Designing & Building a Home Theater #7 Tips for Placing Screens, Projectors, and Speakers

Table of Content

• Editors’ Choice 2022: My Favorite Wireless Speakers
• Horizontal lens Shift: How far off to the side?
• TOP 10 HOME THEATER
• Astell&Kern’s HC3 Dongle DAC Supports Hi-Res Audio & Microphones
• WTF is Surround Sound?
• Shure SRH440A Studio Headphones: Review
• Free Downloadable Guides
• Google Nest Ecosystem of Products for the Custom Installer

Every time you adjust one thing, it will affect something else. It’s also nice to use two people, one to make the adjustments and the other to stand by the screen and give feedback. This is especially true if the projector is far away from the screen. Enlisting the help of a significant other or friend is a good idea when attempting the next step. Verify everything is secure, then lift up the projector and attach it to the ceiling plate.

The other critical factor is the amount of ambient light interfering with the projector's output. As mentioned, the amount of ft-L that arrives at your screen for reflection back to the viewers depends on two other key factors besides the projector's lumen spec. The larger the image, the greater its area, and the more lumens are required from your projector to achieve a given brightness across the entire screen. There are two primary characteristics you'll want to pay attention to with any kind of screen material you're considering.

Editors’ Choice 2022: My Favorite Wireless Speakers

If the projector is pointing up or down, you will have issues with pitch. The projector should be pointing straight forward, perpendicular to the screen. If pitch is set correctly, the left and right sides of the image will be parallel. The easiest way to dial in pitch is to set a small torpedo level on the projector, oriented so it is perpendicular to the screen, and adjust the mount until the projector is level. You are almost done, but now comes what I think is the hardest part of the entire process. Fine-tuning can be time consuming, frustrating, and uncomfortable, unless that is, you enjoy holding your hands over your head for extended periods of time as you repeat the same steps over and over.

ProjectorCentral adheres to the notion that an "accurate" image follows widely accepted production standards used to create high definition and UHD movie and TV content. It's important to understand that each of the three imaging technologies described earlier deliver 4K resolution to the screen differently. Any difference you do see is likely more attributable to differences in lens quality or image processing. A high-end lens, with multiple groups and individual elements, are the hallmark of better projectors. To adjust yaw, you need to turn the projector from side-to-side until the top and bottom of the image are parallel. If the lens is exactly horizontally centered on the screen, the image will also be horizontally centered on the screen.

Horizontal lens Shift: How far off to the side?

Should space allow, plan for a dedicated projection booth in your home theater room design. This represents the ideal location as it will mask any annoying noise from the projector cooling fan during the period of silence. It will be difficult to relocate the projector once you complete the overall home theater room design. So make sure you remain within the supported projector to screen distance range for the required screen size and keystone image correction or lens tilt support. Once positioned, the Formovie Theater can be leveled using dials on the lower front left and right sides that are attached to the adjustable feet. This will allow fine tuning and is a nice approach compared to many units that require you to awkwardly spin the feet themselves, which can throw off your placement.

Note that you'll find more home theater projectors today spec'd at 2,500 lumens and higher than ever before as manufacturers have ratcheted up the brightness to account for some degree of ambient light. Most people end up with a fixed-frame screen directly mounted to a wall or hung from the ceiling. The bezel can end up being anything from a 3-inch black felt-wrapped border that hides any stray image spilling off the screen material, to a fine, nearly invisible bezel that gives the impression of an image floating in space. Although screen material can greatly affect the cost of a screen, fixed frame options are always the least expensive. LED. LED's have the advantage of running cool and providing a compact light source that, like laser, lasts the life of the projector.

TOP 10 HOME THEATER

The last two picture modes are Dolby Vision Bright and Dolby Vision Dark. All picture modes could be configured to be the same if desired; the differences between them by default are adjustable gamma, color temperature, and various image enhancements turned on at various strengths. Yes, about the top of the screen, and at least 18 inches below the ceiling, unless it is below grade.

I normally make the image a little larger than the screen to ensure that the entire screen is filled. Any part of the image that spills over will be absorbed by the screen frame. Sometimes I will purposefully make the image too small while performing other adjustments and only zoom out to the cover the full screen when everything else is dialed in. This is because it can be easier to tell if pitch, roll, or yaw are incorrectly set when you can see the border of the image on the actual screen, as opposed to the frame around the screen.

Astell&Kern’s HC3 Dongle DAC Supports Hi-Res Audio & Microphones

Make sure you have no lights or they are turned off for the distance between the screen and projector. It also introduces video processing and hampers the quality, aspect ratio, and more. I installed 2x8's above the drywall in the location around where I knew I was going to install the projector. That way, it gave me more flexibility as far as where I would finally anchor the mount without having to install it off a joint. These two images show a 10-bit HDR grayscale pattern with little-to-no banding as it might be seen on a 10-bit projector and with visible banding caused by bit-depth deficiency . Filter projectors based on your desired features and specs.

In this simulation , the projector on the left would require a higher lumen output to achieve the same image brightness because of sunlight from the windows. Note that brighter is not necessarily better with home theater projectors. Too much brightness in a dark theater can lead to viewer fatigue, and the brighter you go the harder it is to maintain lower black level and superior contrast. This is why many premium projectors regarded as having the best contrast and deepest blacks come in with ratings of less than 2,000 ANSI lumens, though projectors intended for bright-room viewing may go to 3,500 lumens or more. Using your manual as a guide, decide on how large you want your image to be, and calculate your throw distance.

The Formovie Theater allows for front or rear as well as ceiling or table top installation, with projection screen size from 80 inches diagonal up to a very large 150-inch diagonal. These projection sizes are possible utilizing as little as 5.5 inches of space from projection screen to back of the unit (to display an 80-inch image) to as much as 19.3 inches (for a 150-inch image). The first step should be to identify the correct placement of your projection screen or big screen HDTV. Although centering a home theater setup around a TV is most common, video projectors deliver a really big screen viewing experience. Just as with TVs, you have the choice of 720p, 1080p, and 4k options, as well as projectors that are optimized for small or large rooms. The key thing is that the setup procedure for for a video projector is different than for a TV, and, of course, a room that can be light controlled is best.

This puts my throw distance at about 10'6" max . I can move the projector back, but this would force me to mount it lower. This would affect viewing from the bar behind and make it overall just less visually appealing. BenQ continues to innovate home theater projectors with advanced features and superb picture quality to maximize movie fun and family enjoyment in a variety of environments. Whether you’re new to projectors or a home cinema connoisseur, use the projector buying guide to find the perfect home theater projector for a whole new visual experience. A home theater projector is the ideal entertainment choice for movie lovers. And it’s easy to choose the perfect projector for watching movies, playing games, and family fun.

An important note regarding calibration of this unit is that since it has a laser phosphor plus RGB laser light engine it has a very narrow bandwidth for its color channels of RGB. I verified this by measuring the spectral power distribution , which showed very narrow peaks for the red and blue primaries. To have the most accurate calibration of this unit a spectroradiometer with a minimum sensitivity of 4 nanometers or less really should be used, as anything less will yield slightly-off results when making adjustments. When Color Space was set to On it mapped the color Gamut of Rec.709 correctly with slightly less accuracy at some targets, but nothing noticeable to the eye, while providing an overall better image. I have the Sanyo Z3 and the lens shift allows for one full screen shift up or down and for half the screen's width shift to either side though it is not possible to use both the shifts to their full limits.

If you're reading this article, you're in the market for your first projector or just a home theater enthusiast expanding your knowledge. The joys of front projection are many, but it's not like buying a TV. Projectors are part of a two-piece system that includes a matched screen.

The light source behind the Formovie Theater is the ALPD 4.0 RGB+ triple laser. This hybrid design is effective—during my time viewing the Formovie Theater I did not observe any speckle in any content. Also, while watching normal content I did not experience any rainbows, which can potentially be visible with any single-chip DLP projector regardless of having an RGB light source that eliminates the usual color wheel. If one were to really look for it with specific content, you can make any DLP projector show some rainbow effect, but I'm pleased to say that in my normal viewing I did not see any.

Another example of a high-end audio/luxury brand collaboration that makes sense. The Devialet Dione Opéra de Paris Soundbar marches down the Champs-Élysées to its... Can a wireless turntable really deliver the same experience as one wired directly into your system? You might want to start saving if these are in your price range.