor removed.)

Next shelf down: Xbox 360 and, hiding in the back to its right, PS Vita TV.

Bottom shelf: My launch PS3 Fat.

Everything feeds into the HDMI 2.0 switch at the top, and is powered by the Panamax surge protector at the bottom.

 

 

Behind the middle doors: my gaming HTPC. Some of you followed its saga in the PC building thread. It ended up being an Intel Core I9-9900KF machine with 32MB RAM and a GeForce RTX3080. I have a cordless Corsair keyboard and mouse on a "lapboard" so I can play from the couch. You can see the mess of wires in the bottom along with my HOTAS and, in the back, the Oculus Rift 2 rig.

 

 

The right-side rack: Outlaw 7000x amp at the bottom, then the Denon x6200w, then a Sony UBP-X800v2 4k Ultra HD player and Philips Hue Sync Box. There are Hue Play light bars atop each sub shining on the wall behind, and Hue bulbs in the track lights overhead; the sync box syncs the lighting colors and intensity to what is happening on screen. The external hard drive to the player's left belongs to the Xbox Series X.

 

Everything is powered by the Furman surge protector in the top of the rack. Mounted in the rear of the rack is a 24-port Netgear gigabit switch to provide network connections to everything. There are redundant CAT6a lines buried in conduit from the main house to the cottage, home-run into an On-Q structured wiring box in my cellar where my AT&T Fiber line feeds into the house.

 

 

The view looking back in the room. I carefully framed the photo so the back row of chairs hides my LEGO backlog of set awaiting to be built. 😉

 

Excuse the detritus in the front chair -- mostly the remains of the rack rewiring project.

 

 

My nerd shelves. The cabinets hold filing boxes with my PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PS4 discs, as well as controllers, charging stands, and other accessories. There's an outlet in each side so I can keep things charged and out of sight. The drawers are media drawers housing my Blu-Ray collection. The second shelf on the middle-left is my son's display shelf. The rest, I must take credit or blame for.

 

 

Just finished running Audyssey on the new setup tonight. Will break it in tomorrow catching up on The Mandalorian, and then spend my vacation week finally getting to know the PS5 and Series X!

 

[kelley]

Great setup! I'm a fellow 85X900F owner. We moved in August and I'm just now getting my system put back together, waiting on my new stand to come in...five weeks after I ordered it and it still hasn't shipped from BDI.

[Brandon H]

That sucks. Hope it comes in soon. I had our cabinet guy custom-build my stand when we were renovating the cottage. There are casters hidden under that bottom skirt 😉

[dogbert]

Flippin' gorgeous, mate!

[ChrisBardon]

That's quite the space!

[AlbertA]

Wow that looks amazing. Well done!

[Angry the Clown]

Lovely. Great work, Brandon!

 

[Magness]

That is an awesome setup Brandon!

[dogbert]

So what were your big lessons building it all out? What'd you do differently if you started over knowing everything you know now? 

[Brandon H]

It’s been a great space but I would definitely do just a few things differently:

 

— I would have had the builder place plywood behind the TV mount area to make current and future mounts easier. The wall is studded, but there’s also an expanse of cinder-block right behind the drywall behind my TV. Mounting a TV into cinder block is not fun, nor is it something you want to do often. I’d like that flexibility in the wall.

— Biggest regret is not channeling into the concrete slab to run power outlets into the floor for the chairs. Those recliners are manual. Believe it or not, manual recliners are actually more expensive in most cases these days, and I’ve already had to have the mechanism repaired on a couple of them several times. I should have just bit the bullet and had them channel out the concrete and run power for motorized seats.

— I probably should have gone ahead and wired and planned for a projector mount and screen of some kind when it was all opened up. It’s not really an ideal space for a projector, but you could just squeeze a 100” screen in if you were determined, and the center beam would have allowed for wiring for a projector. I was not that determined at the time, and honestly, I can’t say that I’ve missed it much sitting nine feet from an 85-inch screen, but in retrospect — maybe I should not have passed on the opportunity to have it there if I ever wanted.

— I would have made the contractor manage cabling better. The photos don’t show it, but right now, the in-wall network cables and the speaker cables come out of conduit directly into the room. They are neatly loomed and groomed, but it still makes for a mess behind the rack, and I have to be careful in wiring and moving the rack around to make sure that I don’t strain connectors. I should have made him terminate it all into junction boxes and wall plates.

— I like the look of my rack cabinet, but honestly, it might have been easier just to place a single tall rack to the right of the TV rather than racking everything into the cabinet. It’s not a big deal given that I don’t change out equipment that often, but wiring across two racks and moving behind that thing is a bit of a pain (often quite literally — it gets uncomfortable back there during long wiring jobs.)

— I would have wired in wi-fi access points. You would think wi-fi would not be a problem in an open two-room cottage, and it’s not, except for getting signal to the exterior security cameras. The signal does not like trying to pass through a few inches of spray-foam insulation, cinder block, and then additional exterior insulation and cement board. Hardwired access points likely would work better.

 

 

 

I’ll try to post some photos before and after the renovation so you can see what we had to work with. It was a fun project.

 

 

[rustyjaw]

7 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

I probably should have gone ahead and wired and planned for a projector mount and screen of some kind when it was all opened up. It’s not really an ideal space for a projector, but you could just squeeze a 100” screen in if you were determined, and the center beam would have allowed for wiring for a projector.

 

I was looking at the pics (stunning room!) and thinking how nice a projector would be in that space. Why "only" 100"? If that TV is 85" I would think you could go 120" - just looking at the space between the speakers. Is it because of the vaulted ceiling, which would drop a wider screen down too far? Personally, I like screens to be more eye level (specifically, the lower 1/4 of the screen at eye level) than overhead, but if you have two rows of seating, I can see that potentially being an issue.

[Eldorado]

8 minutes ago, rustyjaw said:

 

I was looking at the pics (stunning room!) and thinking how nice a projector would be in that space. Why "only" 100"? If that TV is 85" I would think you could go 120" - just looking at the space between the speakers. Is it because of the vaulted ceiling, which would drop a wider screen down too far? Personally, I like screens to be more eye level (specifically, the lower 1/4 of the screen at eye level) than overhead, but if you have two rows of seating, I can see that potentially being an issue.

 

I think you'd be right there, unfortunately he has that big ass window right next to the left side of the tv.  He'd have to offset the center of a screen much larger than that 100".

[Brandon H]

Yep, the window is the issue. We could have taken it out, but at some expense. There are other windows too, so light control would also be another (but manageable) issue.

[Robot Monkey]

Looks lovely

[rustyjaw]

7 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

Yep, the window is the issue. We could have taken it out, but at some expense. There are other windows too, so light control would also be another (but manageable) issue.

 

So I guess you are talking about a fixed screen then, not some kind of retractable? (I was assuming retractable)

[Starhawk]

How do you like the mini split for that room? Not sure what your weather is like there so it might not be needed much.

[Brandon H]

Mini-split works great. Super-quiet and energy-efficient. There’s another, smaller unit in the office. The cottage is well-insulated and pretty airtight so it doesn’t take much to heat or cool it. Our winters are mild but summers, that’s another story. We use a small tankless water heater to provide hot water to the cottage, which works fine since we don’t need that much.

 

Ideally, I would have put some form of retractable screen in that would drop down in front of the fixed TV — in which case you are right — it could just drop down over the window with appropriate light control. I never thought through it that well.

[rustyjaw]

Just now, Brandon H said:

Ideally, I would have put some form of retractable screen in that would drop down in front of the fixed TV — in which case you are right — it could just drop down over the window with appropriate light control. I never thought through it that well.

Perhaps something for your 2.0 version. But leave that for later, enjoy the fruits of your labor now.

[Robot Monkey]

Oh, please share the before pics!