Building a better bedroom theater! (56K will cry)

[Skippman]

Everyone has hobbies whether they call them that or not. Mine, other than computers, cars, and shooting is home theater as many of you know. I found myself with a 5 day weekend this week due to the holidays. Rather than veg around the house which I've been doing far to much of I decided to get started on a project that's been on the burner for a while. So I started working on my bedroom theater project. What do you guys think so far?

The current setup


Rears


Closet



I finally got the chance to start installing my bedroom theater having had the boxes of parts laying around my condo for months now.

I started by cutting the holes for the front three KEF Ci200.2QT's.





I then had to climb into the attic to move the insulation from around the holes and put the housings in place for the motorized speakers.





Here's a picture of me in the attic.



Once that was done I was ready to install the front three speakers. Fortunatly my dad was on hand to help with the heavy lifting.









We then moved onto the rear two Ci160.2QS's. We started by drawing an outline of the speaker to cut out.



We then cut out the holes and mounted the rear speakers.







All 5 in ceiling speakers are now mounted. They are not, however, wired up yet. I have to relocate the RG-6 for my satellite and wire up the HDMI cable that will be running to the plasma screen. I figure I'll spend another day wiring the speakers for power and sound, installing the HDMI cable, and putting in the in-wall break out box in the closet.


I finally uploaded the pictures of the closet before I painted and built shelves as well as some after pictures. They look a little yellow due to the flash but they were antique white when I started as you can see from the first picture.









Here's the shelf install:



The shelf is 22" wide and 22" deep making it perfectly square. I used 1x2" for supports screwed directly into the studs. I then mounted a piece of birtch finish plywood to the top. I finally trimmed it out with some rounded moldings. I also installed a grounded outlet for my power needs. I also cut a hole in the top shelf in the rear left corner and installed a cable gromit to run wiring through.

I used ebony stain to smooth out the finish. It took 3 coats, sanding between coats to get a smooth finish. Unfortunatly as you can see the stain ate RIGHT THROUGH the painters tape.



I then painted the room with Valspar Shark Loop Grey paint.











As you can see, the paint covered the stained drywall nicely. Next up is the installation of the On-Q in-wall wiring terminal in the closet and wiring up the in ceiling speakers.

[vicaphit]

I'm jealous. Your room is awesome, I am sort of a minimalist when it comes to orginization, the less you have the better!

Love the pistol on the bedstand, nice touch, and it matches everything!

Are the speakers going to pivot on hinges? or come all the way down and face the bed?

This looks like a fun project, and I bet it will raise the value of the condo. Why would you put this work into the bedroom theatre and not the living room?

[Skippman]

I'm jealous. Your room is awesome, I am sort of a minimalist when it comes to orginization, the less you have the better!

Love the pistol on the bedstand, nice touch, and it matches everything!

Are the speakers going to pivot on hinges? or come all the way down and face the bed?

This looks like a fun project, and I bet it will raise the value of the condo. Why would you put this work into the bedroom theatre and not the living room?

You know, it's funny because I didn't even realize the pistol was in the photo (taken a month ago) until you pointed it out. That's my Tarus .45 carry piece.

The speakers are actually motorized. They will articulate down 30 deg to face the listener. The articulation is actually adjustable so I can make sure I get the proper staging. Between that and my Yamaha's built in time alignment (what they call YAPO) I should be able to get good staging in the bed. My living room has a set of Mirage Omni-Sats, an 8" Mirage woofer, a Yamaha HTR-5150 reciever, and a Oppo DV-980H SACD/DVD player. It's used for music only.

I bet what you're looking for is my home theater. That's actually in my finished basement. I'd like to go to a projector next year after I finish paying off my kitchen, finish my bedroom, and take care of a few other things.

Seating Area Right


Seating Area Center


Seating Area Left


Theater Left


Theater Center

[Apoptosis]

got a picture with the speakers articulated down? Just curious what they look like. Also how much did a pair of those set you back?

I did a Google search on the KEF Ci200.2QT speakers and they came back as $309 each, so beween the fronts, rears, and the center I'm guess you have about $1,000 in speakers alone?

I went with Aton A62W Storm Series In-Wall speakers for my fronts and rears and then went with the Aton A53W LCR Center channel for my Home Theater setup and have been happy with the price/performance. Plus the Aton's are lifetime warrantied and that has already paid off when I had a nate moment and fried one of them.

You got an over-the-top setup no doubt!

[Skippman]

I think it's in the $1200 range for all of them. I paid close to $320 a piece for the 3 front. My friend is a licesned KEF dealer. I don't really care for buying speakers online in case there's a warrenty issue or one is damaged in shipping. I'm still waiting on the power supply for the linear actuators to get here. Should be here late this week, early next. Once I have that I plan to spend a day wiring everything up and I'll take some pictures of them in the downward position. They're signal sensing. When they pick up voltage on the speaker inputs it starts the motors. After 2-10 min without a signal the automatically retract. You can also set them to not open at all and use them retracted.

The reciever I have in the room, a Yamaha RX-V1600, has multizone and I've been contemplating putting in ceilings in the two upstairs bathrooms on thier own zone but that's probably overkill.

My current plans are to run a RG-6 lead from the mouting plate in the closet up through the attic, down the interior of the wall behind my bed, and terminate it in a RCA jack to connect a subwoofer under the bed. I also have a 35ft plenum grade HDMI cable that I'll run from the reciever in the closet to the TV. I'm still debating on my TV power options. I could just tap into one of the 12ga romex runs in the house with a junction box. Or I could wire it up through the attic and put a plug on the end in the closet and connect it to the Trip Lite power conditioner I have in there. I know Panamax has a couple of keen products for that purpose but to be honest I'm already slightly over budget anyway.

How do you like your Aton's? I hear good things about them on other forums but I can't say as I've ever heard any in person. Hell, I've not heard my KEF's in person either but I love my Iq's by them that are in my theater room.

[Apoptosis]

I'm happy with the Aton's so far, but I've only had it a few weeks. I'm still working out a few bugs with all the cabling that I have done as my HTPC and Television don't seem to get along well, which is driving me nuts.

[Skippman]

HDCP issues?

[Apoptosis]

HDCP issues?

For example when I boot my PC up the post screen and windows Vista splash screen are displayed on my TV via the HDMI cable, but once windows goes to the desktop the screen goes black. If you unplug the HDMI cable and plug it back in a few times it will 'detect' the TV finally and you can log in since you can see the screen. My other issue is if you leave the system running for 12-24 hours and try to run a Blu-Ray it pops up saying i don't have everything for HDCP. I then have to reboot the system, unplug the HDMI cable a few times after windows loads and then run the Blu-Ray, which works fine now that it is rebooted.

Not sure what that all is about just yet.

[Skippman]

That's definatly a HDCP issue. Somehow the TV and the GPU are getting out of sync. This is common on some AVR's. Are you using your AVR as a HDMI switch or is the TV connected directly to the PC?

[Apoptosis]

That's definatly a HDCP issue. Somehow the TV and the GPU are getting out of sync. This is common on some AVR's. Are you using your AVR as a HDMI switch or is the TV connected directly to the PC?

This is directly connect right now.

[Skippman]

Have you checked to see if there's a firmware upgrade for the TV?

[Skippman]

Well Matt, Dad, and myself put in a full 2 days work and got 90% of the room finished! Big thanks to Matt for his expertise and assistance getting the parts, assembling the equipment, and finishing the install.

Now, on to the pictures!


TV Bracket

Originally the plan was to use this Acme mount with our distributor insured us would work perfectly fine with the Panasonic plasma. Guess what, he was wrong. The screw holes would not line up with the mounting bolts on the rear of the TV resulting in us needing a new mount from Peerless. The new mount ended up being far better as it is now COMPLETELY flush to the wall. In this photo we see the old Acme mount, the wall box, the HDMI cable, and the electrical before the outlet was installed. What's not show is the IR Blaster receiver which was installed later. We left the plate removed from the back of the box in order to back feed the extra HDMI and power cabling into the wall.




Workin'

Matt, Dad, and myself then got to wiring. Here Dad gets down with some romex wiring.



Here is me removing the old coax and speaker wiring that was tucked under the base board.




Here's Matt soldering some connectors for the speaker power leads and working in the attic.








Closet Wiring

Here we cut the hole for the in wall terminal plate and pulled through the wiring. Pictured is the wiring for the satellite and the power/turn on leads for the KEF speakers.



Here is the back of the terminal block we used to wire the room too.



Finally here is a picture of the equipment connected and racked up. You'll notice the DVR is on cardboard boxes. I found the hard drive spinning caused the shelf to "hum" slightly. I plan to eventually mount some rubber matting under it to reduce the vibration.




Mounted TV

Here are two pictures of the Panasonic mounted on the wall. In the first you'll notice how there is ZERO room between the TV and the wall making it appear totally flush. In the second you'll notice the IR reciever mounted under the TV used to relay the IR commands via hard wire to the component rack in the closet.






Some Thoughts

Now that everything is more or less installed there are a few things left to attend to.

1.) Automatic speaker triggers.

The speakers are designed to motorize down either by switch or by a trigger sent from the AVR. Currently its set up to run off the AVR and while cool it is... distracting. The center speaker is a model year older than the other two and it's servo motor is distractingly loud. When you're about to go to sleep the last thing you want to hear is it retracting the speaker into the ceiling. To that end I think we're going to rewire the trigger to be switched as opposed to automatic. That way when it's time for bed I'm not jolted back into conciousness by the speakers.

2.) Subwoofer.

I don't currently have a subwoofer in the room but will install one as soon as I can come to a decision. We've not pre-wired for it just yet as neither Matt nor I was particularly interested in playing around in the ceiling insulation anymore than nessicary.

3.) IR Blaster.

The wiring is in place but I've yet to hook up the actual flashers to the equipment rack as we'll be tearing it back down to get to the PSU for the speakers. So for now I'm having to lie on the right side of the bed so the remote can hit both the TV and the components.


All in all it's been a productive couple of days and I couldn't have done it without Matt and my father. Thanks guys!

So, what do you think?

[martini161]

how many watts is that amp/reciver? is this all on its own line at the breaker?? i just finished up doing some power wiring myself, and scared the **** out of my self cause i was stupid and was too lazy to find the fuse holder threw me back into the stair case pretty hard looks good though! may be finally putting together my home theater soon and finally getting rid of all the boxes that make my wife crazy! woohoo!

[Skippman]

It's all wired to a 20 amp breaker that was only used for my guest bath and closet light.

The AVR (Yamaha RX-V1600) is rated at 120w per channel. More than enough to drive the in ceiling KEF's.

I'm loving the plasma. Before I had to have my CRT Rear Pro set up on <gasp> cinder blocks so's the foot of the bed wouldn't cut off part of the image. Now that it's wall mounted the viewing angle is much more natural for a prone position. This has also free'd up a TON of room in the bedroom. The only downside is the carpet is crushed where the cinderblocks were. I don't know how to get it to come back. I've heard about an ice cube trick that I might try.

[DMB2000uk]

That flush-to-the-wall mount is pretty damn sexy.

We buried our Plasma and Speaker wires in the wall too, TV's with no visible wires are just so pretty to look at.

Dan

PS. Is it alright if we move this thread to the new AV forum, or do you want to keep it in the only-members-can-see country club?

[Liquidsnake]

Nice man, I wish I coul do that to my room, just to close to the kids room. I have the surround sound in the living room, but it stinks, cause rarely do we watch movies there!

[Skippman]

GAH! Didn't know this wasn't in the home theater section. Admin please move!

[shamrok3]

Dude, that is an EPIC HT system! I wish I understood all of your wiring and HT jargon, but it looks sexy and powerful! Enjoy it man!

[Skippman]

Thanks! Took a long time to get it where I wanted it. My only complaint is with my Uverse. Not the service itself but how it works with my IR Blaster (repeater). I can't figure out if the problems my Harmony remote, or the Uverse box itself because the Uverse remote works ok, but the Harmony only works about 1/3 the time.

[doublesuit]

Hi Skippman,

First of all: great bedroom.
Your equipment in your bedroom beats my livingroom setup.

I do have the same built in Kef speakers btw, the CI200.2QT's, but I have no clue how to remove the front and grill. And I need to find a way to remove these to build them into my ceiling.
Hopefully you still read your own thread and can you give me some guidelines how to get this done. Searched the whole www and you are my last hope ;)

thanks,
Doublesuit