Neil Chinnery's Home Cinema Page
I had gradually built up my setup over the course of the last 10 years or so. Starting with a 28" TV and a Nicam
video plugged into the hi-fi, followed by an upgrade to a surround sound processor, then a dolby pro-logic processor,
then a 28" widescreen TV, then a DVD player and a 32" Widescreen TV and finally a dolby-digital processor. I'm sure
this will sound familiar to some of you!
Like most people who are into home-cinema, I regularly get the magazine Home Cinema Choice and drool
over some of the setups that people have. However, they all seem to have a budget of £10k or more and
there is no way my wife would let me spend that kind of money on my hobby!
I've always found that the screen was never big enough to immerse myself into a film in the way I can at the cinema. This obviously
meant buying a projector, but initially
I gave up the idea after looking at some of the budget (circa £1.5k) projectors. The image they put out was too
pixellated and dim for my tastes.
I continued to read about the various projectors coming onto the market until one day I was looking at the HCC
web site and found a 2nd hand projector for sale, at a resonable price, that promised everything I wanted, and best of all, came with a 2 year
warranty.
After seeing it and buying it, I decided that I wanted to go the whole hog and have a room dedicated to home-cinema. The rooms in the
house were out - I have an 18 month old daughter whom I would prefer not to wake up when I'm watching films at volume! However, I do have a double-garage, and I decided to convert half of this to a cinema. But, I didn't have £10K to play with,
just a total of £2.5k (including the money for the projector). This obviously meant that I would have to do all the work myself. I searched round the web but was disappointed by the lack of
information on how to do this kind of thing.
Basically, I had to work the whole thing out for myself. The following pages have been put up in order to help anyone else attempting this kind of project.
These pages are in no way intended as an instruction manual, and a project like this cannot be undertaken unless you are competent at this kind of thing. I make no guarantee that what I have
done is legal - or even safe! Remember that you should always consult with professionals before undertaking any electrical or structural work. Basically, if you copy what I've done and it all goes wrong, I accept no liability - you're on your own.
Having said that, feel free to e-mail me
- I'm happy to help if I can - I just don't want my arse sued off if things go wrong ;-)
