The first step in building a good home theater system is to get a job with a major producer of projection equipment to learn how to set up and maintain your home theater system. Although this is what I did, of course it is not necessary to go to that extreme.
My training and experience with Barco projection systems helped me set up and obtain the necessary equipment for my home theater system. I started with a dark basement room that was only about 9 by 20 feet. I had used it for many things over the years, from a playroom for my daughter, to a workshop, to a spaceship, and now a home theater.
From work in Barco, where they were remodeling, I picked up some fabric covered wall dividers that were being thrown away and placed them on the sides of the theater to hide the cinder block walls and reduce echo for better sound. I then covered and painted the back wall a matte white for the screen. I use the entire wall for a borderless screen, that way the projected image becomes the border and it never feels like the movie isn’t filling the screen when watching a widescreen version.
It’s good to know that all movies are shot in 4/3 ratio. The widescreen versions simply crop the top and bottom to make it look wide. I usually test a movie in both widescreen and fullscreen versions to see where they are cropping the image. Sometimes after editing a widescreen movie, it is re-cropped on the sides to provide a full-screen version. Kodak has produced such high-quality film that it allowed filmmakers to reduce the raw film area and still obtain acceptable resolution. I enjoy both the widescreen and fullscreen versions. But it is good to fill the entire wall with the image.
For a projector, I kept my ears peeled for units being scrapped or sold cheap to employees. A few years into working for Barco, they sold some of the older demo equipment and I chose a Barco Graphic 400 projector. At the same time I bought a second broken projector for spares. The total cost was $150.00. Over the years with Barco I have collected other used or broken equipment to add to my theater. The Video Enhancer VSE20 was a much needed accessory. Lineless, large image duplication produces horizontal lines resulting from the TV-quality picture resolution of tapes and DVDs. Line mirroring smooths and fills in missing information on the screen, resulting in HDTV quality from all TV and DVD inputs. No need to buy an HDTV.
With a good stock of spare parts for my old projector and a set of service manuals, I’ll be in good shape for years to come. I’ve had to do some repairs and adjustments over the years, but it’s been worth it. The VS20 generates a lot of heat and after about two hours I had to let it cool down, so I installed two quiet CPU fans on the top of the chassis and that solved the problem. When I started building the theater I bought a screen sound system from K-Mart for less than a hundred dollars and the surround sound has been excellent. The projector is mounted on the ceiling so it’s out of the way and we have four nice rocking chairs to watch the movies.
For an added touch, I installed a string light across the ceiling with a dimmer control. From time to time we watch TV in the cinema, but most of the time we save it to watch movies. We no longer rent and try to choose good DVDs to add to our collection. My favorite movie is Ground Hog Day, I never get tired of it and it’s much better without commercials.
You can still get good used projectors on E-Bay, try searching for “SHIP” and look for projection equipment and video enhancers. Small DLP technology projectors under a thousand dollars are also good home theater systems and you don’t need to upscale the video as you can only get the resolution the projector is capable of. The digital processor in the projector acts as the video enhancer. The big picture may not be as smooth as with a CRT projector and lamp replacement costs are factors to consider when getting a big screen projector.
