# The New Theatre



## Prof.

I've had a sort of theatre for many years..It performed ok but was not what I really wanted..
The room was originally two bedrooms, and we knocked down the adjoining wall to make it one long room.
The room was never really finished properly, needed painting and new timber skirting, but was one of those jobs that just kept being put to the bottom of the list.

About 6 months ago, we had a freakish tropical downpour, and within minutes, we had 6" of water flowing across the floors in every room !!. Every bit of furniture that was on the floor was ruined, including some of my HT gear and of course the skirting boards...

To cut a long story short, the Insurance Co. paid up for all damages and losses, and we got all the walls painted, new skirting and new furniture...and some new HT gear..
One of the items that got damaged was my 32" Widescreen TV...
All the power connections were on the floor in power boards, and of course they went under water when they were on..The TV didn't like that !!

So after we put in new carpets, I decided that now is the time to make a real theatre..

I've been a member of the AVS forum for sometime, and have learnt a lot about building a home theatre, and picked up some great ideas along the way..

After about 4 months of work ( with some procrastination along the way) the front part of the theatre is almost done..
I made the mistake of setting up the projector and screen before I'd finished, and now progress has slowed down to a crawl..
Anyway, here are the first pics..A little blurry unfortunately.


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## Prof.

The Prosceniums at the sides are hinged to the wall, to gain access to the speakers and behind the screen..
The centre speaker and other HT gear is behind the main bottom panel, which is held in place with Velcro strips..
The equipment rack is on castors and can be rolled out to gain access to the wiring....Also the equipment door looks darker in the photo's than the rest of the material, but to the eye is almost identical.. 

All comments welcome...

Prof..


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## Sonnie

Looks good Prof. :T Looks like it's finished to me. Very neat and concealed.

Sad news on the water damage but it sounds like you may have ended up coming out pretty good on the deal.

I'm assuming the main speakers are concealed on each side of the screen. What is all the equipment and speakers you are using.


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## Hakka

That looks awesome mate. Very tidy.

Harry.


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## Prof.

Thanks guys....Actually the flood was a bit of blessing..A lot of our furniture and white goods were quite old and worn and now we have ALL new goods and carpets and a complete re-paint to boot!! It's like a new house..
Instead of the old Sofa, we now have new micro-fibre recliners for the theatre..
We were payed out in cash ( virtually unheard of with Insurance Companies...God bless them) to the replacement value of all items...
We bought some of the replacement furniture second-hand,instead of new and with that and the money for the replacement TV, saved enough for me to buy the materials for building the theatre, buy my first DLP projector, and up date my Receiver to a 7.1 system..

My equipment is very modest, and some of it now is getting a bit long in the tooth...It has served me well and I still get the occassional WOW from friends and family who come to watch a movie..

Boston Acoustic bookshelf ( can't remember model) Fronts L&R
Parasound Omega...Centre 
DIY Krix tripoles...Surround sides
DSE Monitors...Surround backs
Richter Thor Mk.4...Subwoofer
Toshiba SD2650...DVD Player
JVC...VCR ( can't remember model, but I do remember it cost $790...Oh how things change!!
Yess....Digital SD STB.
Yamaha...RX-V 757 7.1 Receiver
Pioneer...Receiver, CD Player, Cassette Deck ( not used anymore)
Benq W100...DLP Projector..
Screen is a 106" 1.95:1 DIY 1.2 gain Vinyl faced MDF in a shadow box

The L&R speakers are mounted behind the side panels and the centre speaker is behind the bottom panel..
I have left sufficient space behind the top panel (also removeable) to mount the centre speaker if I need to..

All I have to do now is get back into the swing of things and finish it all off..

Cheers,
Prof..


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## Hakka

Prof. said:


> JVC...VCR ( can't remember model, but I do remember it cost $790...Oh how things change!!



I've got a JVC vcr, HRJ-615 from memory, it looks the same as yours. I bought it in the early 90's for $650. It is the most reliable piece of AV equipment I've ever owned. I replaced it with a Lite-on DVD recorder about 6 months back, but I've since swapped back to the JVC.


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## Prof.

Yeah, thats the one...One of the best VCR's on the market at that time..I bought it when it was first released..
Mine's still going strong after all those years, but I only use it for recording some TV shows these days..
In some respects, the sound quality these VCR's produced from Video movies was astounding...even more dynamic that some of todays DVD's..
I would still be using it, apart from the disappearing videos from the shop shelves, but I never did like the square format, and now with Cinemascope DVD's, I can never go back...


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## Guest

awesome


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## polygonkilla

Great job - What kind of fabric is that.


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## Prof.

polygonkilla...Somehow I missed your post...

The fabric on the screen wall is called Black Stretch Interlock..When it's stretched tight it has the openness similar to grill cloth..


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## Rodny Alvarez

Hey prof.:nerd: 
Looking.... good !!:clap: 
Are you doing all the work??


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## Prof.

Thanks Rodney...Yes, I did do the whole theatre myself, without any help from anyone..
Lifting frames into place was the biggest problem, since I was working on the theatre during the weekdays and no assistance was available..But I finally got there..

The theatre was finished about 6 months ago..and has just had an update with a new and bigger CIH screen and Anamorphic lens..oh..and a new HD-DVD player...


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## tjambro

Prof. said:


> The theatre was finished about 6 months ago..and has just had an update with a new and bigger CIH screen and Anamorphic lens..oh..and a new HD-DVD player...


Prof, your theater looks very nice! How do you like your CIH setup? I built my dedicated room in 2003 with a 16:9 setup but switched to CIH last year and it really "feels" like a theater now. :T 

What make/model lens are you using?

I would also like your thoughts as to whether your upgrade to HD is a big leap over DVD or is it not as noticeable as you would have thought?

-Tom A.


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## Prof.

Thanks Tom...

I often wondered what all this hype was about concerning CIH..
I've seen screenshots which look ok., and I understand the principle of utilizing all the pixels in the image, but couldn't really believe that it would make all that much difference...
I had contacted a few people here locally, and all said that I wouldn't be disappointed..So I bought a lens and made up a scope screen...

Well all I can say is that it's the best few dollars I ever spent..
I found, as you probably have as well, that the image is totally immersive..You really feel like your there..and it brings you to that feeling that you're in a real theatre..

The lens I bought is called the CAVX Aussiemorphic..It's a locally made lens that you can buy in kit form and assemble yourself..
In a special bulk deal, I was able to buy the kit for $350.00 (AUD), which is about half the normal price..
It has very large prisms and is designed to fit most projectors..
I made up a slide unit for it, for when I need to watch 16:9 movies and normal tv viewing..

I will be posting some updated pics here of my theatre, when I've completed the new installation..

The reason I bought the HD player was for the vertical stretch facility it has..My projector doesn't have image stretch..
I don't have any HD DVD's yet, so I can't compare it to SD..but I have noticed that there is an improvement in the SD DVD's over my previous player..
Also I'm only using component at the moment so I can't access the up-scaling facility..I need a 15M. HDMI cable..

Which lens are you using, and how have you found the image quality?.This is one area that really surprised me..The sharpness and detail is even better than the normal zoom method..
I found that I needed to re-calibrate the projector settings for the Anamorphic lens..

Do you get any pin-cushioning with it? I get a little bit, due to a fairly short throw ratio...


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## tjambro

Prof. said:


> The lens I bought is called the CAVX Aussiemorphic..It's a locally made lens that you can buy in kit form and assemble yourself..
> In a special bulk deal, I was able to buy the kit for $350.00 (AUD), which is about half the normal price..


I've seen some of CAVX's posts over at AVS but I didn't realize he sold kits. That is a very nice price, I paid considerably more for my lens...



> Which lens are you using, and how have you found the image quality?.This is one area that really surprised me..The sharpness and detail is even better than the normal zoom method..


I started out with a Prismasonic H1200 in the DIY kit. I chose the H1200 because it was a well respected lens and because of the ability to switch between 16:9 and 2.35:1 w/o sliding the lens out of the way. Once I got the lens and got used to seeing images on a 10.5' wide scope screen, I couldn't bring myself to switch back to a puny 8' wide image :bigsmile: so I just used TheaterTek on my HTPC to setup profiles for each aspect ratio. I used to think of myself as an OAR purist but stretching to scope isn't that noticeable to me. Granted, stretching 4:3 is a bit much but I watch very, very little in 4:3 anyway. 

When the Panamorph U380 came out shortly after I bought the Prismasonic, it came with a heavily discounted introductory price of $1500 which is $1000 cheaper than now and that lens was bigger than the H1200 and it supposedly was more capable for HD so I sold the H1200 on eBay and now am using the U380. I think either lens is good but I must say that the U380 seems to be just a little clearer to me. I don't have HD yet so I can't make any comments on that. But, after I sold the H1200 I was lensless for a couple of weeks so I did the zoom thing. It wasn't bad, but like you said, the image was more sharp with a lens. 



> Do you get any pin-cushioning with it? I get a little bit, due to a fairly short throw ratio...


Yes, I got slight pincushion with both lenses. I don't think you can get rid of that, all you can do is minimize it. I have a throw ratio of 2.0 so that keeps it pretty small. It all runs off into the screen borders. Slight price for a much improved experience.

Enjoy your setup, I'm sure you will! :T 

-Tom A.


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## Prof.

Here is a shot of the now modified Theatre to accept the new Scope screen setup..
The screen is 9.2' wide..







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And the CAVX Anamorphic lens in place..







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## Captain Crunch

Very nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!:clap:


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## Prof.

Thanks Captain Crunch...

It has taken a few months of blood, sweat and tears to get it all up and running, but the end result was worth every bit of it...
The Cinema Scope image has just blown me away, so much so that I find watching 16:9 movies very restricted and confined, and 4:3...well forget about it...


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## Fred33

Very clean looking. I like the use of basic colors. Good Job.


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## Prof.

Thanks Fred,

As you probably realize, that was my previous theatre which has now been dismantled and moved to my new location..


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## Sonnie

Lookin' very sharp Prof. :T


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## Prof.

Thanks Sonnie,

Hopefully my new Finniss theatre will look just as sharp only a bit smaller..


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## Sonnie

I'm confident that if you had it lookin' that good in one place, it would be no less sharp lookin' in another... probably better. :yes:


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## splitz

wow, that's slick


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## Prof.

Thanks Jim...That was my new theatre then...it's now my old theatre, since I moved about a year ago and have built a new theatre..


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