# Big Screen Home Theater for Under $1000



## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

Two weeks ago I moved out of my home near Seattle, and I wanted to take a minute to document how I did my home theater there. My theater had some features which worked out quite well in retrospect:

1) it featured a 100" screen
2) it doubled as a living room
3) I set things up in a way that didn't 'dominate' the decor of the whole house. (IE, I see a lot of home theaters that look like a 'man cave.' This one didn't; most of the gear was hidden.)
4) it was super cheap. Under $1000 for everything, *including speakers.*


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

*^^^ Here's how the room was set up. Basically there's a 100" movie screen on one side of the room, the couch in the center, and the equipment in the back.*

This setup works well to reduce room clutter, because all of the ugly crap is in the right side of the room, inside of a shelf. And by putting all the electronics by the projector, you can hide all the cables.

This worked out really well; in a previous home theater I had to dedicate an entire closet to my electronics, and that made it REALLY difficult to swap out a cable or make an adjustment to the receiver.

The rug in the center of the room serves a couple of uses. First, it hides the cables for the loudspeakers. Second, it reduces reflections in the room. (I used a black wool rug, so that it would reflect both sound from the speakers and light from the projector.)


Also, that pic isn't my living room  I don't have any pictures of it, and I just moved out a couple weeks ago.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

For the electronics, I used an Ikea Expedit shelf. They're about $80 IIRC. Looks identical to the one above.









Most home theaters mount the projector in the ceiling. I used the Expedit instead, for a couple reasons. First, when you mount a projector in the ceiling you have to figure out how to run a pile of cables to your electronics. And second, mounting a projector to your ceiling is just REALLY UGLY.

The Expedit is great because you can put the projector *in* the shelf. By doing this you can hide all the cables.

In my home theater, I had the following items:









Optoma HD20 1080P projector, mounted upside inside of the Ikea Expedit cabinet









PS3, mounted vertically in the Expedit









Home theater PC, in a case similar to a Shuttle XPC









Five of these KEF speakers. The subwoofer is a bit too big to fit in the Expedit, but it still 'blends' into the room quite well.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

Here's some things that worked well in this setup:

*1) The theater features a 100" screen.*
Once you get used to watching TV on a 100" screen, it's REALLY hard to go back to anything else. I have a newer and more expensive set, but I banished it to my bedroom because the 100" screen is SO immersive. It's like comparing watching a movie at home to watching it in the theater; there's something about a giant screen that makes every movie more compelling. It's just a lot easier to get involved with a big screen.

*2) It still doubles as a living room.*
A lot of the home theaters that I see on AVSForum seem like a 'man cave' to me. I wanted a home theater that could still function as a living room. Real estate is VERY expensive in Seattle, and it's just not practical to have a dedicated home theater unless you happen to be a millionaire. So I made a lot of design decisions to optimize the aesthetics of the room.

Ironically, I don't think this hurt performance much. In my previous home I had a room dedicated to home theater, and another room that was just a living room. And I think the setup described in this article is every bit as good as my old 'dedicated' home theater, it just looks a lot better.







The big breakthrough in the setup is the Expedit cabinet; it's a really great way to hide audio video gear. The Expedit cabinet hides a LOT of gear, and this makes it easy to integrate a lot of options. For instance, I have my home theater PC for downloading movies and shows via bittorrent, but the kids have their Roku and PS3 for streaming video and games. Can you imagine what a mess of cables there would be if all that audio video crap was on the left side of the room?

So this arrangement might be a good option for people that live in the city, or in homes that aren't McMansion sized.

*3) The whole theater is about $1000.*
The projector was about $800 from Woot.com, the KEF speakers were from Newegg and cost about $250. The Ikea furniture was about $100.


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## req (Aug 4, 2007)

the picture really does not do it justic because its just my cell phone. it looks awesome in person.






















































my home theater is a little more expensive, but similar to yours.

i used the same IKEA type shelf for my equipment, but it is all up front and houses my center channel speaker, PS3, XBOX360, OUYA, HTPC (not yet hooked up), 7 channel amplifier, and reciever. i have a panasonic PT-AR1000U ($1200) because of its extra brightness. i have nice heavy curtains for light mitigation. 122" diagonal screen that is 16:9 projected on a 6mm sheet of ABS plastic i got at a local plastic supply store for ~$100. i still have to paint the screen a munsnel N7 neutral grey - i just have not gotten around to it. all i hear is that it should make the viewing expierence much better.










my amp\reciever\speakers are much more expensive - but i got them while i was on deployment in the navy while i was not married, so i had some expendable income. in my house, i ran all the wires through the attic, so there are no wires showing.

the projector hangs from the cieling - but it is not really noticeable because the mount, projector, and wires are all white.

i wish i had a closet or area that i could put all my equipment though.


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## 94VG30DE (Nov 28, 2007)

I'm convinced the next "TV" I buy will be a projector, for this reason exactly. I hate how much of a mess hanging a TV is, whereas a projector is like hanging a picture, and is much less obtrusive into the room. I'm not sure I would have thought of hiding the projector inside the shelves though, that's slick.


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