After over a week of being too sick with the flu to do anything beyond moving a mouse a few inches here and there, I was able to finally install a new 92" pulldown Panoview Greywolf II movie screen in our apartment...
Small Space Home Theater
The large screen was a freebie during a Circuit City promotion and I had to wait 5 months for the screen to finally be delivered (it was such a popular promotion, the contact at Optoma said she had boxes and boxes of rebate forms to handle by herself). But when you're getting something for free, you end being a whole lot more patient than if you had to pay for it.
The ceiling mounting option was fairly easy. I needed to purchase two weight bearing swag ceiling hooks, which are readily available at Home Depot in the ceiling lamp hardware section. Drilling two 1/3" holes using a power drill, I fastened the swag hooks, uniformly spaced the distance of the two preset loops on the Greyhawk II screen. The screen weight about 24lbs, so you want to make sure you drill into support beams if possible.
Currently the Optoma DLP projector is ceiling mounted using an affordable solution from eBay, but will require additional drilling through a wall dividing the living room from a walk-in closet, which will store the components and hide the wiring (except a single audio coaxial cable that will run over the Yamaha YSP-800 Digital Sound Projector). I'm dreading this last part, since it will require a bit of planning of how to attractively finish what amounts to a hole in the wall.
For now, all we can do is enjoy the huge picture (no audio, as I wait delivery of the coaxial cable from Monoprice) that dwarfs our 40" LCD. The screen has a 1.8 gain and none of the sparkling issues some users have mentioned; excellent viewing angle irregardless of whether sitting or standing. I'll have specifics about image performance after a few days of using the projector/screen combo, since I tired myself out installing everything last night. We can't wait to get everything fully setup for use in the coming days for a full test run using a PS3 for our first movie night screening. Now the question is which movie to screen....
Comments (11)
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Thanks for all this information. Can you give us some more details about the affordable ebay solution for mounting the projector itself? Our trouble is that we have very very very high ceilings and so were considering mounting the screen atop a book case to pull down in front of the shelves. Based on your experience, what do you think of this idea? We will also need to wall mount the projector since the ceiling is too high. Any suggestions/ideas appreciated.
view rebandvic's profile
yes I agree with first comment - could you provide more information? This may have been covered in previous threads, but I was wondering which projector you chose. Look forward to hearing the audio set up details.
view kjmerklin's profile
kjmerklin: The projector is a Optoma HD70 HD 720p DLP projector, which was ceiling mounted using the NPL Series Projector Mount from Mount Direct.com.
rebandvic: consider ceiling mounted the unit with an arm extension, which can add an additional 18"-92" of downward positioning.
view gregory's profile
You can also get cheap projector mounts from monoprice.com
view DaveD's profile
Can you provide details on the dimensions and layout of your room? How far do you sit from your 92" screen?
view inspiredaustin's profile
inspiredaustin: we're seated about 11ft away from the screen in a 12.25' x 13' room. The deficiencies of the room for home theater include 4 different door openings (2 do not have doors) and ambient light that limits the use for evenings (the projector is usable with the solar shades rolled down, but not desirably so); amazingly, the 92" image doesn't seem to hurt either my girlfriend or my eyes, so this is might be the sweet spot for such a small room.
view gregory's profile
What kind of LCD TV is that? Did you paint it?
view bluehoo's profile
bluehoo: It's a Samsung 40â³LCD, model LN-S4052D. Our friends Ben and Polly, whom we house toured, also have the same set (bottom photo).
view gregory's profile
We have this exact same set-up. Same projector, screen and mount! Our bulb is past it's lifetime but still going strong! We use it too much. During the summer the kids were watching tv all day. I need to get a bulb for the day it finally goes out... it will come eventually but I am testing to see how long it will really last.
view royaltygirl's profile
You can get a very nice projector mount at http:www.projectormountstore.com
view MartinMan's profile
sorry, last post was a mistake. link should be:
http://www.projectormountstore.com
view MartinMan's profile