Theaters, sub panels and projectors oh my! — a wiring “home run”, in-wall theater rack and 4k/8k
Part 24 — Designing and building a DIY home recording studio
The whole story — part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14, part 15, part 16, part 17, part 18, part 19, part 20, part 21, part 22, part 23, part 24, part 25, part 26
Preparing the wall for the sub panel
I’m just about ready to put in an electrical sub panel for the basement/studio, but before I can install the sub panel I first need to relocate some existing TV and internet wiring to a different place in the basement.
This early picture (above), shows both the gray electrical service panel and a white service panel which is dedicated for just internet and TV wiring. We bought this home a year ago and I don’t know what I was expecting to see inside the white panel, but I totally laughed when I opened it up and looked inside. This HUGE service panel was housing nothing but a couple raw-ended Ethernet cables, a tiny little 3-way cable TV splitter and an A/C outlet for plugging in a future router and modem.
This panel wall will soon be one of the exterior walls of the studio so it needs to be as closed up and air tight as I can possibly manage to get it. Already having two big service panels in the wall, plus the sub panel I’ll be adding makes three very large holes for sound to leak through. It will already be a lot of work to try to seal up both the main and sub electrical panels, so this monstrous, unnecessary white box definitely needs to go.
HOME RUN!
I’ll explain more in a moment, but here is a picture of the back of the rack space I‘ve built for flush mounting the theater equipment and my NAS computer storage system in the wall under the stairs.
I successfully removed the white box from the studio wall and pulled the TV and internet wiring that was inside of it, over to this new location. For convenience of wiring and making connections in general, I decided to make this spot THE home run location for all the data and TV/video connection points for the house — including the studio.
It took a bit of doing, but the TV and internet wiring for the new basement rooms (as well as rerouting some of the main level wiring), is now running here. It looks like it’s going to work out great having it all in this new location.
Theater A/V rack
After a few weeks of wearing me down, my sons convinced me to consider putting in a projector and screen rather than a large TV for the theater (so they can have a larger screen for gaming parties). I’ve never really ever considered using a projector and screen because projectors with a great picture all seem to be the size (and cost), of a MINI cooper. Plus they normally sound like an airplane flying overhead. Also putting in a projector requires a significant amount of extra planning and work and calculations that using a TV completely avoids, so I’ve actually made it a point to avoid projectors.
As it turns out though, timing is perfect. After a few weeks of intense research, I was referred to a projector manufacturer (Thanks Jacob Fenn), that very recently released a projector that produces a high definition image with color and calibration ability that is virtually cinema quality. It‘s not silent like a TV, but the fan is very quiet and will only barely be noticed if no sound is coming out of the main speakers. It is a decent 15"x11"x5" and it projects a high definition resolution that is slightly beyond what our eyes can actually appreciate at our seating distance. I say timing is perfect, because the cost for both the projector and screen is somehow substantially less than what it would have cost to put a TV there. I was pleasantly shocked! (by the way, thanks to my sons for sending me down this path).
For those interested we are going with this BenQ projector and this Silver Ticket screen. Both manufacturers make 4k compatible products but we were happily able to save even more by going with 1080P — which at our seating distance from the screen is on par with a cinema experience. Here is some of the why we didn’t go with 4k….
A little tangent on new TV resolutions like 8K (and even 4k)
I love seeing TV manufacturers announce they are starting to produce equipment using new, extreme, microscopic resolutions that the eye literally can’t see. I say I love it, because it means projectors and TV’s that DO have resolutions that the eye can actually resolve to, all start to drop to a price that actual humans can finally afford. Even 4K TV’s are sadly wasted on the majority of people buying them because couches are placed too far away for the viewer to be able to see the extra pixels they paid for.
When I was still thinking I would have a TV on the theater wall and was researching TV’s, I stumbled onto a cool and informative video on what resolutions the eye can actually see and under what conditions. You can watch it here.
At the end of his video he says 8k will NEVER be made. Well, he’s sadly wrong (You’ve heard the phrase, “Never say never”). There are several 8k TV’s recently announced an available for sale right now. What he should have said is: “8k SHOULD never be made”. Other than that, he is right on with his info and hopefully the video can help save you a bunch of money that you may have wanted to spend on a TV that you wouldn’t be able to benefit from. Eventually we are all forced to upgrade and spend more than we need to as “lower” resolutions are eventually pushed out and no longer made.
The only place I can see the use of 4k or higher being justified still (maybe) is in virtual reality headgear which have screens literally a couple inches from our eyes. I don’t always want to have images so close that I can see individual hairs on someone’s head, but it’s nice to have that detail when the situation calls for it in that setting.
Screen distance calculator
There are many resolution/distance calculators out there that I’ve used over the past few months, but here is one that I just stumbled onto in a quick search for you that has some nice, concise info for you. To calculate viewing distance info for the new 8K spec using an 85" TV for example, you would type 85 for the diagonal screen size and 7680 for the resolution width and 4320 for the height. Then click the “update data” button and then scroll down to see the results. The “visual acuity” distance (listed as #3 in the result notes), is actually the only REAL spec that we need to be looking at here. That is the distance where you must be to actually see the detail 8K is giving you (if your eyes had the ability to see the pixels 8k is delivering).
In real life, if you are standing a foot or so behind someone — depending on your eyesight — you will likely be able to see individual hairs on their head. If the person moves farther away, the hairs will suddenly begin to visually blend into one another. Many people are buying TV’s that allow them to see the individual hairs, but many of those same people don’t realize that in order to see that level of resolution, they need to be sitting just a couple feet away from their screen (referring back to Visual Acuity Distance in the calculator). I can still hear my mother’s voice asking me —when I was a child — to not sit so close to the TV when I watched. Now, unfortunately, if you want to see the resolution of 4k, you actually have to. If you plan ahead and calculate the size of TV you buy based on the distance you are sitting from the screen (that your eye can see at the distance your couch is etc.), chances are high that you’ll end up spending A LOT less than you thought you would need to. Most likely you’ll end up with a bigger screen but lower resolution than you thought you would need, which ultimately will save you quite a lot of money in the end.
If you do check out the TV monitor distance calculator ….
Note #1 is the shortest distance which is really nothing more than a distance that prevents you from having eye or neck fatigue from having to turn your head or eyes in order to see images on either edge of the screen. Think about the last time you sat in the front row in a movie theater. Pleasant? …..No.
Note #2 is the longest distance that THX recommends you sit from a screen to have a nice cinema experience. THX is just a cinema spec certification used to make sure viewers experience content the way the producers intended you to. It includes specs for how close/far to sit to a screen and how far off to the sides is still “good”. THX certification eventually made its way into homes and gaming consoles and even cars. It is highly misunderstood by the general public and many people think it is actually a technology of some sort.
Longest distance is simply a measurement that ensures you are still decently immersed in your field of view. It doesn’t mean that if you are in the kitchen prepping something (while watching a show on your TV that is in the living room 30' away), you won’t be able to enjoy the TV show. It just means you won’t be able to see all the Pixels you paid for.
It ended up being a ton of work to get the room all dialed in as far as which projector would deliver a fantastic image (and still be something that I can afford), where it should be placed and how big of a screen to use. But, now that the work is all done, I think we will be glad we went this direction. Using a screen allows us to have a screen size that is the “right” size for our seating distance range and is bigger than any TV we could have considered, so our boys are excited because of what games will look like on it. The projector can actually fill the wall if we really wanted it to, but now that my boys understand viewing distance and eye fatigue they are on board with keeping it the size that won’t cause eye fatigue from the “front row of the theater” effect.
Also, for those interested, I discovered a calculator by Carlton Bale which I used to figure out that best screen size as well as the seating distance and even platform height (among other things), and it’s free. Thanks Mr Bale!
Projector distance calculator
And just for good measure, here is a projector calculator from BenQ that helps you determine the correct projector (using their models), that is best for your room size, distance of the projector from the screen and screen size etc. Each projector has a specific brightness (lumens) which is information you will need if you are using Carlton Bale’s theater calculator above. If you are buying a projector, chances are the manufacturer making your projector will also have a calculator of some sort to help you out. If not, there are various generic projector calculators out there.
Projection screen supplier
And lastly, if you are in the market for a screen, you may want to look here at a company called Silver Ticket before you buy anything. Silver Ticket sells very affordable, high performance screens and even speakers (the screen specs listed on the site include the “gain” spec you will also need for Carlton’s theater calculator).
Having spent a little more money on speakers in the theater in our last home, I strongly suggest you check out these speakers. The market has become even more competitive and I will be spending quite a bit less this time for equal performance. I love it when companies like Silver Ticket and Monoprice.com start competing with each other and actually get down to real wholesale pricing on things like in-wall speakers with performance that meets and is even exceeding performance of well respected speakers that are MUCH more expensive. I’ll just leave it at that. =-) This time around it looks like Silver Ticket has just was I’m needing!
Back to the rack
Rather than putting an audio/video equipment rack in the theater room I want to place the equipment out of sight so it won’t be visible. I’ve decided to use the storage space under the stairs which we have turned into a closet.
Taking it a step further, instead of placing equipment in a cabinet on the floor in the closet (which would be bulky and take up a bunch of room), I wanted to see if I could somehow flush mount the equipment in the wall on some rack rails.
I found a spot along the wall that seems like it would work nicely. Also, because it’s all in a “closet” behind a door I’m not going to have to spend any money on any type of door or covering for the rack. Instead, I will simply recess the front of the rack a little (about an inch or so) into the wall, to protect equipment knobs from being bumped into or knocked off.
I’ve been calling the area under the stairs the “A/V closet” because that’s where we will go to access the equipment. but now that I think about it, the equipment itself will actually completely live inside the utility room. So really the “A/V closet” is actually just an “access the face of the equipment” closet.
Since the utility room is getting a constant flow of fresh air from outside (through a 6" fresh air duct piping air into the room), any heat coming off the rack equipment will quickly dissipate and be absorbed into the utility room, rather than getting trapped under the stairs in the closet and creating an oven.
In my last home I did the same thing, putting all the A/V equipment in the water heater and furnace utility closet, and because of the constant fresh air flow into the closet it kept the gear cool. I expect that having a larger utility room now, will likely work even better for dissipating heat.
Cutting a hole in the wall
The only dilemma I have now is the studs in the stairwell wall are framed too close together for the rack equipment to fit between.
The walls are framed with 2"x4" studs (which in reality are trimmed down to their actual finished dimension of 1.5" x 3.5"). Standard 16" on center framing places the center of each stud 16" apart. This means there is a gap between the studs of 15 1/2". Standard audio, video and computer racked equipment is 19" wide. This means I’m going to have to move a stud over about 3 1/2" for this to work.
Normally this would be a really fast fix but this wall is actually yet ANOTHER load bearing wall which means I have to be really careful about how I remove and change the studs . I would hate for the floor above to accidentally come crashing down.
As I consider all the options, it would definitely be a lot easier to just put the A/V equipment into a rack or shelf in the closet space under the stairs, but again, it would be really bulky and probably make the rest of the space not really usable for anything else. Also, the heat from the equipment would be trapped. And like humans, electronics don’t like being overheated, so I would have to find a way to ventilate the space. Ultimately, flush mounting the equipment makes a lot more sense if I can swing it.
Framing for rack rails
I decided to go ahead and re-frame the section of the wall to fit rack rails. I first supported about 5 feet of ceiling joists to lift pressure off the wall. To do this I used several brace studs placed directly under each joist above the work area and I set them in place using my sledge hammer, “The Persuader”. I used a reciprocating saw to cut out the studs in the wall that were in the way and then framed in a header and a few extra jack studs on either side so there’s more than enough solid wood on the sides for the rack to support racking heaving things.
Ooops!
I was very careful in my measurements and the initial dry fit of the rack rails was great,
BUT …
I forgot to account for the thickness the mud, tape and texture would add. I didn’t realize my mistake until the texturing was all done and I was excitedly just placing the rack rails in the space for fun to see what it was going to look like, and sadly discovered they didn’t fit.
I felt a little embarrassed as I explained to the mudder/taper that I was going to have to rip out the inner 5/8" drywall trimming and replace it with 1/2". He said it wasn’t a big deal, but it was pretty painful for me to have to undo something that looked so nice already. I luckily still had a partial sheet of 1/2" drywall and I was able to do it right and the rack fit perfectly this time.
Prepping for fiber
Apparently our neighborhood is slated to get fiber channel for internet next year. I realized this is my one chance to run a conduit from the outside of the home to the new home run. As luck would have it, it was a straight shot from the new “home run” to where you see the conduit exiting the house in the picture below
Not knowing yet how I want the end of the conduit to be, I gave myself a little extra on the outside of the house. When the fiber line is ready to be installed next year, I’ll probably just shorten the end of the pipe a little more and maybe even put a little waterproof outdoor housing over it. Or, more simply, I could actually just shave back the sunburnt expansion foam (so it’s flush with the house), shorten the pipe a little, put the cap back on and just drill a hole in the middle of the cap (just big enough to allow the thin little fiber cable through) and then waterproof the small little hole using some silicone caulk to seal it all up. I’ll probably just ask the fiber installers what they think is best and then do that. In my last home, the installers just ran the fiber into the house through the fresh air duct at the back of the house. It wasn’t sexy, but it got the line into the house. I wanted to have a nicer solution in place this time.
When fiber optic cable is eventually run, they will need to get it from the cable box (arrow on the left) over to the conduit on the right. They could go up through the water spout by the cable box and run it up and through the soffits and then down the corner to the pvc conduit. Or, I guess I could even run a conduit down under the gravel and under the cement pad over and then around to the corner of the house. I guess I’ll see when we get to that point.
Wow, kudos to you if you made it all the way to the end of this post with me. Now, it’s finally time to install the electrical sub panel!
