How To Build a Home/Preview Theater

Author:	Ravi Vide
Date:	21st November 2009

Throughout my childhood, I had been dreaming to have my own cinema theater, sitting alone, playing my favourite movies again and again and again and so on, without having to buy any ticket. Even when I was in my college days, I never thought it was a possible thing to happen. But thanks to the technology, in present days, even a middle class person in India can afford a home theater with some cost cuttings and money savings.

My first and important advice to all those who are planning to build their own home theater is, first to do sufficient research, gain as much knowledge as possible and then start building it. The reason is that if you make a mistake at an initial stage, you may not be able to correct it at a later stage, or it may cost you a lot to correct it.

I am not going too deep into technical here, because the subject is vast, I am going to explain you, with pictures on how I built my own home theater, which may help you in building your own.

At first, I got a room constructed with specifications of 22' X 11' X 11' with no windows and with only one door, where the door is far from the screen.(i.e, main woofer) Based on how big you want your home theater to be, you can construct with length:width:height ratio as 2:1:1.

Two main challenging things for any home theater are acoustics and resounding. I stay little far from the city and little leakage of the sounds will not disturb my neighbors. But if you are staying in the mid of the city, and the distance between your theater and the neighbor's flat is small, then you must consider good acoustics for your home theater. Technician charges you a lot for making your home theater acoustical. If you want to save money, You can get it done by yourself by doing some research. "Room Within Room" is a popular concept for making a room acoustic.

When I initially constructed my theater, it was resounding like hell. A good false ceiling made all the resounding to disappear.

Follow the pictures below.. They are self explanatory.

Acoustical Ceiling In Making.

After installing the mesh. Echo was 100% at that time.

Optra Acoustical sheets. The best sheets having NRC(Noise Reduction Constant) value 1.0.

Ceiling Finished and all the resounding was gone. Two empty spaces were left for lights. But later I filled them with two more sheets.

The 8'X6' foldable Silver Screen. I recommend Silver screen for more clarrity eventhough it is expensive than all. You can also see a table below the screen with four racks. This is to keep the DVD Player, Receiver and DVD collections.

Optoma EX530 projector. It is cheaper and better solution. Going for 720P or 1080P projectors is not required at present as the blueray market is still not popular in India. Waiting 2 more years is a good idea as the blue ray market will pick up and 1080p projectors' price will be dropped.

It is a closed hall, so LG 1.5Ton A/C enough to cool the whole system.

First Cupboard. Philips DVD Player and 1000kv stabilizer. 500kv is enough, but I am using 1000kv for more safety.

Second Cupboard. Onkyo receiver. I purchased Onkyo 5.1 Sound System. My budget did not allow me to go for 7.1 sound system, otherwise I would have bought that. Some people prefer home theater systems where the receiver itself acting as DVD player. But in case if you want to use a blue-ray player as your video source, you have to purchase a new sound system again.

Third cupboard was empty there but later some books and magazines occupied.

Fourth cupboard for DVD library.

Rear right speaker. Nowadays we don't require big speakers to get big sounds.

I am using only plastic chairs so that they can be removed anytime. Theater seating is expensive and needs to be fit permanently.

Projector is ceiling mounted.

Woofer and Front Middle speaker on Red Carpet.

Ok. That's it. I was watching "10000 BC" there.

If you have any questions, or want to correct me, Please post your comments below.

How To Build a Home/Preview Theater

Ravi Vide