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Vented boxes

— By Paul McGowan —
One of the last subjects in this series needing to be covered is the projector and its mounting and cooling. In my view a home theater is not a home theater I would want to own unless it was based on a projected image. I know some of the large screen LCD and LED TVs are bright and wonderful, but they do not impress me as a movie. I'll take a projected image every time. One of the hesitations many have with projectors stems from their noise. Unless they are in another room, projecting through glass, they can be quite annoying. My room, unfortunately, would not allow us to place the projector behind a wall. There's a set of stairs blocking that from happening. Instead, Robert designed and built a 'quiet box' with its own ventilation system, optical glass, and access door. First, a bit about the projector in use. We chose the JVC X700R projector because it is one of a very few projectors on the market making their own optical engine based on technology that really works to my standards. The other is Sony, leaving pretty much every other brand using the Epson engines in their own box. Doing some research on projectors, you pretty quickly narrow it down to one or the other of the two: Sony or JVC. The Epson engines are ok, but not that highly regarded. The Sony's are excellent but dollar for dollar, and considering the importance of black levels, I prefer the JVC, as recommended by my installer. I don't think I would make a different choice had I to do it over again today. The screen I am projecting to is from Screen Innovations and, as I mentioned previously, it is a woven, gain of 1, acoustically transparent product. What that means is I can, and have, mounted the left, center and right loudspeakers in the wall and behind the screen. This is the best way to view a film, duplicating how it is executed in a commercial movie theater. The voices come from exactly the correct position matching the actors on the screen. But on to the box that we built. Below is a picture showing the box where the projector sits. The chairs are only temporary as we wait for the new couch to arrive. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA You can see the entrance to the theater on the left, the door to the equipment room (under the stairs), my collection of media and the popcorn machine. Looking at the quiet box itself, note the clever access door on the side. Here's another view. Notice also the gray panels to the left and right of the media rack. These are custom diffusors we had installed for better sound to treat the room. Bottom line on the extra hassle with the quiet box. It is so critically important to have a projected image that the extra time and money to design and build this box was worth every bit. It's dead quiet. Now, where's that popcorn..? IMG_3249

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