Well, I have been away for quite a while and, in that time, completed a couple of projects that were the epitome of blog worthiness but unfortunately, I didn’t blog them. To try and get caught up and rolling again, I am going to dust off the blog and give the highlights of my latest project. In a nutshell, we previously turned our dinning room into a play room for the kids which turned into a black hole for junk and was a total waste of space. Rather than converting it back to a dining room and sticking a table and six chairs we would never sit at in there, we opted to build ourselves a full on home theater system.
So, it was decided. We would build a theater. Luckily, I already had many of the needed components including 5.1 worth of 2003 Klipsch Reference speakers. To power the speakers I used my old school Denon AVR-3805 which doesn’t have HDMI, but was too expensive to be expendable, and a 110″ screen from a theater I built in a previous home. Aside from these major components I was also already packing the accessories like Xbox, PS3, Wii, and my Media library of 15000+ songs and 700+ DVDs ripped and stored on a Drobo. The room, having been a play room, already had DirecTV service so, out of the gate, content was covered.
Having taken inventory of the items I had, it was time to figure out the items I would need. Since my receiver didn’t have HDMI I would definitely need an HDMI switch that worked on remote to change sources and obviously, I was going to need a projector. For the switch, I scooped up a Monoprice 5×1 HDMI switcher for some absurdly cheap price, $30.00 I think (Go Monoprice) and bundled that order with 150 feet of speaker wire, a couple of HDMI cables, and a universal ceiling mount for the projector. With the basics out of the way, it was time to sit down and figure out what projector to use. I begin by looking at the Optoma HD20 which was all abuzz around the net claiming to be a sub $1000.00 1080P projector. While the stats on this little guy looked good, complaints of fan noise and the appearance of the word “Acceptable” over and over in the reviews, had me somewhat cautious of this device. The noteworthy part of the HD20 reviews and articles were that almost every author referenced the Epson Powerlite Home Cinema 8100 as its step up and main competition. After seeing this projector mentioned over and over, I pulled its specs, read several reviews, and decided it was the 1080P device for me so I sailed over to www.projectorpeople.com and picked one up. 
Okay, components and a projector out of the way, I had the body of my beast, but no brains. I needed something to handle the online streaming and media library delivery, and while many think an Xbox/PS3 is that solution, I am not in that camp. The choice, for me at least, was obvious. I would need a Mac Mini. At the time I was building this system, Apple had released the $999.00 Mac Mini Server which appealed to me because a regular Mini is $599-$799 stock, but configured for my Application, $799.00 was the more accurate price. Subsequently, a Snow Leopard Server License is $499.00 so picking up a bundle for $999.00 was a deal I couldn’t pass up. For anyone else out there who isn’t as savvy with the Computer part of this built, the server license is so completely and totally unnecessary, don’t sweat it. A regular Mac Mini with 4 gigs of memory will serve just fine.
So here we go, the gear is assembled, time to build it out. As you can tell from the picture at the top of this post, the room was designed around my two little girls and about as far from my idea of “theater” as possible. There was also one other minor stumbling block. My wife. As it turns out, the only way I could get her on board with this project was to double the theater room as my office and workspace thereby moving my current workspace into the newly designed theater. This would mean a dismantling of all of my tech and toys on an epic scale. My old office was to become a laundry room, a small price to pay for what I was about to start building. I shouldn’t get ahead of myself though, before tearing all of this down, it was time to clear out the room, paint it, run the wires, and load in the gear. I began the week before Thanksgiving, and worked all of my free time for about a week to complete the project. That being said, it was only until recently that I actually called it “good” and have spent more time enjoying content than tweaking the gear. Which is the more enjoyable is a matter of opinion. I am sure I will find a reason to tear it all apart so that I can tweak it more in the near future.
The build out was simple. I ran speaker wire in the wall and through the crawl space. The HDMI and power for the projector was run tightly up the back corner of the room and over to the unit, .Charcoal Grey paint, curtains on the windows, some appropriately themed movie posters (it was Christmas time after all), a media stand I already had in another part of the house, and a smaller desk for my workspace. The result? I have to say that my family spends almost all of our time in this room now. The girls get to play Wii on a screen who’s diagonal is cumulatively longer than their combined height which blows their little minds, and 110″ of 1080 Disney Channel delivers wide open mouths and loads of excitement. My wife is now having friends over every week for her Tuesday night line up and can now watch TV throughout the week while I am on my Mac working or playing. Bringing the two of us into the same room while still letting us enjoy our own content is brilliant. For myself, I have been jamming out with Beatles Rock Band and Modern Warfare 2 on the big screen, enjoying my movie collection, and generally drooling over Discovery HD theater every night since it was completed. To anyone who is thinking “hmm, what the hell good is my dining room for?” I say tear it down and make yourself something amazing. To any who reads this post and thinks there is no way you could build something like this, find me @bushwilliams on twitter or e-mail Sysop@shortordertech.com and we will make it happen.
The specs are as follows:
- 110″ 1080P HD Epson 8100 Projector Display
- 5.1 Klipsch system including: 2X RB-75s, 2x RS-7s, 1X RC-7, and a RSW-15 powered by a Denon AVR-3805
- Game Consoles: Xbox 360, PS3, Wii
- A Windows 7 PC / Hackintosh 2.66 Quad w/ 8GB of RAM, fully water cooled, sits beside the components to facilitate Blu-Ray and DVD Ripping as well as video encoding and the occasional Windows based video game.
- Direct TV HD DVR for Live Content
- Mac Mini Server 2.53ghz 4GB RAM connected to my media library (Drobo) via FW800 distributes content at 1080P via Plex as well as serves iTunes libraries to three other Apple TVs and Macbooks in the house. This server runs TED (Torrent Episode Downloader) and wrangles all of our TV show torrents, streams Netflix, and provides crystal clear 110″ web browsing and Gaming. The Mac is fully controlled via a Logitech Harmony 880 Remote and functions just like a regular AV component. It has a small form factor and is absolutely fantastic for this application.
Additional Photos Below:
This morning I went to tag a movie in iFlicks and noticed that the “Open With” menu contains iFlicks multiple times. After a quick search, I found that my Launch Services Database needs to be rebuilt and that doing it is rather simple. If you find yourself with same problem, do the following for a quick fix:
