Home Theater Geeks 448 Transcript
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00:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I describe a home theater that is much more Stick around Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is TWIT. Hey there, scott Wilkinson. Here, the home theater geek. In this episode, I want to share with you a home theater of the month from avsforumcom. Now, this theater is unique. It's much more than a home theater. Sure, you can play movies and TV and all that kind of stuff, but you can also do a lot more.
00:50
The theater was built by Keith Elliott in Plano, texas. He built the home in 1992, and he added the home theater only two years ago, so he had this in his mind a very long time Now. Interestingly, keith is a retired electrical engineer and he worked in a large part of his career at Texas Instruments, which is the company that developed DLP, digital light processing technology, which is the imaging technology used in an awful lot of home theater projectors and commercial cinema projectors. So he was on the inside for sure with regard to home theater technology. And now, finally, he has his own home theater that does a lot more. So he decided to add his home theater in graphic one on the on top of his three-car garage, and here here you can see the theater in process of being built from the outside, and that's on the left, and on the right you can see some of the framing, which includes these orange tubes. He calls them Smurf tubes, but they're really conduits for speaker wire and lighting wire and all the various kinds of wire that need to be strung around the home theater, and so I thought that was kind of an interesting view of that. Now we see the finished theater in graphic two, and it uh, it's really quite elegant. I like it quite a bit. Um, the DIY acoustic panels that you can see there on the walls are covered with images from movies, uh, which he built, he built himself and uh based them on, uh, on a thread on AVS Forum that explains how to do that. Now I must say I'm not a big fan of the white seats In a home theater. I'd rather have dark seats, because anybody not sitting in a white seat, the white is going to reflect more light. But he and his wife liked them, so they did it. Okay, good for them. Now notice in this graphic the golfing green there in front of the seats.
03:33
In addition to being a movie theater, this room doubles as a golf simulator, which is really pretty cool. Keith can actually hit real golf balls in the theater. Now he has two projectors in this theater, one for movies and TV and such, but another one in Graphic 3,. It projects images of various golf courses onto the screen. Now that gizmo behind the projector is a sensor that monitors the markings on the golf balls to analyze the golfer's swing and determine the ball's flight path. It measures the club speed, acceleration, angle of attack, ball speed, spin, launch angle, trajectory and landing angle and that provides the projector really the software that's running on a computer with an image of the flight path. Now the simulation software runs on a custom DIY computer that Keith built with a monitor on the side wall. We can see that in graphic number four and this is a particular golf simulation software that is running and projects displays onto the projector on the ceiling which then projects onto the screen On the left side of this graph photo. Here you can also see all his remotes and that's a custom-made 3D-printed remote caddy sitting there, which I thought was kind of cool as well.
05:27
Now, of course you don't want to hit golf balls into your nice movie projection screen. Projection screens are relatively delicate and if you're hitting a golf ball at full swing that's going to land pretty heavily and really damage that screen. So Keith installed a separate motorized screen and protective side panels that descend from the ceiling when it's time to play golf, and you can see that here in this little video clip. So that screen that is descending basically allows you to see the golf course and so on, but it's meant for this purpose. You know it allows you to see the golf course and so on, but it's meant for this purpose. It's very thick and it fully um protects the, the projection screen, the main screen, from those really fast golf balls. And there are also these projection or these side panels that uh, protect the walls and uh and the rest of the front of the theater from those flying golf balls.
06:38
Other protection that he put in there includes thick pads on the ceiling, which is graphic six, and you know that's in case you, you know, hit the golf ball and it goes up into the ceiling. Those thick pads are there to protect the ceiling. And in graphic seven he has these thick foam covers for the subwoofers which are in the corners, so that in case the ball happens to hit one of those, it's not going to damage the cone of the subwoofer. That would be bad, so that in case the ball happens to hit one of those, it's not going to damage the cone of the subwoofer. That would be bad. So, in addition to golf simulation, even better, keith installed a full VR system, which you can see here in graphic eight. This is a split graphic. You can see him playing golf with the yellow line indicating where the ball is going, and also on the right he's got a whole VR system with a headset and, even more interesting, the headset is connected with a cable, a wire string if you want to a sensor that goes to the computer. It tells the computer where the headset is in the virtual space. In the next graphic I think we can see something about this wire it's attached to the ceiling with pulleys and such, and it goes down to the ceiling with pulleys and such, and it goes down to the, to the headset, and so as he moves around, the computer adjusts its imagery to reflect where he is and his orientation. I mean, that's pretty sophisticated. Now, of course, it's also a regular home theater and uh, otherwise I wouldn't have wouldn't have featured it. It just has these extra features, but the uh, the home theater itself is a very fine home theater, as we can see a little bit in graphic 10,.
08:45
Um, there is the regular screen, the main projection screen. The golf screen is retracted. You can see a couple of the acoustic panels on the side. In this particular shot he's watching some basketball. That is a 133-inch diagonal screen, 16 by 9 aspect ratio, and it's acoustically transparent. It's a woven material and the three main front, left, center and right speakers are behind it. It comes from a company called Dragonfly. This particular material is called AcoustiWeave and behind it are three episode Signature 7 in-wall speakers for the LCRs. He uses that same model for the side and rear surrounds in the room and he uses Episode Signature 5 in-ceiling speakers for the overheads and Episode Element subwoofers two of them there in the front corners which we saw earlier. Which we saw earlier. The main projector is an Epson LS12000 laser illuminated projector a very nice projector and his surround processing and amplification comes from a Denon AVR-X8500HA AV receiver, so it's an AV receiver-based system. I had not heard of this speaker company episode before, but I'm sure they must sound really good.
10:28
All in all, keith estimates that he spent on the order of $46,000 for the theater, not including the actual building of the room, which was part of a larger addition to the house, but with the equipment and everything he figures it's around 46,000 bucks, which is not jump change by any means, but a lot less than some people spend on their home theaters. And look what he gets for it Not only a great home theater, but he gets to play golf at night or in the rain and he gets to do VR once, basically in any environment that the VR system can produce and walk around. I mean it's like Ready Player One. If you ever saw that movie, it's getting close to that, which is pretty darn cool. Now for more on this wonderful theater.
11:28
You can check out my article on avsforumcom. I will put the link into the show notes so you can go check it out. But it is really cool. All in all, a very interesting home theater and I hope you enjoyed it. Now, if you have a question for me, you can send me an email to htg at twittv. I love answering listener questions and I will do so as often as I can right here on the show. And, as always, we thank you for your support of the Twit Network with your membership in Club Twit, which gives you access to all the shows we produce in their video formats, and you can also come into the discord channel and watch us make the show live. So I do hope you will do that until next time. Geek out.
