A compact HT

[dipdawiz]

A compact HT, a term taken from trending automobile sensation now-a-days - "Compact" SUV/Sedan

Though I always had the thought of having a dedicated HT room some day, but urban life never allowed to take any step towards that. And even when I was out for a better sound for my TV few years back, I never thought about a 5.1 system in any of my room.

All things changed when I started looking for sound bar for my humble 32 inch Samsung TV in 2012. Liked Harman Kardon SB26 a lot. But while searching for reviews came across forums like hifivision and some other global websites. That change my thoughts towards sound system and came to know about details of HTIB, AVR and speakers.

I got hooked into the idea. Initially laid my eyes on HTIB, but I am always a fool in this world of consumarism, and fell for it stretching my budget to double than I initially thought. And could not help but thinking about an AVR and building up a 5.1 setup sometime in near future one at a time. I completely ignored my pragmatic logic and went ahead what heart said. Took audition of yamaha, denon, pioneer and onkiyo AVR with yamaha, polk, sonodyne and jamo speakers in various combinations. With a weak heart and solid sales speech, I was sold to ProFX and went ahead with Denon 1713 and 2.1 setup with Polk Audio TSi400 and PSW110.

Here is how it looked then

the AVR

the whole system. (with a Videocon SD box and PS3 which is now sold)

(A lot has changed since then)

 

[dipdawiz]

First forword to 2016, with increasing house rent and almost stagnent real estate rates for a year or so, decided to buy an apartment. Wife's demand of 3rd room for occational visitors struck me with the idea of a dedicated HT room in normal time and converted to a visitors room with a sofa-cum-bed for couple of days in a year. And with no oposition to this idea from her, sealed the deal.

Though the decision of the apartment size was not taken thinking the dedicated HT room, but got that 3rd room with a size of 12x10ft and 9ft high. Room is small, but for my need of decent functional HT with balanced budget it was just about enough size (though bigger is always better ).

With a better understanding of my needs for last couple of years, I was sure I need just 5.1 system and a bigger screen. But after such an investment to buy an apartment, it was sure that I am not going to buy a 50+ inch smart TV. And my old humble 32 inch samsung is still going strong for TV watching and my interest on HD channels are going down due to soo much advertisements in between each program (and floating ad while the movie is on). So, the choice was simple, get a projector. A month of research fixed me to Optoma HD26, Epson 2040/5300 or to stretch budget a bit and go for Benq 1070+. Only another point I looked for is it should be relatively short throw projector. Due to time (actually my laziness) could not get any audition of DLP projectors and really did not wanted to take 1% risk of rainbow effect. With an amazon.de prime offer on Epson TW5210 (for 49K all inclusive), booked the projector day before Dussera (Durga puja). And to my surprize, got the projector delivered within 7 days including a weekend. Meanwhile I ordered CNCT wall mount, 35ft Blue rigger HDMI and 35ft power cable and a decent low height lounger type sofa-cum-bed from Urban Ladder.

As soon as it got delivered, fixed up the projector. Due to a column on one side of the projecting wall, I had to restrict the projection size of 92".

This is how it looked.

(the itch of enhancing the aesthetics)

 

[dipdawiz]

Room was off-white, so decided to paint it dark and sprinkle with some visual eye candy, as the HT room needs to be appealing as it is functional. As all around the room there is no common wall with other neighbors, I did not intended to do any sound proofing and on 12th floor outside noise is also very less. With UPVC window closed, the room is virtually silent.

Started with deciding a color and it was finalized to a dark warm gray color (Asian paints Rolling stone) with red as contrast(Rich rouge). To bring out the colors, decided to put a white boarder around red.

Used this paint for screen. Silk touch paint is made in India and has a real good finish for a projector screen after I applied.

the beginning

the dark shade

throw some contrast

add boarder for highlight

this is how it looked after all this

(make it a real 5.1)

 

[dipdawiz]

to complete the story, added center and surrounds from polk, TSx 150c for center and OWM3 as surround to my existing 2.1.

the center

the surround

added my precious

After all the hard work of painting the room and sealing all cables in casing, this is the look of the room now

 

[oracle1974]

You may level the wall with POP and enjoy watching movies on a larger screen.

 

[dipdawiz]

You may level the wall with POP and enjoy watching movies on a larger screen.

you just read my mind, but that is kept as stage 2 upgrade, some time later

 

[mpw]

nice thread..

njoi !

 

[balzac]

Wow. It really looks like your efforts and patience have paid off.

Congratulations and Enjoy!

Cheers!

 

[aashish351]

Whether you level the wall or not, putting a decent fixed projection screen would be a worthwhile upgrade.

 

[dipdawiz]

Updating the thread after a long time. After so many days of use, did not feel the need to go for a fixed projector screen. Tried a pull down screen once from a friend and possibly low cost screen does not make much difference. So skipped that thought altogether for time being. Usage is also moderate, in one and half year projector ran for 1000 hours, approx 10~12 hours a week.

Meanwhile added some posters for aesthetic. Printed those posters from vistaprint. Great quality prints in lesser price than most of the online sites or local shops.


From player and playback point of view things have changed. Almost for 2 years after my PS3 faced some issue and sold off, I was using an HTPC for media player for all physical disc, online contents or from HDD. It was 4th gen Pentium PC with 4GB ram, SSD for fast boot and 1TB HDD in a compact casing. Was running windows 10 with netflix app, Kodi app and prime video on browser and different media players for DVD/Bluray.

Playback experience was not seamless and lately local streaming or movies from disc reduced to nil, it did not make any sense to run such a heavy system anymore. So this January bought myself an Amazon Fire TV stick and upgraded my regular N300 router to Asus AC58U, an ac1300 MIMO supported router (as Amazon Fire TV stick supports MIMO) for faster streaming. As a Kodi alternative using SPMC on Fire TV stick for those rare cases of playing local rips and using a 3TB WD MyCloud as a basic network storage. Though it's mainly used to save all photos (apart from google drive), itune music etc. Would upgrade to a proper NAS as requirement comes.

Waiting for a chance to upgrade to nvidia Shield as soon as it launches in India or I travel abroad or convince myself enough to import it from Amazon.com . But hesitating as I do not have a 4k display to make most out of shield. On the other hand, thinking to go back to my long lost love for PS3... now PS4. Lets see how it goes.

Experience with Fire TV stick is pleasant so far. Its directly connected to Denon's one of the HDMI ports. Netflix app in Windows 10 could bit-stream 5.1, now Prime video also bit-streams with 5.1 surround (previously prime video was on browser with stereo sound). Apparently video quality feels better on fire stick than from PC. Now everything, apart from the sub, running on a 1.08kva 660watt iBall Nirantar UPS, can take whole load for 7 to 10 minutes enough time for my apartment's backup to kick in. Found this iBall UPS suitable as it supports 660watts where as most of the 1kva UPS supports only 600watt or 1.5kva UPS are too costly. Sub is connected to a voltage stabilizer to give circuits some protection, hence it goes off for around 15~20 seconds between the time of power cut and back up comes. So far so good.

 

[dipdawiz]

Another update and addition, its just an add-on to the home theater. Got Amazon Echo Dot as corporate gift, so tried to put it to good use. Yes, some of you guessed right. Used it for home automation. Still tweaking and trying to add different features for ultimate use, but at this moment, its like "Alexa, Show time" - switches off lights, powers on AVR and Projector. For starter using a Raspberry Pi as IR blaster (with IR led) as well as emulator of belkin wemo. Also it can switch on-off other electrical devices of this room, living and dining room.

If interested, you can check the project here in github.com. Its a simple project to get you going.

Working on controlling Kodi, but I am almost sure that it wont be used (pointless voice command to play-pause etc while watching movie). And Alexa can play things from Amazon Prime to your Amazon Fire TV stick anyway. But believe me that "Alexa, Show time" and other commands are useful at times. All the basic details are there in the project link I gave, also hundreds of blogs and youtube videos to help you set up your Echo (Dot/Plus) with DIY switches, Raspberry Pi, IR blaster etc.