Build It: Convert Your Home Office Into the Ultimate Home Theatre

Posted 06/27/2011 at 2:30pm | by George Jones

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Is it possible to convert a standard home office into a surround sound home theater with minimal fuss?

I have an average-size spare bedroom that mostly functions as a home office and gaming room, and has been used primarily by me. Given the cramped quarters of San Francisco apartments, I set out to make the room less me-centric and more family-friendly by transforming this home office into a home office theater. The goal was to create a room suitable for three things: normal PC computing, big-screen surround sound movie viewing with no reconfiguration needed, and big-screen gaming. Ancillary goals were to make the room feel less like a cluttered man cave, and to avoid breaking the bank.

For the most part, I think I got this one right.

Ingredients

• Yamaha YSP-2200 Digital Sound Projector $715
  • www.yamaha.com
• Epson PowerLite 8700UB $2345
  • www.epson.com
• Atdec TH-WH-PJ-FM Telehook Universal Projector Flush Mount $55
  • www.adtec.com
• Elite Screens Manual 120-inch Pull Down Projection Screen, 16:9 Aspect Ratio $160
  • www.elitescreens.com
• Ceton InfiniTV4 Digital Cable Quad-Tuner card $400
  • www.cetoncorp.com
• Warpia StreamHD Wireless PC to TV 1080P $140
  • www.warpia.com
• Logitech Harmony 880 Advanced Universal Remote Control $60 (used)
  • www.logitech.com
• Logitech diNovo Edge Bluetooth Keyboard $155
  • www.logitech.com
• Razer Onza Tournament Edition $50
  • www.razerzone.com/minisite/onza
• Glide TV Navigator $50
  • www.glidetv.com
• 50x 60-inch Vinyl Pull Down Shade $60
  • www.lowes.com
• Cables: 2x 35ft. HDMI High-Speed Cables $54 each
  • www.amazon.com
• TOTAL: $4298

Component Spotlight: Audio

YAMAHA SP-2200 DIGITAL SOUND PROJECTOR

This is the secret sauce of my digital home theater build. The YSP-2200 delivers big, rich home theater sound at what feels like a bargain rate.

Yamaha's YSP-2200 Digital Sound Projector produces accurate tones in all ranges and accurate surround sound effects.

The trick with this build is that I wanted to be able to connect my PC as well as my PlayStation 3 to the 1080p projector. Prior to this, I’d heard considerable praise heaped on Yamaha’s sound projector, and Maximum Tech editor Michael Brown recommended I check out Yamaha’s YSP-2200. I’m glad I did.

The YSP-2200 consists of two parts: a 37.13x3x5.75-inch center unit and a 17.13x5.38x13.75-inch subwoofer. It uses complex algorithms and an automated self-calibration routine to determine the acoustic properties of any room, and then projects discrete sound channels at walls and other barriers in the room to recreate the surround sound experience. Frankly, the 5.1 and 7.1 modes really surprised me given the size, enough so that it’s hard to imagine ever buying a space-consuming six- or seven-speaker set again.

It also supports HDMI 1.4a, making it 3D-compatible down the road. Not surprisingly, given the acoustic quality and reduced footprint, this is a category that is quickly gaining in popularity. We’re starting to see more and more sound projectors on the market every year. It’s worth noting that Yamaha makes both lower-end and higher-end sound projectors, as do a number of audio companies, including Boston Acoustics and Polk.

Component Spotlight: Video

EPSON 8700UB

So much for not breaking the bank. The moment we got our hands on Epson’s 8700UB projector, we knew it was destined to be the visual centerpiece of this project. Truth be told, it’s not that easy to find high-quality 1080p projectors that don’t cost a fortune. The low-end of the price scale in this category includes Optoma’s highly touted HD20 ($900 retail), and Epson’s PowerLite 8350 ($1,100 retail).

The picture quality of the 8700UB is superb, and the 1,600 lumen output (which increases to 1,830 in Dynamic mode) allows it to function surprisingly well with some ambient light present.

You can find cheaper 1080p projectors, but few deliver the sharpness, brightness, and image-throw versatility of Epson's 8700UB.

I really love two of this projector’s features. First, an adjustable 2.1:1 manual zoom lens allows you to throw a 110-inch diagonal image from variable distances ranging from 11 feet, 9 inches all the way to 25 feet, 1 inch. This allowed me to run a 120-inch image in my 15x13-foot room. Second, the projector allows you to shift the image position vertically and horizontally, which allowed for convenient installation in the corner of my room. (It’s worth noting that using the zoom lens does reduce the brightness—Projector Central reports that this drop-off can range from 18 to 36 percent, depending on zoom level).

I spent a lot of time contemplating a wide variety of projection screens to go with the Epson projector. I drooled over a number of higher-end motorized screens, dreaming of push-button conversion to theater mode before settling on a simple manual screen with a 1.1 gain. It works great. (Gain indicates the reflectivity of any screen or projection surface. A 1.0 gain is considered normal. Most conventional screens have gains in the 1.0 to 1.3 range.)

Regardless of the lumens and the slightly reflective screen, I still found that the best condition for the greatest visual quality was darkness. With notions of weekend-long sessions of Portal 2 and Shogun 2 in mind, I purchased an inexpensive vinyl pull-down shade for the large window in this room. In an effort to keep my girlfriend happy, I installed the shade inside of the room’s curtains. Success!

Other Important Components

If you remember last year’s 3D HTPC build, you may recall that we used a number of interesting accessories. I transferred a few of the devices we used back then to work with this home theater.

The no-brainer of the batch was Ceton’s InfiniTV 4. Its four-tuner capacity makes it a recording workhorse, and Ceton recently introduced the ability to split the four tuners among other Windows systems on a network, which makes for easy live streaming. We’ll explain how to make this work below, but it’s worth noting that you’ll also need to get your hands on a multituner CableCARD from your cable provider if you want to use it.

Similarly, I found that Logitech’s diNovo Bluetooth keyboard and Glide TV’s remote control mouse granted me full range of Media Center controls and some basic gaming controls at a distance. Razer’s Onza Tournament Edition controller rounds out my collection of input devices.

More and more, Warpia’s StreamHD is becoming an essential part of my home theater. It’s great because it allows my friends and family to quickly and easily run media (including music) from their laptops to the big screen and receiver. A USB dongle plugs into a laptop, which then wirelessly transmits up to a 1080p signal to the soundbar and then on to the projector. As I mentioned in my review of the StreamHD, some compression artifacts are visible at the higher resolutions, but picture quality is surprisingly clean.