- Aug 8, 2005
- 603
- 4
- 81
I have been interested in making a home theater for my apartment but am having trouble figuring out the basics. The area is quite small at 10X16 and I cannot put excessive holes in the walls due to it being a rental. This complicates wire management as I don't want several wires going across the room.
I will likely have a small sofa or recliners at one end of the room (spanning the 10ft wall) with a coffee table. I'd like to try out a projector and my initial searching shows that $500 can buy a pretty decent one. My idea is to put the projector on the bottom of the coffee table and maybe run a rug to the screen wall to conceal a power/HDMI cord. This would give the projector approximately 10ft from the screen wall which I imagine is alright for an 8-9 foot screen size. Ideally, I would just project onto the wall, but would consider a basic screen as long as it doesn't require more than 2 nails to hang so that I can easily patch it upon moving.
So the sound system portion is where I am struggling the most. It seems a lot of enthusiasts swear against sound bars but this would be the easiest thing. Are there good sound systems that don't require full surround? I could place a small cabinet under the screen/wall to house the receiver/amp and any media devices and just have a 2-3 speaker setup (2 side speakers + center). Would this work? Is a sub-woofer necessary? This way I would only need to run 1 or 2 easily concealable wires for the projector. Any more speakers (such as behind/next to sofa) will make this difficult and a sub-woofer might be problematic for an apartment.
An overall budget for this project will be $800-1000. If I drop about $500 on the projector, is $300-400 enough for fairly decent speakers/sound? I am not an enthusiast but want something a little better than a standard TV speaker.
I will likely have a small sofa or recliners at one end of the room (spanning the 10ft wall) with a coffee table. I'd like to try out a projector and my initial searching shows that $500 can buy a pretty decent one. My idea is to put the projector on the bottom of the coffee table and maybe run a rug to the screen wall to conceal a power/HDMI cord. This would give the projector approximately 10ft from the screen wall which I imagine is alright for an 8-9 foot screen size. Ideally, I would just project onto the wall, but would consider a basic screen as long as it doesn't require more than 2 nails to hang so that I can easily patch it upon moving.
So the sound system portion is where I am struggling the most. It seems a lot of enthusiasts swear against sound bars but this would be the easiest thing. Are there good sound systems that don't require full surround? I could place a small cabinet under the screen/wall to house the receiver/amp and any media devices and just have a 2-3 speaker setup (2 side speakers + center). Would this work? Is a sub-woofer necessary? This way I would only need to run 1 or 2 easily concealable wires for the projector. Any more speakers (such as behind/next to sofa) will make this difficult and a sub-woofer might be problematic for an apartment.
An overall budget for this project will be $800-1000. If I drop about $500 on the projector, is $300-400 enough for fairly decent speakers/sound? I am not an enthusiast but want something a little better than a standard TV speaker.