Where do you find the space in a modern house to put a home cinema? Spare bedroom? Cellar? Extension? Now, I have the first but it's too small and would of had some major sound proofing issues. I haven't got a cellar (but have heard of some good conversions) and the extension would of left me no cash for equipment so what do I do?

I played around with a lot of ideas using a package called MyHouse 7.0 which is a good little CGI tool. Some were a bit too ambitious but here are the before and after images showing the simple solution that I ended up with.

I thought long and hard and after a brief investigation of the partly converted garage (see the pool room) I saw that if I could move all the junk (bikes, lawn mower etc.) into a large shed and used the entire space then I'd have the basis for a pretty respectable home cinema.

There were some initial phases:

 

	Locating a good quality shed,
	Deciding on it's location (which involved removing some large Lleylandi),
	Building the base,
	Transfering all the contents from what was the storage area of the garage/pool room and finaly...
	Ripping out the entire pool room build back to the bare garage.

I then got hold of a good quality builder and gave him detailed plans of how I wanted the construction to progress and what materials to use. I thought about a floating steel wall with Acoustic matting and maxi-board but this added upwards of two grand on the build cost. Details of this build are available here along with pictures and final screen images for those interested (go on, you know you want to!).

Having got the room build completed I decorated it in neutral colours (resisting the dark reds/blues) and started the 'fun' job of installing the equipment, detailed below.

First was to choose a projector. There are many great affordable projectors out there now. Both DLP and LCD versions are available for under a grand and the picture quality is up there with what only the big CRTs could do in the past. They have their weaknesses, DLPs have occasional rainbow patterning and LCDs are prone to visible grid structure (sometimes known as 'Screen Door') but some are better at hiding it than others.

I looked at Screenplay's 4800, Hitachi's PJ-TX10, Panasonic's PTAE500 and Sanyo's Z2. I liked the Screenplay, great black levels but the resolution was just too low. The Hitachi suffered from visible panel structure although even with it's lower resolution with respect to the Z2 and AE500 it did a good job. It is very flexible to it's placement having a large optical shift and excellent zoom ratio (2:1). No ceiling mounting was it's undoing in my case. The decision between the Z2 and AE500 was much more difficult. Both are excellent HDTV (720p) resolution projectors and the choice is really down to whether you can live with a slightly less good black level (the AE500) or a more obvious grid (the Z2). For me the inky blacks of the Z2 were brilliant but the virtual absence of black lines (see below) on the AE500 (coupled with a pretty reasonable 'dark grey' black) scored the highest, so the Panasonic became the heart of the new Home Cinema. For a full head to head of the Z2 and AE500 look at the review on projector central, an excellent site created by our American Cousins.

Mounting a projector is something that needs a lot of careful consideration. The room that all this is to go in will be around fourteen and a half feet by sixteen feet, too big for a rear shelf positioning as this would yield a mammoth 170" screen due to the zoom ratio. I wanted to come in at 100" so this meant that the projector needed to be around 10 feet from the wall. As this is also where the best sitting position would be for both the picture (close enough to be big but not too close - i.e. see all the blemishes) and the surround system, I decided to go for a ceiling mount to keep it out of the way. Panasonic recommend their mount but, I'm sorry, at £170 for a shaped piece of steel that requires additional cost extras to lower it away from the ceiling this was poor value for money. I stumbled across LMP and there mount looked interesting. I embarked on a long email conversation with them and all I can say is you couldn't wish for a more helpful company. I was advised on setting up, projector choice, drop heights and when I received their fully adjustable mount on a 250mm column I was very impressed with the engineering and manufacturing quality of the unit. The best bit was that it only costs £110. It's a no-brainer; if you need a ceiling mount for a projector buy if from them. Another good this is that if you have a projector that they don't supply a mount for then you can phone them up and 'do a deal' that would mean you would get one made to measure free for being a guinea pig - what more could you ask for?

The trouble with big screens is that they can show up what you previously thought was a high resolution DVD. The interlaced picture that you see on your 28"/32" TV looks crisp and sharp but those 576 lines (or 480 on NTSC) just don't cut it when the image is the size of a barn door. Now don't get me wrong, the projector does a fine job of de-interlacing the s-video signal from the Pioneer DV626D to a progressive format and performs some simple but effective scaling to get it to fill the native 1280 x 720 pixel display but the question is; "To get the most out of that humble 12cm disk do you need a dedicated scaling unit?"

I've looked around, read up and talked to many suppliers and it looks like there are three solutions:

The first is to pay about the same amount again as the projector and buy an IScan. This is a seriously high quality de-interlacer and image scalar and will greatly enhance the picture on all sources. It can, however, introduce lipsync problems and these have to be endured or overcome by delaying the audio (some Home Cinema amplifiers can do this - Denon's AVR3805 for one - and so can some high end DVD players). Unfortunately my budgetary constraints prevented me taking this option.

The second option was to try out a mid-range de-interlacer / scaler. I managed to get hold of, on approval, a Brite View BLS2000 from Zinwell, It had been very well reviewed from the pros and was found on sale for around £250. To cut a long story short it didn't work very well (or at all in the ideal 50Hz 720p mode) and caused more problems than it solved so this left me with the final option.

This was to get the best DVD my budget allowed. One with (both PAL and NTSC) progressive scan component output. This would give the best signal possible to the projector leaving it to do the scaling only. After realising that I could investigate the iScan option again when finances permitted, and that this option would give me the best starting point (and allow for the Pioneer to stay in the lounge) I decided to seriously look at the the two mid-range players that were in the frame. These were Pioneer's DV668 and Denon's 2200 (each around £480 for a multi-region version). For those of you with a slightly higher budget look seriously at the DV868 (the 668's bigger brother) as it has image scaling in-built through the HMDI. In the end I plumped for the Denon as it out-performed the Pioneer in every way.

The other area I wanted to look into was getting a full sized, tonally matched set of speakers to replace the compact Mirages. After a long search through the web, mostly eBay and the ex-dem second hand sections of hi-fi dealers, I managed to find an Acoustic Energy AE107C Centre and a set of AE120 floor-standers to go with my existing AE109s.

Updated the small Mirage Sub (that's gone back into the Lounge to support the other Mirage satellite speakers) with a larger one from Mordant Short. The MS309. It's good!

Updated the old video recorder to a Panasonic DMR-E55 DVD RAM Recorder for a 'good' price. Nice little unit. I had to put in a new s-video feed all the way from the projector though as it deserves better than the switched composite connection.

Latest: Finally bit the bullet and had Sky HD installed, I had to do it before they decide not to support the old component connections (I bought the Panasonic Projector before the 'HD Ready' standard came out). Not a lot of content but what there is is stunning. Watched Battlestar Galactica on Sky One HD (sad Sci-Fi nerd) and the detail was incredible. Really puts the DVD to shame. Hope this format war resolves itself soon so I can start updating that side of the system. Main irritation here was sorting out a phone socket for the HD box.

I'd also bought an Xbox 360 after Christmas so needed a way to share this, the DVD and the Sky HD Box's component inputs to the projector. Looked around, read a few reviews and ended up getting this. It works really well.

Projector bulb finally gave up (went with a small bang!) after 2,400 hours. Slightly disappointing for low lamp mode, I was expecting around 3,500-4,000. Anyway, I sourced a new one for under £250 and fitted it along with the recommended new filter. Word of warning here, opening it up was a bit of a nightmare as there was dust everywhere. I took extreme care with cleaning but a small piece of dust must of been disturbed and managed to get in to where the LCD panel sits. It now manifests itself as a very small (just a couple of inches across) pinky tinge on the top right portion of the picture. I've heard people talk on forums of very obvious green blobs caused by dust and mine is only noticeable on plain light backgrounds so I suppose I shouldn't complain. It's three years old so perhaps a specialist service / cleaning would be worth investigating.