Room Conversion
 

Tomorrow I start the tearout stage for a basement conversion to a home theator, I have done a ton of homework to get ready for this. I would greatly appreciate any advice from others that have already been here and done it.

Some things that I am left baffled on, either from too much info or not enough are;

1. Spearker cables, what brand, should I match the compent cables with the speaker cable brands as with spearkers.

2. Room balance - Due to size I may have to have the rack system to one side of or below the screen, good idea, bad idea, don't even think about it?

3. I have read the HDMI for everything can be troublesome, this is how I was going to go anything to rethink here?

4. Things I still have to buy are seating (brands - comfort over sytle, bass kickers or not), spearker system, cabling, thermo system, racking (or I may build it myself from wood)

5. Things I have JVC HD-1, Draper screen matched to projector, Pioneer VSX 84, all game systems, Sony Blu-Ray s301.

Any advice from this point would be most appreciated once again.

Re: Room Conversion
 

Tomorrow?? Sort of waited until the last minute eh??

1) You do not need to match speaker cables to component cables, but I would try to keep the same or similar speaker wires to all speakers. This will of course depend on what you are using. I have my front three wired in Transparent Reference but haven't put them into the rears for $$ considerations.

2) Many people run the gear on the side of the room, myself included, the only 'issue' this brings up are you'll need different length speaker wires, which is no problem. Ask any wire maker, they will agree. If you recall electro physics, electrons travel at near the speed of light, so a few extra meters on one cable won't make it to be audible.

3) HDMI is the way to go, that said it has been painful for some, you won't know until you put all your gear into the system, this can depend on the cable as well and I wouldn't skimp on any long cable you might be putting into a wall to feed your projector!

4) Just a personal thing here, I HATE bass kickers, they just feel fake to me, others like them, so take this as you may. You have some serious shopping still to do!!!

Hope this helps some and good luck!

Re: Room Conversion
 

I might be too late to chime in on this, but you may want to consider using CAT 5E/CAT 6 cable to HDMI for your long runs. Cat5/6 is very reliable and can carry the full bandwidth of HDMI. This would also save you some money because by the foot - CAT 5 is much less expensive than HDMI and can carry the same info. You would use a converter at termination - maybe at a junction box at the wall ( a door at the wall that's flush with the wall, this is where you would place the converter and have a HDMI wallport/ceilingport to go to the projector - minimizing how much HDMI cable you need - keeping lengths to less than 6ft per hdmi). This is just a thought.
P.S. You can get the converters starting at $59.00, transfer rate of 2.2gbps for 30 meters over CAT 5, move up to CAT6 and its 50 meters! And sound transfer has been verified (I love using that word lately - verified :D).

Re: Room Conversion
 

prerich,

Do you have much experience with these converters? I've seen them but never personally used them and have to wonder if something like my HD DVD player would like to pass through one of these....

I know HDMI has gotten much more reliable over time and with the final release of the standard, but am curious what your experience has been with HDM players and these converters.

Also try http://neptuneeq.com/ if you have $3,500 to invest in room correction. It supposedly doen't need a class to learn how to use like Audessey

Re: Room Conversion
 

+1. I have not heard of these either.

Re: Room Conversion
 

I have a lot of networking experience and I have used CAT 5 cables for a multitude of things (I made my first component video cables out of Cat 5 and made custom speaker cables out of CAT 5 - some of the best speaker cables I've used :) ) I have yet to use the converters but people that I have heard use them in the industry have big praise for them and consider the whole Cat 5 thing the greatest secret in the AV world - rarely tapped (maybe because it will drive prices down - hmmmmm)? Cat 5's max data run length is 100 meters - if my memory serves me correctly - but it can become intermittent at this length, but runs under this length are extremely faithful. I haven't heard anything negative about it yet. I plan on using them when I wire through my attic. CAT 5 has been very good to me :cool:!