Perspective.

Just for the record...this is how it all began.

Time to dim the lights.

So here it is. I'd say it's about 95% complete. Most of the stuff that is left to do is minor aesthetic stuff. Hanging some posters, finishing the base trim, getting the final curtains up, etc. But all in all this project is coming to an end. It's like that part in a long movie, where you know it's over, but you still gotta sit thru another 15 minutes of "wrapping things up" story stuff.
For some reason the walls appear green in this picture and the chairs seem purply-grey. Just take my word for it. That is not the case. Anyway, what you're seeing here is a view from the screen. I went with some chairs from IKEA for the seating. I needed chairs that weren't too wide and I wanted ones that were easy enough to slide around. These fit the bill. The curtains on the right are temporary, but they're similar to the final ones that I'll be picking up this week. The chairs in the back are on a temporary makeshift riser. Serves the purpose for now, but it's a bit too precarious to leave as it is. This is a view from the "sweet spot". I started bringing in my DVDs even though I don't have a bookshelf for them yet. One of the main things I need to start tweaking is the acoustics of the room. They actually aren't that bad. A few well placed sound panels will help tightening it up. Nothing fell on top of my head when the sub was blasting away, so that's good. All in all it's living up to my expectations. Now that it's ready my time will be spent tweaking the projector and HTPC settings. Finding the ideal audio settings and most importantly, watching some %$!#&* movies!

Sweet light goodness.

Lights dimmed and everything fired up. Time for some screenshots. A bit of a disclaimer here. These images represent everything in a pretty much "out of the box" state. No serious calibration has been performed yet, only some very minor setting adjustments that I picked up in a forum online. That being said, let's see some images.
Here's the login screen. And now that I look at it, I'm a bit embarrassed to see that my login icon is a snowflake. I need to work on getting better pictures with my camera. Most of these pics are a little darker than they actually appear in person. The projector is plenty bright and the contrast more than satisfies me.
Down in front, mother%&$#! Ok, that was stupid. Anyway, what you're looking looking at is the interface for the DVR software I use called BeyondTV. It allows me to record TV (HD stuff included), pause LiveTV, play media files from the web, etc. If you look close you'll see a 6 foot white man on the right side of the picture. Ok, that was stupid too.
A lot of people have asked what's the first thing I'm goning to watch . To be honest I still haven't quite decided. For right now, it's still in the tweaking stage, so I watch snippets of this and that for specific audio and video moments. My parents were in town visiting recently and I quickly turned them and my wife into guinea pigs. I had a "beta" run thru screening of an HD version of The Bourne Identity. It looked and sounded great. They were impressed. I'm playing DVDs thru a software DVD player called Theater Tek. It allows you to run post processes like ffdshow on the image to make it even sweeter. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, I'm just using the default settings on the player without any post processing. Mmmm....Empire.

The whties in this image aren't nearly as bright as they are in person, but you can still get a sense of the detail that I can get out of the box.

Enjoying the dark side.

I put on a little LOTR and started blowing thru chapters and hitting pause to try and find a descent image. Just a little something that made me think...cool. It was sort of a slot machine methodology, but it served it's purpose. This was one that worked for me. This movie is a 2.35 film, so you can see my handy dandy masking system in action.
With this picture I wanted to see what an older black and white movie looked like. This is a clip from The Lady from Shanghai. The darks and lights in the image hold up just fine. The side masking curtains help frame it all up nice and clean-like.
This is a classic moment from my favorite Miyazaki movie. This pic shows what anime and other animated material will look like on the big screen. I'm going to be spending a lot of time in the dark.
And lastly, here's a quick picture of Madden 2007 in action. I have no idea how to play this game, but it looks sh-weet. I'll be curious to get some PC gaming going on. I'm not much of a gamer right now, but this might change my mind.