11 April 2011 CI Team

imageI know this post is a little bit "offtopic" but I´m sure that almost every developer/nerd dreams of his own cinema at home.

After I was asked at Twitter about my own solution I thought it would be a good Idea to blog about it.

Setup overview

"Input" equipment

-   Xbox 360

-  MacMini (unfortunately I have the 2009 version without HDMI - that means stupid adapter handicraft work)

- T-Home box as TV receiver

I´ve marked them red in the picture below.

"Output" equipment (now it´s getting interesting Zwinkerndes Smiley)

- Any kind of a Samsung HD Flatscreen in the age of about two years

- The Beamer from Epson EH-TW3200 Full HD

- The devil concept S Set 1+R m. DolbyDigital SW 5.1 for the fitting sound

These are marked blue and green. A special role plays the HDMI switch I´m going to talk about later.

Bildschirmfoto 2011-03-20 um 19.41.22

Beamer-Setup

I´ve searched for a Full HD Beamer which works as quiet as possible and is also suitable for Xbox games. This Epson is what I found:

Like you may see on the picture: it´s not the smallest one. But this wasn´t important for me anyway because I´ve planned to place it on the ceiling. Also I´ve bought a fitting screen. I´ve assembled the screen at the ceiling with an bracket (with the help of someone because I´m not the king of homework Zwinkerndes Smiley ) .

IMG_1041IMG_1040

I´ve found out, that the Lens-Shift function is very practicable to arrange the picture generous. I´ve fixed the beamer with this ceiling bracket at my (plasterboard) ceiling and it works till today Zwinkerndes Smiley.

Of course you can hear the beamer working - it´s almost like the sound of the Xbox 360 (the old ones) - it´s a bit irritating at very quiet scenes if you are concentrated on it.

I didn´t recognize any kinds of trouble with the picture. Also there is now rainbow effect till now. But I can´t recommend you to use it at daylight. The colors are extremely pale even if you change the configurations.

IMG_1036

HDMI Switch

I´ve tried to avoid the annoying cable changes every time I want to use the beamer. I thought the solution is this HDMI Switch.

There are 4 HDMI Inputs and 2 HDMI Outputs + a TOS-Link exit for the sound. The gadget is able to use both exist at the same time (if you need this). Only disadvantages: It´s extremely ugly with the red LEDs and the cables on three sides Zwinkerndes Smiley. You can´t conceal it totally because the remote control needs to stay in contact with the gadget.

Cable

For the connection between HDMI Switch and beamer I´ve used a very cheap 10m HDMI cable. My other gadgets didn´t like this but it was okay for the beamer Smiley Otherwise take a look on the Amazon Basics HDMI cable, I absolutely recommend them to you.

Result

I know it´s just fun but also its dam cool Zwinkerndes Smiley