I was always a movie addict. I always wanted to have a proper home theatre, as in a PVR like theatre at home!
About 4 months ago we bought a Sony DVD Player + 5.1 Channel Speakers. To be more precise, we bought this for our home.
I got the system fit into my living room with the help of electricians and carpenters. Eventually I had a good music system and DVD player. But still watching movies on a small 29 inch TV was not much fun. I mean the sound was larger than life like; but the video was not. So I decided to go for a Plasma LCD. It did not take much time for me to realize that those things cost a real lot of money :-(.
I was speaking about this with my former boss from Linux Learning Centre, Mr. Ramesh Kumar. He is my gadget-guru. He has an idea about practically everything electronic on this planet; and no I am not joking. He suggested that I go for a home cinema projector that can be connected to my DVD player. Actually he gave me the Acer projector that he uses at his office for a couple of days, just to play around with. When I connected the projector to my DVD player and watched the projected movie on a wall in the living room; I had made up my mind. That evening I demonstrated the setup to my wife and convinced her. Actually I did not have to do much convincing because she is a bit of a movie freak herself ;-).
Then I went back to Mr. Ramesh Kumar and started budgeting the whole thing. We both infact visited Hansa Pictures. My colleague Kiran also came with us to Hansa. We looked at a few projectors and projector screens. Finally I zeroed in on Optoma EP721 and Grandview 50″ x 67″ pull down instalock screen. I also bought a 10 meter HDMI cable to connect the projector to my DVD player. It turns out that the cost of (projector + 83 inch screen + cable+ dvd-player + installation service) is much less than the cost of a 40 in LCD TV!!! (
Once all of these things showed up at my place, Mr. Ramesh Kumar helped arrange for people that can fit all of this into place. I guess the images below will tell you the story.
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Had it not been for Kiran, my cousin Adithya, Tassaraj from LLC and my house keeper Shivanna; I would have had a very very tough time installing these things. Anyways, after all this circus, we now have the screen in our living room that can be rolled open when needed and rolled up when not.
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The projector is connected to the DVD player via a 10 meter long HDMI cable. So now all I have to do is start the projector and play a DVD 🙂
I got to tell you, the experience is fantastic 🙂 Its not PVR like, but this thing will do until I actually build my house with a theatre in it.