Permanent setup for projectors and screen - Your Screening Room Pictures

[Steve Klare]

We are renovating the den this year. While we have an Electrician here, I'm considering putting a floor outlet under the dining room table: having everything beyond this cart run down in the basement.

[Paul Adsett]

Steve, I recommend the molded plastic conduit, with adhesive backing, to run speaker cables from the projector area up to the screen. These can be easily mounted to the bottom of the side walls of the room with no screws into the walls. Available from Home Depot and Lowe's.

[Steve Klare]

Hi Paul,

It is more convenient! (Still fun to gripe about it!)

There is a shelf below the custom pull-out mixer platform: that's where the disk player is now. Under that is a large drawer. This will become the home of assorted film-frippery: lenses, brackets, cables, spare lamps (-etc.).

-right now if you look up in the corner cabinet, there are lamps and lenses hiding behind the assorted ceramic figurines and commemorative dishes! (The model cars on the top shelf stay right where they are!)

There are cable handling issues to deal with: everything was always cut generously and this is more compact than before. some clips and ty-raps will get it under control.

[Paul Adsett]

Well done Steve, I bet this is a lot more convenient for you. I like the fact that the projectors are out on display for family and guests. These wonderful machines need to be seen . and appreciated, even when they are not in operation.

[Steve Klare]

The Saga Continues!

Roughly 2005, we mainly used the living room and dining room for company. Literally weeks went by without anybody spending more than 15 minutes there. The family room of that epoch was the den.

I sensed my opportunity! I measured up the front window and grabbed the biggest pull-down screen I could stuff behind the curtains and I had my theater! I put a projector on the far end of the dining room table.......and then another...and then 30 feet of cable and an amplifier and four speakers...and a mixer and a VP and a video player...and often special guest appearances by slide projectors and lately 16mm too. ("Keep it SIMPLE", I always say!)

Problem was, along the way we renovated the first floor: did a new kitchen and replaced the back porch with a new sitting area with a gas fireplace. My theater was now located on desirable Real Estate and all I had was squatter's rights! (C'mon!: It's the longest throw in the house!)

My wife has been trying to get me off the dining room table about 10 years now.
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-I mean: Who couldn't see the beauty in THIS!

It's got wires and plugs and an abundance of knobs and LEDs! There are custom made cables in there that exist nowhere else on Earth! (She married an Engineer: this comes with the territory! You get the vacuum cleaner de-clogged within 15 minutes you have to pay for it somehow!)

Maybe a year ago, she started making the case that if we got some kind of cart, we could work some...mutual benefit. ( I HATE it when she makes sense!😉)

1. Following the semi-annual table cloth swap (or random visit of some annoying relative.), I wouldn't have to spend 15 minutes re-plugging and testing.
2. She could have dining room table that didn't look like NASA's basement!

Welllll...the package showed up from Amazon on Monday, and following about 30 minutes of "insert tab "A" into slot "B", here it is!
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Welll! La-Dee-DAHHHH!!!!

[Lee Mannering]

Hi John. Yes its been loved and was able to buy it as a boy with proceeds from a few weeks stage work with Tommy Trinder a memorable time for me. My goodness he used to fracture me although the shows never finished until 11pm and I was up stage school at 6am the following morning to get across London.

Yes the F1.2 lens came later. Funny thing with Eumig lenses I've never had one in any of my machines suffer from fungus and they have stood the test of time.

[John Armer]

A nice read and pictures all. 😀

A look back to the Super 8 sound film force awakening in me here is my 1972 Eumig I ordered as a boy

Goodness Lee, your Eumig is immaculate! I see it benefits from a lens upgrade too.

[Lee Mannering]

A nice read and pictures all. 😀

A look back to the Super 8 sound film force awakening in me here is my 1972 Eumig I ordered as a boy and took delivery towards Christmas that year but had to wait till Christmas day for a 200ft cartoon from Santa.
Some witnessed it in Blackpool a few years ago projecting in the cinema up against a Elmo Xenon.



Now my oldest surviving film friend this Eumig has given others and me lots of entertainment over the decades and as you can see has been very much looked after. This then is my most basic setup in our home Kinema where we project 8mm, 9.5, 16mm and 17.5mm sound films. My most recent install was a 4K UHD projector and player replacing my old Benq proj which gave excellent service.

[Steve Klare]

Yes,

My screen is exactly where a set of shades would hang, and we've even used it that way when it's very bright out and somebody was sitting facing the window.

From the outside, it looks like we keep drawing a shade over the front window! What must the neighbors think we are up to?!

-will I finish a show someday, roll up the screen and find a Peeping Tom on my front porch?!

(I should paint the back of the screen to look like my living room!)

[Maurice Leakey]

I have the same situation as Steve.

In my lounge bay window I have a white roller blind. Purchased from a local chain store as a "daylight" blind, i.e., thick enough to block any outside light, it does a great job as a cine screen, I have the 122cm width (4ft) and it's ideal for Super 8 and 16mm, for 16mm 'scope I use a long focus backing lens.

Here is the shop ad, note that the blind is white although it's obviously not a good picture. I can assure you that it is as white as white.

https://www.johnlewis.com/house-by-j...product-images

[Steve Klare]

Excellent!

This is a lesson to all you film collectors (or model railroaders) out there: Get a house with a full basement and you can do what Mitchell does here.

-I bought a split level (half basement), which means I have to blend into regular house spaces like a chameleon!

(This is no life for a Mammal!)

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

I posted this years ago on the old forum, but since I think most of us will not bother checking the archive unless we are looking for something specific, I am reposting my humble home cinema.



The only change since those pictures were taken is that the Sony DCP-1000 analog stereo sound processor has been replaced with a Dolby CP65.

[Steve Klare]

This is what the projector end of my setup looks like. Right now I am running a nice pair of Elmo ST-800s. The left hand one is sitting on top of the blu-ray player that provides signal for my VP. The outlet strip provides a means of turning everything on and off, and also surge protection to keep old, hard to replace electronics from getting injured by lightning strikes and other nasties from the grid. I recently moved it up on top of the table to keep the cats from gnawing my line cords! The mixer is to gather all my audio and send it on down the line to my amp. It's also where I do volume control. From the left: channel 1 is the left hand ST-800, channel 2 is the right and channel 3 is the blu-ray player. Channel 4 is empty today. Most commonly that's for 16mm, but it's been laptops and iPods and all sorts of noisy things that needed to work through better speakers for our listening pleasure. Also present are one of my 'scope lenses and the auditorium lens that keeps the 'scope image from spilling off my screen.

All of this operates on kind of a treaty: I have squatters rights because a long time ago, we only used this end of the house for company. I camped out on the south end of the dining room table and even after our renovations and the migration that followed, I stayed there. Of course being a marriage and a family, some kind of accommodations have to be made! When we have major company (or it's time to change the tablecloth), all of this stuff goes away. (Close friends and family kind of expect it there!)

We are currently re-thinking this arrangement. It's a bear to re-connect all these cables and my wife doesn't always enjoy eating with lenses staring at her. We've come up with the idea of getting a nice cart, removing that extra leaf from the table and having the setup basically permanent on it. On State Occasions, it would be a case of disconnecting just a few external connections and rolling it away. Return to service would be much easier too.

[Steve Klare]

These things weigh heavily on the mind!

-a couple of years ago I had this dream: I shoved the china closet aside and found this door I'd never noticed before! (Strange: I'd PAINTED that wall at least twice!)

The knob was missing and it was painted shut. I got a crowbar and pried it open. I found a long, narrow, empty room with a high ceiling

Between then and the moment I woke up and remembered that wall is external and there's nothing on the other side but my side lawn and my neighbor's house, I finally had my dedicated home theater and I was pretty pleased about it!

-you ever wake up from a really great dream saying "Noooo! NOOOO!!!"?

(If I was actively collecting films when we were looking for houses, I would certainly have looked for ones with a full basement!)

[Daniel Macarone]

There's no permanent setup in my apartment. It's too small. But, I have a home theatre dream that will not die - It's a movie palace-style screening room, with projection booth that has two portholes, one for Super 8 (or any portable projector) and one for an Elmo LX-1100 16mm.

We can post our dreams, can't we?