The 'Barlow Blue Box Theater'

I realized the other day that I have never really done an offical blog posting about the finished theater. Finished is actually a fairly relative term since projects like this are always a work in progress, but for now I think at least a synopsis is in order of our progress to this point.

For anyone who does not know Laura and I have built the theater from the ground up. When we first moved in the room was nothing but bare concrete walls. First we framed the room, ran speaker wires and sheet-rocked. We built a custom cabinent to hold all of our DVD's, theater equipment, and board games as seen in the pictures. We also built a stand for a couch to sit on to create theater type seating-- I think we ended up going a little too high, but I wanted the listerners ear to be at the same level as the rear surround speakers and those needed to be at 1/5 or 1/3 the height of the ceiling. So, the height of the sitting position was determined on the correct height of the speakers.

Next, we did finish trim, carpet and paint. We ended up doing a crown molding because we really wanted to paint the ceiling the same dark color that we did the walls of the room and we needed something to break up all the blue. We chose to paint the ceiling a dark color to help reduce glare from the projector and other sources from interfering with the projected image.

It was then time to start adding equipment and finishing touches. The equipment has changed several times over the years, but the principles are the same. The speakers are all placed on either 1/5's or 1/3's fractions of room dimensions as mentioned above. This helps to reduce reflections and nodes which can really mess up the sound projection in a rectanglar room. That is one of the reasons we have the couch, which is the prime listening postion, pulled away from the back wall. We ended up with a full set of Klipsch speakers arrayed with 6" drivers. The same driver is used in all 5 speakers, the only difference is the rear surrounds which only have one 6" driver rather than two. This helps keep a consistant tone and frequency response (notice the very cool cerra-metalic finish of the Klipsch speakers cones-- rigid yet precise). The front speakers are all on stands that we made in order to get the drivers at the right heights relative to the listening position. The subwoofer is a Paradigm 12" driver rated at 200W. This is probably the next thing I will replace when I get some extra cash. It works well, but I could use a little more 'umph' and low end extension. Everything is controlled by a Sony 7 channel reciever rated at 120 w per channel-- it works o.k. but I would like to upgrade this as well at some point. The screen is a 106" diagonal 16:9 configuration. We made the frame ourselves with 1" x 4" 's and streatched a rubberized cloth material made for theater screens across the frame much like you would a canvas for a painting. It is a bit of a trick to get the screen material to not crease during this process and it takes a lot of staples to do it properly. The outside frame is attached with mending brackets and covered in a black velvet material. The projector is a full 1080P HD projector made by Sanyo. It was one of the highest rated projectors this last year and yet also one of the least expensive. Connected to the projector via HDMI is our Sony Blu-ray player and HD dish satelite. Everything looks crystal clear, even on a 106" screen. If you haven't seen Blu-ray yet, you really should-- it is amazing! I put some screen shots on, but they really don't do it justice.

Other finishing touches include the movie posters and dartboard. We got some of the movie posters from the theaters before they stopped giving them away. Now we have to buy them on-line. We used to change out the posters every once in a while, but now I think we have settled on a few of our favorites that will stay. We actually found the Lord of the Rings poster at DI and later checked to see if we could buy a crisper version on-line and found out that it was selling for over $60. Apparantly since this was the first one released it had become a collecters item.

The latest edition to our theater is also our favorite. Last christmas mom Barlow gave us the popsorn machine you see in the corner. It is a kettle type popper and is basically a smaller version of the real ones that they use in theaters. We have some great buttery oil we use to pop the corn and it tastes and smells amazing-- just like at the movies.

I hope no one fell asleep reading this. I tried to be as concise as possible and yet give enough detail for anyone who is actually interested. We have had a lot of fun with this project and will continue to enjoy the process as we continue to upgrade and add. We love to watch movies in this setting. A few weeks ago we almost took the kids to a movie, but decided to rent one instead because we could have the same experience at home for a fraction of the cost of taking all four of us to a movie theater. We've come to enjoy movies more at home beacuse we can get better qaulity sound and picture, and we still get the popcorn and diet coke-- plus you can pause it if you need to go to the bathroom. Well, thanks for reading and as always, everyone is welcome to join us for a showing in the 'Barlow Blue Box'-- really anytime, we love to have people here!