I wish I had thought of eBay. You can buy a lot of stuff on eBay. They have almost as much stuff as Amazon. Recently, I was in the market for a new center channel speaker for the “entertainment system” in our den. I put that in quotes because the system is a cheap, cheap RCA model that I bought at Walmart several years ago. The center channel speaker that came with the original system was pretty limited to say the least. We could not hear the dialogue on most movies. I decided to limit my budget to less than a $100, but I still wanted at least an entry level speaker. I went online to eBay. There are retail type stores on eBay. For example, Polk audio has an outlet store on eBay. However, I wanted a Klipsch this time. I searched eBay and found a used Klipsch center channel for $65. The speaker had a tear in the speaker cover, but other than that it was fine. I hooked it up and raised the channel level a bit . It sounds great now. Hopefully, I can upgrade the receiver next along with the sub. Home audio upgrades are a slippery slope. They are fun though!
I was going to talk about the Wii, Xbox360 or AppleTV2 and how each one fits into your home theater, but I am now distracted by streaming video services. I will go back to the above 3 gaming consoles in a future post.
My number one streaming video service right now is Netflix. They just signed a deal or have almost signed a deal with Dreamworks to stream Dreamworks movies. You can read more details on Maximum PC’s website among other places. That is great news for Netflix fans like me. It might mean that Netflix is moving away from hard media and focusing more on streaming. In August they will go to a two tiered type pricing model with users choosing to have both streaming and dvd options for watching or one or the other. I am going all streaming. I will be even more excited when they are able to stream movies with 5.1 audio as opposed to the stereo audio they stream right now.
Now I hear that Walmart is getting back into the video streaming game again (for the third time). You can read the whole story here. Walmart bought Vudu. That particular article seems to think Netflix is going to die now that big bad Walmart is back on the scene. Only time will tell, but I am for one am not switching to Walmart to that I can rent movies for $3.99 each when I only pay $7.95 per month (under the new Netflix pricing). One big advantage Walmart will have is that they will get some movies the same day that they are released on disks. I suppose the change in pricing at Netflix could make some people angry, but I am not one of them. One thing for sure is that the streaming business is getting very competitive. Besides Walmart, there is Hulu plus. Hulu plus offers users more archived TV shows and an even larger selection of movies.
Let me know which service you use the most or like the most or if you hate them all.
I love the PS3. I think it is an awesome box, and I don’t even use it for gaming! The PS3 can do many things for you in a home theater setup. The first thing that comes to mind is its blu-ray player capability. It is pretty awesome! I have never had a hick-up using the PS3 to playback a blu-ray movie. The measuring stick for me is “Avatar”. That movie is so bright and clear on my screen, that it makes me want to watch it over and over again. If you pair the PS3 with the PS3 blue tooth remote, you have an even better setup and your WAF goes way up. The remote is less than $20 on Newegg. Using the PS3 game pad is not bad, but the remote kicks its butt.
The PS3 works really well with Netflix as well. It is pretty much seamless to go from watching a movie on a disk to watching a streaming flick on Netflix. I love it!
There are cons to the PS3. One big fault of the system is the optical drive. I love it for blu-ray, but it is horrible for regular def DVD’s. It is not horrible because it does a poor job at playback. It is horrible because it doesn’t work for very long. I bought a PS3 about 4 years ago. The first thing that failed on my unit was the regular def laser. I can’t read normal DVD’s. I can only read blu-ray disks. However, that is my only gripe with this system. I love the rest of its features.
Writing this blurb about the PS3 made me start thinking about the PS4. It could be in stores in late 2011, but it is more likely to appear in 2012. Check out the latest here.
Next time let’s talk about the Wii and how it fits in the home theater setup.
When I started my home theater, I didn’t have a screen. I used a white wall as my screen. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. The picture was decent and at least initially, I was very happy with it. I was just over joyed at watching a 104″ diagonal picture instead of a 27″ diagonal picture on my HD but still tube SONY Trinitron. However, as I watched more movies on my wall, I inevitably wanted something better. I got used to the picture quality and wanted more brightness and definition. I had to have a screen.
I considered making a screen or painting my wall with screen paint. However, the more and more I read about large projector screens, the more I came to understand that I had to have one custom made. Once I decided that I needed a custom made screen, I had to figure out which manufacture to go with. In the end, I decided on Carada. I was not disappointed. The figure below shows you the corner of a Carada screen – you can see the bright white screen material and the special light absorbing black felt on the frame. It really works too!
I selected a 104″ diagonal. 1.85:1 aspect ratio screen with white material and a 1.4:1 gain. The 1.4:1 gain is called a “Brilliant White” screen. You need this material if you have your theater in a walkout basement type area with large windows. I covered the windows with blackout curtains, but I still get some light into the room around the edges of the curtains. After you order your screen, a consultant from Carada contacts you for a design review. They ask you several questions including why you want the aspect ratio you specified (16:9 is the most popular, but I have not be disappointed with my 1.85:1), why you want “Brilliant White” screen material and what type of room and projector you have. The screen is then constructed just for you and shipped to your house. It is awesome when the screen arrives! it is inside a huge tube and packed extremely well. Assembly is easy. You build the frame and snap on the screen material. The hardest part of the whole process is locating the screen properly. The screen comes with two brackets. One bracket accepts the clips on the top of the screen frame. The second bracket secures the bottom of the frame. Once you have the top in place, you sort of flex the screen a bit and attach it to the bottom bracket. The only advice I have for locating the screen properly is to turn on your projector and display an image. Then you can center the screen properly. The screen includes a pair of white gloves for assembly. I suggest you use them to avoid getting any fingerprints on the screen when you are putting things together.
Conclusion: Go with the custom made screen. A 104″ diagonal model will run you almost $800, but it is worth it. One more note: I recently had to relocate my theater (we moved). I tried my best to pack the screen the way Carada packed it, but when I got to the new house and hung up the screen, the material was creased. I panicked. I thought I was going to have to order another screen. A friend of mine who I consider a home theater guru (sort of like a Yoda for all things home theater) suggested sunlight and/or a hair dryer to get rid of the wrinkles. I left the screen propped against the wall and opened the blinds on the large windows in the theater. The heat from the sunlight removed the wrinkles in about a week. My screen looks good as new again.
Considering your theater seating arrangements when setting up your home theater speakers might be the most important thing you can do to improve how your movies sound.
Let’s look at the center channel speaker first. If you sit too high up and the speaker is below your ears, you will not hear the dialogue as well. A normal height male’s ear will be xx inches off the floor sitting on a normal male sofa. If you place your center channel speaker at say xxy inches, the majority of your dialogue will not reach the listeners sweet spot for hearing. Most people place the center channel speaker below their screen. Exotic setups include speakers behind a screen, but my budget doesn’t go there!
What about the left and right surround speakers? Again, you have to look at where the listeners ears will be in relation to the speakers. If you have multiple rows of seats, you may need to position those rear speakers between the rows rather than favoring one row over another.
Where should channels 6 and 7 be placed. These speakers should be behind the last row of seats on the left and right. They should be at the same height as the left and right surrounds.
The last two speakers are the front channels. You can’t go wrong here if you put them on the left and right of the screen. They are the easiest speakers to position.
My SONY 7.1 surround sound receiver has a built in AUTO CONFIGURE mode. You place a microphone in the middle of the theater, select AUTO CONFIGURE and the receiver does the rest. If you have this feature built into your receiver, use it. It should result in very good if not the best possible sounding setup you can have with your current system.
I bought a Buffalo IR100 repeater thinking that I could enclose all my components in a closet, mount the repeater target in the wall and happily use my remotes. I ran into several problems when I did this.
The kit comes with four emitters, one receiver, a base unit and a power supply. The picture below gives you a better idea of what you are getting.
You can purchase the kit online at a variety of retailers including Amazon,and SmartHome.com. The kit retails for about $88.
Ideally, you mount the IR receiver in a wall to the left or right of your screen. The device is cylindrically shaped and mounts easily in a hold in your drywall. It comes with two different color lenses: clear and tinted. The tinted lens is nice if you ware mounting the receiver in a black wall. You then use cat5 cable to wire the receiver to the base unit. The base unit is mounted inside your media cabinet. You then attach the IR emitters to the base unit (via mini wiring terminals). The emitters are then positioned on the components you are trying to control. The emitters come with adhesive pads on them for easy installation. The hardest part about mounting the emitters is finding the IR receivers of your components. I had to refer to the owners manuals of the various components to get an idea of where to look for the receivers. Usually they are next to the displays on the equipment. I diligently found all my component receivers and mounted the emitters as precisely as I could. The IR100 worked well for about two weeks. Not is does not work at all on any of my equipment. The receiver for the kit has a green indicator light on it to notify you that it is receiving a signal. My unit’s green light blinks when I send a signal from one of my remotes. The emitters flash red when a signal is going through the receiver to the base unit and out the emitter. My emitters flash correctly when I use a remote. However, none of my components react to the signals. I have verified the positions of the emitters many times, but I still don’t get any results on my equipment. The only thing that I can think of at this point is that I have some interference causing noise on my base unit and garbling the signal I am sending to the equipment. I know that fluorescent lights effect the IR100, and my emitter cables are not shielded. I am ready to scrap the IR100, sell it on ebay and find a different unit. Stay tuned…
I subscribe to the Cnet cheapskate deal of the day email alert. Today was an interesting one. Check it out for yourself here: Cnet cheapskate deal of the day for July 15, 2011. The reason the deal is interesting is that I know someone who bought one of these units not too long ago. That person was having a lot of trouble hearing anything out of their SONY Bravia flat screen TV. The speakers on that TV are behind the screen, so the sound goes down instead of out. They added the Vizio sound bar and saw a dramatic improvement in sound. The biggest problem with this sound bar is the size. It is a really long, big piece of equipment. If you have a TV under 40″, you are going to think this bar is huge. My friend’s TV is a 32″ flat screen. We ended up getting a different piece of furniture for the entertainment components to sit on. Then we put the bar on top. Unfortunately, unless you have a Vizio TV, the included brackets will not work for you. We flipped the brackets around and used them as a stand for the sound bar. It works fine, but I just wanted everyone to know what they are getting into before they jump in on this deal. Have a good day!!
How important is it that your front speakers are matched to your center channel speaker? What difference does it make? Why does it matter?
I do not have speakers matched to my center channel speaker. I have speakers from the same manufacturer (Polk Audio), but they are not necessarily matched. The front left and right speakers are M20′s and the center channel is a CSR. Audio purists will say that you must match the speakers. I am kind of in a wait and see mode. I spent all my money on my video setup, so I have to incrementally improve my audio instead of jumping all in at the beginning. The biggest improvement I have seen is on my center channel speaker. I had an RCA home theater in a box speaker for a center channel to start out. It was terrible. I had to put the level on that speaker to max just to hear the dialogue. The new CSR is much better. It is so clear and crisp in fact that I am thinking of putting one in the living room for the HDTV in that space. The M20′s have been ok. I would not say they are fantastic right and left channel units, but they are an improvement over the poor quality RCA units. I don’t think you can go wrong with Polk Audio equipment regardless of the level.
My next post is going to be about XBox360′s. I have taken two different ones apart so far. More on that soon along with some pictures of the torn down units.
Watching “Inception” the other day on my tube based 1080i projector system (102″ screen), I was dismayed by the lack of details in the shadows in almost every scene of that movie. The movie highlighted the weakness of my setup. However, I now have a gamma booster inline between my HD-FuryIII and my Runco projector. The booster I use looks like the image shown below.
The booster is pretty simple. The only connections it has are a VGA input, a VGA output, an RGB pass through and power. You will need a male to male adaptor to connect it inline between your HD Fury and your projector VGA cable. After you get everything hooked up, power everything up and send a signal to your fury via HDMI. My blu-ray source is a PS3. Get a picture on the screen then start adjusting BB knob to lighten the image. You have to walk the line between image washout and shadow detail. I would use “Inception” for your shadow adjustment.
When I upgraded my home theater receiver to a 4 to 1 HDMI receiver, I wanted a good mid-range receiver that would not kill my budget. I went with a SONY. Keep in mind that this upgraded occurred two years ago. The receiver offers 4 HDMI inputs and 1 HDMI output. I use a HD-Fury III (white with cool blue LED lighting) to convert my HDMI to a 1080i VGA signal for my tube based Runco projector. The result is awesome, and even without 1080p, I am very happy with my picture. I bought the receiver because it had HDMI and it is a 7.1 capable component. However, I have only played one movie in my theater that utilized all seven channels: “The Condemned”. The movie is strictly a popcorn flick getting 2 out of 5 stars in my book. Great action but pretty lame acting. It is frustrating to have seven channel sound and not see a lot of seven channel movies out there. It gets even worse when you go to a streaming service like Netflix. They only stream movies with stereo sound! I guess that is why it pays to have great front left and right speakers and a good sub.
