Home Theater Setup Questions

LiquidDeath

LiquidDeath

Magnus Deadlift the Fucktiger
4,889
11,292
So the wife and I just bought a new house and it came with a home theater upstairs. I'm inheriting an existing set up with a Panasonic PT-AE7000 (http://www.projectorreviews.com/pana...7000/index.php) and a 110 inch screen (16:9 setup so 54x96). It is already wired with built in 5.1 surround speakers in the walls (minus the sub, but I have one of those). It also has a second level raised about 8 inches in the back of the room for stadium seating.

I want to be able to watch movies and tv and also play video games in the theater room. The biggest problem I am running into is that the closet that all the wires run to is located about 10 feet off the theater room itself. Does anyone have experience setting up theaters that can suggest the best way to do it? I figure that I need to get IR repeaters or something like that to relay remote signals from the theater to the equipment in the closet. Do they have repeaters for Playstation controllers? Will I need to worry about input lag? I've tried to look online for solutions, but I haven't been very successful finding any.

Hopefully I can grab some pictures of the room and closet to help out. I'll post them here once I have them.
 
Eomer

Eomer

Trakanon Raider
5,472
272
PS3 controllers and most RF or BT PC peripherals should be fine. I've never had any issues with PS3 controllers or Logitech "Unified" RF devices, they're good for 30-60 feet. The older RF stuff was only good for 3-6 feet, but both Microsoft and Logitech peripherals with the mini receivers are 30+ feet range. You might have to do some sort of IR repeater to control the receiver, cable box and the like. Look in to Logitech Harmony stuff.

Sounds like a nice setup, fairly similar to mine. I've got an old PT-AE2000 with a dying panel and a 106 inch screen. It's pretty awesome paired with a fast HTPC and/or PS3. I use a Logitech Performance MX mouse and a K800 keyboard. Both seem to work fairly flawlessly, although sometimes I can get some mouse lag or repeated keystrokes, but that only seems to happen when the CPU is pinned. It's something I've noticed on and off with numerous KB/M setups over the years, something about having the CPU maxed out can occasionally cause some interference issues with RF devices, but it's generally never been a serious issue. I tend not to play any "twitch" style FPS games on the HTPC anyways.
 
LiquidDeath

LiquidDeath

Magnus Deadlift the Fucktiger
4,889
11,292
Thanks for the advice!

Questions: How big is your theater room? How far away do you sit from the screen?
 
Noodleface

Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick
37,961
14,508
Eomer_sl said:
PS3 controllers and most RF or BT PC peripherals should be fine. I've never had any issues with PS3 controllers or Logitech "Unified" RF devices, they're good for 30-60 feet. The older RF stuff was only good for 3-6 feet, but both Microsoft and Logitech peripherals with the mini receivers are 30+ feet range. You might have to do some sort of IR repeater to control the receiver, cable box and the like. Look in to Logitech Harmony stuff.

Sounds like a nice setup, fairly similar to mine. I've got an old PT-AE2000 with a dying panel and a 106 inch screen. It's pretty awesome paired with a fast HTPC and/or PS3. I use a Logitech Performance MX mouse and a K800 keyboard. Both seem to work fairly flawlessly, although sometimes I can get some mouse lag or repeated keystrokes, but that only seems to happen when the CPU is pinned. It's something I've noticed on and off with numerous KB/M setups over the years, something about having the CPU maxed out can occasionally cause some interference issues with RF devices, but it's generally never been a serious issue. I tend not to play any "twitch" style FPS games on the HTPC anyways.
Click to expand...
More likely than not, with the CPU pegged you're not properly able to provide the current those devices need to operate. I did a lot of testing with KB/M on pegged microcomputers and experienced similar issues.
 
F

forin

78
0
LiquidDeath_sl said:
Thanks for the advice!

Questions: How big is your theater room? How far away do you sit from the screen?
Click to expand...
I generally prefer to use ITU-R for their video and audio placement recommendations, mostly due to objective measurements and scientific measuring.
ITU-R describes designed viewing distance as follows;

"The Design Viewing Distance (DVD), or optimal viewing distance, for a digital system is the distance at which two adjacent pixels subtend an angle of 1 arc-min at the viewer's eye; and the optimal horizontal viewing angle as the angle under which an image is seen at its optimal viewing distance."

Here is a nifty table they provided with this study

Optimal horizontal viewing angle, optimal viewing distance in picture heights (H)

rrr_img_37569.png


To find your proper viewing distance based on resolution and picture size, take your diagonal screen (110 inches) multiply it by 0.495 and that will give you your screen height (H).
Then take that number (H) and multiply it by the corresponding number from the far right column, based off of your resolution.

So for you 110 x 0.495 = 54.45 (H) This is your screens height in inches.
54.45 x 3.2 (H) = 174.24 inches away from the screen (14.52 feet away from the screen)

Notice for 4k (3840x2160) viewing how close you can sit to the screen. At 110 inch diagonal thats just 7.26 feet away.

Hope this helps!
 
Eomer

Eomer

Trakanon Raider
5,472
272
LiquidDeath_sl said:
Thanks for the advice!

Questions: How big is your theater room? How far away do you sit from the screen?
Click to expand...
It's not a room by itself, it's just my living room. I live in a large open concept loft. My primary seating position is roughly 13 feet from the screen to my eyeballs. For most PC games I play at 720p because I find the UI/text elements too small to read at 1080p. I generally leave the desktop at that resolution as well, for the same reason.
 
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