Picture House #3
Phase 4 : Summer 2004 : Installation of the
kit
July 1st 2004 the video side
of the Picture House was completed.
Luckily everything and everyone
arrived as expected. David and Andy from Owl
Video came to oversee the installation of the the screen
they supplied. The builders were on site to cut a hole in
the bulkhead for the screen to drop through. My friend Roland
from B4
was coming with my Barco 1209 projector which he'd had in
storage for 10 months.
| Following the arrival
of the builders, next David and Andy arrived from Owl.
They supplied an electric, tab-tensioned, 7 foot, 16:9
Grand Cinema screen by ScreenLine. Since the screen
is being featured on this website they drove half way
up the country to help make sure everything went smoothly.
Soon after, Roland arrived,
as did the TNT man with the DVD Player. You can see
Roland here positioning the screen in the bulkhead.
It's a tight squeeze. |
|
| Phil and Vin cut the
slot in the underside of the bulkhead for the screen
to pass through. |
|
| A rare photo of me cleaning
up the loft space. |
|
We found one of the leads from
the screen IR sensor had been broken during installation earlier
in the week and so the screen remote didn't work at first.
Luckily Andy from Owl spotted the problem and fixed it.
| While David and Andy
complete the wiring up of the screen motor in the loft
space above, Roland converges the projector. The Barco's
ideal position ended up being way over to the right
from the centre of the room. Not what I expected and
not in the ideal place for the spotlight above. But
the room is skew whiff so it's hard luck. 2 long bolts
are screwed into the projector body at the front to
raise it to the correct angle to project onto the screen. |
|
| The projector isn't
fixed in place, but there are spikes under the two bolts
so actually moving the projector would take considerable
effort. And once the table is in place around it, nobody
will accidentally move it.
The Phil is going to build
a nice Mahogany coffee table round the projector so
we decided to leave the top cover off to help air circulation.
|
|
I know it's pretty pointless
since taking photos of one's home cinema picture doesn't in
any acurate way represent the brightness, contrast or colour
of the actual image. But I've done it anyway.
Here are six grabs from one of
my favourite movies Battle Of Britain.
July 5th 2004 the audio side
of the Picture House was completed. Another busy and exciting
day as Dave and Colin drove up from Zebra
to install the M&K speaker system.
| Dave unpacks the speakers
and prepares the SW-95s for installation by Colin. |
|
| Colin cuts the holes
in the bulkead and connects up the SW-95 in-wall speakers. |
|
| Close-up of the right-hand
SW-95. For information about this speaker check out
the
M&K website. |
|
| Four M&K K4 Tripole
surround speakers do the surround duties and the M&K
MX350 subwoofer handles everything below 80Hz. The sub
had to be placed at the back of the room because it
is too high to place under the screen.
For information on the
K4's go to the M&K website here.
For information on the M&K MX350 click here.
|
|
It's ten months since Picture
House #2 was dismantled, and the two demo items I used to
first hear the new system were Sheila Nicholls: Faith
from DTS demo disc #7 and Chapter 16 of Saving Private
Ryan DTS (the final battle). I had listened to both of
these items many times and hoped that the new system would
at least be as good as the old system (7 Ruark Dialogue Ones
and a REL Studio III subwoofer).
The new system exceeded my expectations.
Firstly the kick and depth of the bass drum in Sheila
Nicholls: Faith was just what I had hoped for. Clean,
crisp, punchy, and very deep. I'd had reservations that the
MX350 might not have been up to the task. But it certainly
was.
Then Saving Private Ryan
and the overwhelming sound sequence from the final battle.
Again the subwoofer blasted away in the corner. The rumbling
of the approaching Tiger Tank and the whallop of the explosions
was jaw-dropping. The real surprise was the amount of detail
- mainly in the upper frequencies - which I hadn't previously
heard. The squeaking of the tank wheels, the shattering glass
and the 's' and 't' of dialogue were all clearly audible without
excess or sibilance. This is distinct improvement on my previous
system.
A good measure of a quality sound
system is that when listening to it, you get drawn into the
movie and forget you are analysing the audio. The Saving Private
Ryan sequence played on and the three of us sat there transfixed.
I am exceedingly happy with the
new sound system but to improve it further a Denon AVC-A1SRA replaced the AVC-A1SE on July 13th, 2004.
We still need somewhere to sit. Read on.
« Phase 3 : Decoration
and fittings | Phase 5 : Controlling the system » |
