Today I started to figure out placement for the blu-ray racks. I figured out how I wanted to put the projector in the room and “built” that…pedestal I suppose. There were some challenges because while I’m working with the projector, and it needs to sit fairly close to the wall, I’m remembering that the center speaker I have is really big and it’s a really tight fit between the projector and the wall. The speaker is too large to mount to the wall (and I’m really trying to put as few holes as possible into the wall - being an apartment and all) and I need something underneath it to both support the speaker and angle it upward, without interfering with the bottom of the picture once I mount the screen.
When I put everything in the living room, which was only really less than two years ago, the whole center channel speaker took some figuring out. The solution wasn’t elegant. This time around I want it to at least look like I pretended to put some thought into it.
Assembling the Pedestal (pictures)
I took the two 3x1 cube storage….I don’t know…cabinets? I placed them side by side ,face down, and put the projector on it. The first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t level. Luckily, I had some spare pieces of wood (spare shelves from a different Blu-ray rack that I had built awhile ago) that I could put under the left side. That raised it enough to level it out.
I also added part of a shelf that I didn’t use to the back of the pedestal. This is meant to provide support for the new speaker when it comes in. There are also two angled (upward) speaker stands arriving on Sunday that will set on this new shelf. The speaker will sit on the stands and be pointed slight upward, toward my viewing position, instead of the back of the projector and my knees.
I then put the projector on the sit/stand desk I bought a couple years ago, specifically to have something adjustable to put the projector on to raise it up/down if needed. I haven’t ever needed to, the projector/screen relationship has been perfect with the sit/stand desk fully collapsed. I did make sure the gas pneumatic function still works smoothly, which it does.
The room is going to be dark, and there’s enough white on the walls. I wanted to cover the 3x1 cubes with something black. Used a fleece blanket for that. I couldn’t wrap them, it would make the surface of the pedestal not level again. So what I did is just kind of covered the top so that the front would fall to the carpet and folded the sides back, kind of like wrapping a present. Works too.
I placed the projector on the desk and put that on the pedestal to get an idea of how I’d have to move the outline for my screen. it had to go up a few inches, as expected.
The idea is to get it as close to perfect as possible without using the image adjustments from the menu. There are many posts online that agree that using that, especially gratuitously, negatively impacts the picture quality. In addition, the walls in here aren’t exactly FLAT. If you notice the wavy lines, that’s why. The screen is at least flat, so it will help quite a bit.
While I did have to adjust it tonight, for a test image, I’m going to play with it some more once I get the screen mounted and the new, slimmer, better sounding (I hope) center channel speaker mounted as well.
I didn’t want to spend a lot of money just moving what I have from the living room to the spare room. I was half agonizing over ordering a small/cheap couch in the $200 range to put in there because the ones I have are HEAVY and even the love seat might be too big to even get in the room through the door.
So of course, what do I do, I spend $260 on a new speaker that will make placing everything and lining it up MUCH easier.
To be fair, a new center channel speaker has been on my mind for several months, especially lately with the Black Friday and Christmas sales. I couldn’t justify it at the time. I’m not sure this is really great justification, but, if it sounds better, and makes everything line up nicely…it’s one of those things I’ll be able to keep forever.
