garrypettet.com

As many of you will know, I’m an Apple fanboy and a film/TV lover. You’ll also know that, since buying a house in June, I’ve been slowly converting the single garage into a home cinema (or ‘man cave’ as my friend Max describes it!).

I thought I would write a few posts describing my setup, both in terms of hardware and software. I also want to write about my future plans for the room. In this first part, I’m going to go over the room layout and the hardware involved.

The room itself is trapezoid in shape, being wider at the back (where the 2-seater grey sofa is), tapering to about 2.7m at the front of the room where the window is. The room is about 3.5m. It’s carpeted in a dark grey carpet with an antique cream-coloured ceiling lit by dimmable, recessed, spotlights. At the back of the room, in the centre, there is a conduit that runs underground to my server room that is in an old larder cupboard in the dining room. The conduit currently has an 8m HDMI cable as well as 5 speaker and 1 subwoofer cable. The speaker cables run underneath the carpet to the speakers. The HDMI cable will eventually link to a projector but currently connects, via a HDMI coupler, to the TV. There are 9 power sockets (4 doubles plus 1 single on the ceiling at the back of the room for the projector). The entrance to the room is from the hallway, just to the right of the window. There is a black blackout roller blind above the window.

Furniture-wise, there is the sofa mentioned above with a matching footstool. There is a KEF 1005.2 surround sound system (wall mounted apart from the centre speaker) The current TV is a Panasonic 1080p 32″ LCD that is sat on a dark TV stand.

The server room is about 1x1x2.4m in size. The equipment is as follows:

• Onkyo TX-SR607 AV receiver
• Sony Playstation 3
• Sony Blu-Ray player
• Mac Mini connected to a Drobo for storage and an Elgato EyeTV for digital TV
• Time Capsule
• Apple TV
• Nintendo Wii
• Wireless ADSL modem
• XBOX 360 wireless controller adaptor

All components output to the AV receiver which then pumps video out via HDMI and sound via the KEF speakers. The wiring in the cupboard is a nightmare to decipher!

Having all my components out of the cinema has pros and cons:

Pros

1. Quiet operation. No distracting fans, etc during playback
2. No unsightly cables/components in the cinema – it should be all about the TV
3. Maximal use of limited space in the cinema

Cons:

1. Problematic Bluetooth control of games consoles. Although I can control my consoles from the cinema, button presses frequently ‘drop out’ during play (more problematic with the Wii).
2. No direct line of sight to the components. Although I control the Mac and Apple TV wirelessly with my iPhone, I cannot control the AV receiver or the Blu-Ray player unless I physically leave the cinema. This is especially irritating when it comes to controlling volume.
3. Heating issues. I need to figure out a way to adequately cool the server room.

Problem solving

Two of the three downsides listed above are fixable. I plan on buying a universal remote with RF capabilities to allow me to control everything from the cinema. Easy to fix but does require an outlay of about £250. The heating issue can be solved by fitting some vents to the door of the server room as well as a cooling fan if necessary.

What troubles me the most is the Bluetooth issue. It’s basically impossible for me to put the Wii in the cinema and connect it through the conduit to the amp. Whilst I’m using a TV, I can simply connect the Wii to it but once I get a projector and lose the TV, I won’t have any way of connecting the Wii to speakers! It may mean that I need to keep a TV in the room. The PS3 controller seems to fair better than the Wii and I may be able to keep it in the server room – I just need to test it a bit more thoroughly. If it has to go into the cinema room, I may be able to pass another HDMI cable through the conduit (if space permits).

As you can see – there is a lot of hardware involved in setting up a home entertainment system. The next part of this post will go over the software running on the Mac to link things together.