Home cinema room build - pro with some am

[CharlesElliott]

Oh, and apparently the blind motor is due first half of next week, and the fabric around will be finished next Saturday!

[justin220]

I've got a similar set of seats from Octane and bought a few of the attachments -

Wine Holder - actually quite impressed with it, think it was £50 but its nicely made. I got a mate to 3D print me a few others for the remaining seats.
Table - terrible. It is only perfectly horizontal in one position. If you rotate it round it dips down at an angle. Never use it now
Ipad holder - actually quite good but never felt the need for it since trying it. I dont use a tablet if watching a film..

I'll see if I can dig out some pics

Do those seats come as 3 connected, or 1 whole sofa? Mine are all connected and can be rotated round so the leather wear is even. Although I've owned mine around 3 years now and they still look great..

OP - What is the first choice of film going to be to christen the room?

[OldSkoolRS]

Perfect timing for the typical wet July weather (since Wimbledon is starting soon!). You can lock yourself away from it all and enjoy the new room.

Have you chosen your first film/concert/series/event to watch on the finished set up yet?

[justin220]

This was the original Octane metal wine holder



And this was the main issue with it.. ok for beer chalices but not for actual wine glasses!





So about 5p in materials and a friend with a 3D printer..

[CharlesElliott]

OldSkoolRS said:

Perfect timing for the typical wet July weather (since Wimbledon is starting soon!). You can lock yourself away from it all and enjoy the new room.

Have you chosen your first film/concert/series/event to watch on the finished set up yet?

We did watch some of Elton John at Glastonbury on it, and it was great.

We have informally agreed that Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle will be our first family film viewing, but haven't actually arranged it yet.

I have been watching the first 10 mins or so of Spectre to test the sound calibration as I think that is a great workout for a home cinema.

[OldSkoolRS]

I was going to put mine on for Glastonbury but just watched it on TV in the end. Mines not a proper dedicated room, so it's more faff to set up, so I've got lazy and don't use mine much lately.

Enjoy the first film(s).

PS. Some big bangs at the start so that'll test your sub out. Just don't crank up Edge of Tomorrow if you ever watch that as it's a known sub killer if the limiters aren't set.

[CharlesElliott]

justin220 said:

Do those seats come as 3 connected, or 1 whole sofa? Mine are all connected and can be rotated round so the leather wear is even. Although I've owned mine around 3 years now and they still look great.

They are all separate seats, although the two on the ends are effectively fixed position as they have different connectors. The two in the middle could be swapped round.

[Griffith4ever]

CharlesElliott said:

We did watch some of Elton John at Glastonbury on it, and it was great.
.

Sadly, the BBC UHD broadasts of Glasto are almost all, if not all, in plain old stereo :-(

Before UHD they broadcast it in superb surround. Used to really enjoy the atmosphere on the projector, in surround.

Same with Later With Jules - was always in surround, then it went stereo for some reason. Enjoyed some fantiastic artists on that show, aided with a long smoke :-)

[mattlovescars93]

Any finished photos of the build?

[CharlesElliott]

Thanks for the reminder. We've been fiddling a lot and it never quite seems finished, but it has been calibrated now and is working very well! It's hard to really have photos of the finished effect given it is dark, and there is no sense of scale but here goes.

Finished seating



Lighting and covered panel for rack and AC unit (flash shows up the vacuuming / dusting that is still needed. Black everything takes a lot of work!)



Door into / out of room.



Going into cinema mode (it's a bit dark for this)

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AjT-H7YC5S5wg-9JhZuXsBG1Ifoe2A...

Gives a sense of the screen

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AjT-H7YC5S5wg-9HGrPe4S0_Lpq5Nw...

And switching off

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AjT-H7YC5S5wg-9ITYMuG5H4kr2Ebg...

[Griffith4ever]

Wow!... that looks A-mazing. Worked out very well!

How's the sound? (The PJ looks great, for what you can tell on a compressed vid clip. Happy with the speakers and sub?

[CharlesElliott]

It is great, yes. The calibration guy was an independent that does stuff all over the UK (although it was part of the installation cost we paid). He said that 'even though we only had one sub', he thought the construction of the room and the sound achievable was excellent and was very pleased.

Interestingly, he said that 99% of projectors are better in 4K, non-HDR, rather than HDR. He calibrated both, but we looked at a couple back to back and I agreed that the non-HDR actually showed more dynamic range.

[donkmeister]

CharlesElliott said:

Interestingly, he said that 99% of projectors are better in 4K, non-HDR, rather than HDR. He calibrated both, but we looked at a couple back to back and I agreed that the non-HDR actually showed more dynamic range.

That is pretty interesting: as someone who has a 4k HDR PJ in my living room I've often wondered if it really has the brightness to justify HDR when used in a room that does double-duty (so not a temple of black like a proper home cinema) and without having it set to the brightest (and hence loudest) power mode... Yes, the dynamic range is there, but if the brightest picture isn't bright enough then it's going to look dim and murky, especially in darker scenes.

So if a pro says 99% of PJs are better in SDR then I would say the answer to my musings is "no".

[OldSkoolRS]

donkmeister said:

CharlesElliott said:

Interestingly, he said that 99% of projectors are better in 4K, non-HDR, rather than HDR. He calibrated both, but we looked at a couple back to back and I agreed that the non-HDR actually showed more dynamic range.

That is pretty interesting: as someone who has a 4k HDR PJ in my living room I've often wondered if it really has the brightness to justify HDR when used in a room that does double-duty (so not a temple of black like a proper home cinema) and without having it set to the brightest (and hence loudest) power mode... Yes, the dynamic range is there, but if the brightest picture isn't bright enough then it's going to look dim and murky, especially in darker scenes.

So if a pro says 99% of PJs are better in SDR then I would say the answer to my musings is "no".

Seems good advice: Only extremely expensive projectors might be able to achieve HDR properly. Pretty much all of them have to do some tone mapping, so are effectively outputting in SDR anyway. You can use the player/video processor/projector to do this from a HDR source all with various pros/cons and costs. I use a Lumagen video processor for this function, but even after many years they are still tweaking the tone mapping (at least updates are free of charge). So much so that I've tended to get even recent films on BluRay rather than the HDR disc version.

The room does look fantastic CharlesElliot and given the rubbish summer you've probably had more chance than would be typical to enjoy it. I might have to put mine on this evening as I'm sick of listening to the rain bounce off the conservatory roof this afternoon.

Thanks for the finished photos and wishing you many happy years enjoying it.

[mattlovescars93]

Glad I asked for an update, finished room looks incredible! The worse the weather gets in England the more inclined I am to do something like this, with 1/100 of the budget though no doubt!

[CharlesElliott]

Thank you all, we are very pleased with it.

We use Apple TV as our source and it works very well.

[Sheets Tabuer]

How's the soundproofing?

Have my dad living with me in a relatively new build, my bedroom is next to the family bathroom and my dads love of a guiness and curry leaves little to the imagination at 6am.

[CharlesElliott]

Not great as ‘soundproofing’ (especially to the room beneath) but it wasn’t actually designed as soundproofing, rather as sound treatment. It shares quite a lot in common with the soundproofing systems but they generally enforce a complete disconnection between the room spaces to stop any transfer through hard surfaces.

[CharlesElliott]

Sheets Tabuer said:

How's the soundproofing?

Have my dad living with me in a relatively new build, my bedroom is next to the family bathroom and my dads love of a guiness and curry leaves little to the imagination at 6am.

Having said that, it would more than cope with this situation,
I’m sure!