Home Theater, yay!

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We just have a few finishing touches and our home theater will be complete! Before any of you think we are rich or something, let me tell you what we did...so maybe you can do it too!

So, my husband won a 27" flat screen at a golf tournament. During that time our 32" flat screen (which we purchased at cost, three years ago, through my husband's good schmoozing ability) was going T.U.

We found out that we could build our own 96" screen for under $100. We did a lot of research and looked at projectors. Granted the best deal is $1,000 for an HD projector, but we were able to trade in the t.v. we won, plus there was a $100 rebate for the projector. The lamp life is 4,000 hours, which we have figured we will replace in 3 years. The bulbs cost $300.

We already had a surround sound system, which I bought my husband for his birthday several years ago.

We can now watch t.v., movies, surf the web and play Xbox on a 96" screen. It is so cool.

It was a pain to build the screen and get everything set up, but my husband and I watched Pirates of the Carribean last night and I don't think we will ever need to go to a movie theater again. Who needs the loud-chewers, the loud-whisperers, the annoying teenagers slopping faces in the back, and the big fat guy who takes up half your seat?

We had been saving for the projector for a while, so it was a windfall when he won the aforementioned t.v.

Don't spend your money on those 60" plasmas, even the "cheap" ones at Costco! Our friends did and now they regret it, b/c they could have spent less than half the money they paid for it and would have been able to watch movies on an 8' diagonal, instead of 5'

Yes, it is an HD projector, so when the receiver costs go down....oh lordy it will be cool!

If you want to know how to build a screen, let me know and I can point you in the right direction. By the way, since my husband is a banker/economist, we figured the amount we are saving in going to the actual theater, when you figure in parking, cost of tickets (I even get a student discount, b/c I have my graduate school I.D.), food, or even just a medium pop, the projector will pay for itself in two years (at what we paid for it). We are avid movie watchers, so it is worth it to us.

Tallgirl.

doesn't the screen cost another 1,000 dollars? Also, did you get a LCD, or CRT, or DLP projector?

How'd you only get 3 years out of your 32" set? And yeah, what kind of projector did you get, anyway?

what do you mean by flat screen? Most good tvs don't have curved screens so that doesn't tell me much about the TV.

We built our own screen for $40. All you need is 1x4 wood, blackout fabric, which you can buy at any fabric store (we got it for $5 a yard), and then we painted the wood black. You build the frame and then stretch and staple the black out curtain to the frame. But, you are right, paying retail for a screen will cost you $1,000-$5,000, which is the big scam.

The projector is DLP I believe and HD also (so when those prices for the HD receivers from a our satellite company become reasonable, we will be able to take advantage)...sorry I am not very techie, so I don't have the right lingo?



I don't know, I mean the screen is flat (which, at the time we bought it, was a big deal as most t.vs still had curved screens), but it is a Phillips, picture in picture type t.v. I can't believe we only got three years out of it either, but when we called Phillips, they said that 1 in 10,000 units had the source control board fry. It wasn't under warranty and was going to cost us $300 to fix. Since we only paid $600 for the t.v. (at the time we bought it, the t.v. was worth $1,000), we figured we needed to have another plan. I mean the $300 was a sunk cost anyway, so we decided to upgrade.

A friend of ours had built his own home theater and that is where we got the idea. This guy can definitely afford to have someone build it for him, but he is a mid-west kind of guy and couldn't bring himself to pay for something he could do himself...

Don't get me wrong, I used to rep for Phillips (I repped a prelude to the DVD player, called a CDI, way old school) and I believe they are a good company. Our other 17" Phillips still works fine, but I must admit, I was sorely disappointed in the T.U. t.v.

Tallgirl.

OMFG, Tallgirl! I still HAVE a CD-i player!! Don't use it much but it's a nice piece of vintage technology - WITH the full-motion video card!

Alex: Tallgirl's talking about a flat tube, like a Sony Wega. Flat tubes are supposed to cut down on glare, but it's mainly an aesthetic thing - the picture's no better. In fact, there a lot of complaints about geometry problems - lines aren't straight, etc. as they are on a curved set. My HDTV tube isn't flat and it can kick any flat set's @$$.

Back to Tallgirl: I can't watch DLP. If I move my head fast enough or my eyes catch the screen right, I see rainbow stripes. A few people actually have reactions to them. It's an effect of the technology: here's your wiki.

Sweet! My Mom still play music CDs on it. I can't believe I talked my parents into buying one. I sold so many of those things, I am sure there are many people who have their CD-i gathering dust somewhere, or using it for CDs like my Mom....I am surprised you have, I haven't met anyone else who has one, besides the people I suckered into buying it of course... Maybe you were one of them?!? haha

I was worried about the image, b/c of the AS, you know I tend to have laser vision, instead of flashlight vision, so it can get tiring trying to take the entire image in at once. However, I had watched a movie on our friends screen, and I happened to be very drunk on Cosmos at the time and I didn't have a problem, so I am definitely doing better sober...

Tallgirl.

Laser and flashlight vision?? What does that mean? Oh are you referring to the tendency to only focus on a small thing at any given time, rather than the 'big picture'? That often used phrase now has a literal meaning in this case... cool!

Yes, that is what I mean. I use that analogy, b/c it helps non-AS people understand why something I am looking for can be within 5 feet of me and I simply don't recognize that object is there. It also explains why I can't play most team sports, like basketball.

Tallgirl.

BTW, the home theater is working out better than I thought. I can't believe what the fine print says on t.v. commercials!

What DOES the fine print say?

'This ad is fudging the facts'
'Discounts not to be taken seriously'
'Objects in this image are more expensive than they appear'

The Ring Tone ads are particularly funny. You know the adds where you text in your ring tone request to some number? The fine print has all this stuff about calling said number and being automatically enrolled in some monthly program and having to pay something like $12 a month for a minimum of a year.

My husband and I wondered how many schmucks have contacted said number, thinking they were buying one ring tone, and actually they were buying into the thing for a year.

Tallgirl.