When we bought our home, it was equipped with a very early home theater. The centerpiece was a Zenith CRT projector, I believe it was a Model 400. This was a very early unit, probably dating back to around 1979. The screen was a 120" diagonal Draper, and the audio was driven by a NEC five channel A/V amp.A Koss component TV tuner handled both cable and off the air sources. The only source was an RCA VCR. The room is very large, approximately 20'x30'. We were quite happy with this setup, since it was our first experience with HT. The only thing we used it for was rental VHS movies, and it was perfectly adequate for the purpose.

In August of 2000, we had a series of terrible lightning storms. For all the noise, there was little apparent damage. Then one day, we sat down to watch a movie and found that a chroma circuit had gone on the Zenith. The result, aside from terrible color, was that the green and blue tubes had brown spots burned in their centers. Having been through the process of getting the Zenith repaired once, I realized that it had to go. Oddly, the NEC amplifier had blown it's fuse. Over the next few weeks, several other appliances turned up broken, including my computer's UPS. The UPS was totally fried, the battery had expanded so much that it couldn't be removed from the case. I realized that it was possible that all of this damage resulted from a lightning strike, either a direct hit, or nearby. By that time, the most expensive items had been disposed of, so insurance was not a possibility. Of course, given the diverse nature of the damage, it would have been tough to prove to the insurance company that we really had a strike. Even if we had, most of the stuff was very old, and had little residual value.

The worst damage was in the Home Theater, which should be no surprise, given the cost and complexity of the equipment. Pretty much everything had to go, and to save money, I decided to shop hard and do the whole install myself. Here was my initial shopping list:
 

1) TV Projector
2) Audio system, including amp, pre amp, FM tuner, tape deck.
3) VCR
4) DVD
5) Satellite system

To this, as we will see, many additional items were added.

Projector Television: Quick Summary

As I mentioned, the original TV was a Zenith, and possibly went back twenty years. Obviously, given the cost and hoped for longevity of this installation, I wanted to replace it with a projector with the deepest possible future. This meant that the new set needed to be HDTV capable.

As I came to understand, there are many possible definitions of HDTV, which at first seemed bewildering. But it's really quite simple: if you think of the screen as being composed of pixels (tiny colored dots for my non-technical readers), there are several possible formats based on the horizontal and vertical pixel counts. The other feature involved is interlacing vs. progressive scan. Traditional TV equipment interlaces, meaning that each frame of information is presented in two overlapping passes. The highest quality HDTV systems are progressive scan, meaning that each frame is presented in one pass. It all boils down to this: if you have a television with a high enough horizontal scan rate (or a large enough pixel field),  it will comply with all currently planned or implemented HDTV formats. NTSC, the standard US video format, requires a scan rate of 15.75MHZ, proposed HDTV standards would require a rate of up to 72MHZ.

Another aspect of video quality is 3:2 pulldown. Movie film is projected at a rate of 24 frames per second, while television typically operates at 30 frames per second. This means that some processing must be done by the publisher of the video material in order to prevent a film from appearing in fast motion when shown on television. The way this is done is that every other frame in the movie is translated to three interlaced frames on television, as opposed to the standard two. This has the effect of making the film appear in proper time, but introduces a number of odd timing artifacts into the resulting picture.

There is an excellent on-line article by Stacey Spears that explains this stuff far better than I could.

There are three main types of projector device: CRT, LCD, and reflective array.

CRT is the easiest to understand. Three picture tubes display the red, green, and blue video information. The output of these tubes is projected onto the screen using three big lenses. The lenses must be carefully aimed to produce the correct image. The process of setting up a CRT, involves focusing each lens, converging them (i.e., making certain they are all aimed at the same spot), and correcting geometry. This last step, usually a combination of  electronic and physical adjustments, corrects distortions which arise as a result of the position of the projector relative to the screen. For example, if the projector is mounted at ceiling height, the picture will tend to be wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, called a "keystone effect". This type of error is corrected in the geometry adjustment process. As a general rule, CRT's offer the best video fidelity, but the highest cost and most complex installation. They also have relatively low light output, usually this means that you usually must view in a darkened room.

With LCD, a transparent liquid crystal array displays the three primary colors, and using a projector lamp, this is projected onto the screen through a single lens. These are the simplest and cheapest devices. Because a single projector lens and LCD are employed, the installation process is much simplified, there is no convergence required with an LCD. They are also the lowest cost devices, and are the most forgiving when it comes to positioning. They are very poor at displaying dark scenes, as blacks are generally closer to gray. Another drawback is a "screen door" effect, which can be annoying when viewed close up. This is effect resembles fine horizontal and vertical lines which appear all across the image. They arise because each cell in the LCD array is inconsistently illuminated, with the brightness falling off sharply at the edges of the cell. As a result, each pixel will display against a black background. Another issue is that LCD projectors use high wattage projector bulbs, which need to be replaced after roughly 1000 hours of operation. The high wattage also means that they require fans, which can be noisy, especially if the unit isn't well designed.

Reflective arrays (D-ILA and DLP technology) are more complicated. A special semiconductor array does the work. This array is similar to an LCD but rather than changing the color of a pixel, each cell in the array can become reflective depending on the signal applied. Red, green and blue information is alternately presented on the reflective surface.  An inscrutable arrangement of lights and prisms is manipulated so that the primary colors shine on the reflective array in a carefully synchronized sequence. Some of the more expensive units have multiple reflective arrays, one for each color. While the photo mechanics is complex, it is all lined up at the factory, and needs little or no adjustment in the field. From an installation viewpoint, these projectors are no more complicated than LCD's. They use extremely powerful projector bulbs, thus offering the highest possible light output. Reflective projectors can usually be viewed in a fully lit room. Picture quality is better than LCD, with darker blacks and much less screen door effect. The biggest downside is that the heat produced by the powerful bulb must be vented with a large fan, the noise can be annoying, especially with the cheaper units. The projector bulbs are also extremely expensive, and require replacement every 1000 hours.

My Dilemma

At first I looked at the cheaper units described at Projector Central, and thought to myself how lucky I was to have so many affordable choices. Then reality set in.

My Home Theater had been using a 120" diagonal screen. The mount point of the Zenith projector was located 173" in front of the screen. Given a 27" long projector case, the lenses were located 169.5" from the screen.  The first of many geometry calculations now comes into play. The dimensions of my screen were 96"Wx72"H. The ratio of  projector lens distance to screen width is called the "throw ratio". This important number tells you where you can locate your projector. If you're quick, you already know that the throw ratio for my Zenith was 169.5/96, or 1.76.

In order to replace the Zenith, without moving the mount center or changing screens, all I had to do was to find a projector which had a throw ratio of around 1.76. Sounds easy? I looked at literally dozens of projectors. Most CRTs have throw ratios of about 1.3, some D-ILA's have throw ratios of about 2.1 or more. There's almost nothing made today with the correct TR. The few projectors that might have worked are cheaper LCD units, I wasn't happy with their video fidelity. It's also possible to order special lenses for some top-of-the-line 9" CRT projectors, but this would require far more cash than I was prepared to pay.

My first option was changing the mount point. This isn't easy in my room. The entire room, as I was about to find out, was engineered around the capabilities of the Zenith projector, or perhaps it was just a miraculous bit of luck that it worked. The room has an open cathedral ceiling with three exposed double joists at 86.5" intervals along it's length. This gave me three possible mount points, three acceptable throw ratios: .882, 1.76, 2.64 ....none of these work with modern projectors!  The last position was especially unacceptable, since it would have placed the projector behind the couch. I worked out the geometry of this arrangement: you would have had to scrunch down to allow the image to hit the screen! I was stuck in search of an alternative.

I first considered dropping a mount from the roof line to support the projector at a 1.3 throw ratio. The standard way of doing this is with a vertically suspended pipe. This would have been very ugly, and would have spoiled the open feel of the room.

The next solution I considered was to use a D-ILA projector, such as a JVC or Dukane. The throw distance for these units is adjustable, but at the most appropriate setting, the projector would still need to be centered about a foot behind the center joist. Being fairly lightweight, this did not present an insurmountable problem, as a cantilevered mount would be easy enough to fabricate. The issue that made me hesitant was the light bulbs. These units use a 420 watt xenon projector bulb. To cool the bulb, they have very powerful fans. I spent a lot of time looking into this, discovered that some owners had built hush boxes to control the noise, and added additional cooling to control the waste heat. This was a major issue, as the projector would have ended up directly above the couch, so noise and heat would have been very obvious. I needed to find a different solution.

I next considered a wide range of LCD projectors. Some of these actually had throw distances close to what I needed. Unfortunately, I was becoming a video snob, and I found the screen door effect, poor black levels,  and various other pixel artifacts intolerable.

My only choice was a CRT. This was the only way to get the video quality I was looking for, along with quiet operation and no need to replace light bulbs periodically. But this left me with the problem of throw distance. I contacted USPL, which is the company that makes virtually every projector lens for every manufacturer. I went down a list of possible projectors from Sony, Barco, Runco, Dwin, etc. There were simply no affordable combination of projector and 1.76 throw replacement lenses. It just couldn't be done.

A dealer suggested that I could reuse the lenses in the Zenith to modify someone else's projector to the correct throw ratio. At this point, the time was right to deal with the decommissioning of the Zenith. The Zenith was suspended at a height of seven feet or so. It weighed roughly 130 lbs. Did I mention that CRT projectors are massively heavy? I had previously had some experience getting it down, it once needed an in-shop repair. The method was to tie a nylon harness around it, then lower it down with a set of pulleys. You wouldn't think it, but it's a one man job when it's done right. An understanding of simple mechanics is helpful.

Once down, I considered hauling it off for trash collection. I decided that it would be easier on me, not to mention the trash guys, if I broke it up into pieces. I wanted to retrieve the lenses, in any event. So I went to work with screwdrivers, wrenches, and wire cutters. In a half hour I turned what had once been a state of the art television into a pile of broken up components. Unfortunately, the exercise helped no one but the trash man. The tubes were tiny five inchers, the lenses wouldn't work on anything new. I toted everything off in little trash bags. For some reason, don't ask me why, I've hung on to the lens array, it's just too cool to toss.

So I now needed to find a way of mounting a modern CRT projector at 172". There would be no lens replacement. Moving the set forward to the next beam and using a smaller screen would not work in the room, which is 30 feet deep. This meant that the screen had to be larger, I had to go to an enormous 144" diagonal. I ended up installing a new Vutec, with 1.3 gain. Gain is the relative ability of the screen to reflect light. A 1.3 gain is moderately high, the idea is that the relatively low light output of a CRT projector needs the extra reflectivity to show well, especially on a large screen. Enlarging the screen allowed me to mount a projector in approximately the correct position.

The projector I chose is a Dwin 700, which has 7" CRT's. The throw ratio of this projector is 1.3. Even with the huge screen, the projector required a cantilevered mount to place it's center just forward of the supporting beam.  The Dwin projector, at under 60 lbs, is the heaviest projector for which this would have been a viable solution. I probably could have placed the projector on center on the beam, but that would have required the picture to be electronically reduced, meaning less light output. The Dwin promised quiet operation, high video fidelity, and a deep future. The projector was ordered, and I was ready to turn my attention elsewhere.

Video Processor

Dwin projector works at a maximum horizontal scan rate of 65mhz, roughly four times what you would find on a standard television set. It's minimum scan rate is 32.5MHZ, twice NTSC. The higher scan rate is the essential characteristic of high definition television. The Dwin will be compatible with essentially all the HDTV formats I'm likely to encounter over it's lifetime. The problem this creates is that, in order to display a standard 16MHZ NTSC or PAL program, something has to be done to convert to the higher scan rate. This is accomplished with a video processor.

Video processors come in two flavors...line doublers and scalers. Line doublers depend on the fact that an image, or frame, in a TV signal is transmitted in two sweeps. Each sweep contains half of the information, and the sweeps are interlaced...that is, the image is broken up into horizontal lines, each half frame composed of either even or odd lines. The half frames are displayed consecutively. This happens very quickly, so that visually it appears that one continuous motion is occurring, but in fact you are seeing a series of still frames, displayed half at a time in rapid succession. An artifact of this process is that the image appears transected by horizontal black lines. A line doubler simply takes the two half scans, puts them back together, and displays them in one sweep, sort of like shuffling a deck of cards. The picture looks more realistic, with fewer visible horizontal lines.

Scalers are more sophisticated. Imagine a digital still image, with more detail than you could possibly display on your television. That image would be composed of millions of pixels, but they would be so small that, to you, it would look like a superbly detailed photograph. Superimpose a television frame on this digital array, and you end up with about 475 lines of information, and various undesirable artifacts resulting from the interlacing process described above. Now imagine a computer so fast and smart, that it can reconstruct each frame from the interlaced source, effectively creating a seamless progressive frame format. It can do this frame by frame as 30 frames a second stream from your video source. It can then digitally reformat, resize, and output each frame in the most appropriate format for display by your television set. Some of them can even correct for the timing effects created by 3:2 pulldown.  Scalers are super fast video processing computers which can create a video image almost as clear as film, if your television will allow that.

Dwin makes a scaler, called the Transcanner, which is usually sold as a set with the projector. I chose to use a different unit, because of my cost constraints. I considered scalers from Communications Specialties (Deuce) and Extron before concluding that a Focus Enhancements Quadscan Pro was suitable for the task, and very well priced.

For more information about video technology, HDTV and scaling, visit Inline's website.

Audio/Video Components

It seemed pointless improving the video without an simultaneous upgrade on the audio side. Fortunately, I already owned a lot of what I'd need, or so I thought.

The room had been equipped (by whoever originally fitted it out) with four speakers. The two front speakers were A/D/S 790's. They have a very nice sound. I don't believe that A/D/S makes audiophile equipment any longer. The rear speakers were an ancient pair of Rectilinears. The sound had always been a bit weak for the room (which is very large), so I thought it would be nice to add some side channels, a center, and a sub woofer. Fortunately, I already had a pair of Kef 104's. I had purchased these in 1990, and they are wonderful speakers, if a bit vintage in appearance. These were pressed into service as the side channels.

For the center, I purchased an Acoustic Research speaker at Sears. It was an impulse purchase, the speaker happened to be on sale. This proved to be dumb, as thrown into the mix with three other brands of speaker, the resulting sound was a mix of good, bad, and indifferent. I returned the A/R speaker. (Sears is wonderful about returns, I just had to mention that.) I ordered a Kef center, which proved to be a happy combo, especially with the 104's. Speaker nirvanna still has not been achieved.

I looked around a bit, and chose a Sunfire True Sub Woofer. This is the sub designed by Bob Carver in his latest business incarnation. If you follow the goings on in the audio world, Bob Carver split from Carver Corp. several years back, and a bit of rivalry went on afterwards. Carver Corp. fell on hard times, and Bob Carver was able to take control again about a year ago. Today, Carver Corp. seems to be pretty much gone, and all the product comes from the Sunfire side of the house. All of which means nothing. Except that Sunfire makes a very nice powered sub woofer, it's rated at 2700 watts, and the sound is very smooth. That rating may pop your eyes, but as I expound on the engineering of this room, you will see that rated output ain't what it appears to be. That's not a blow at Sunfire, all the manufacturers have funny ways of measuring output. This is an important point, which I'll be getting back to shortly.

Next came the amplifiers. Yes, plural. The room originally had an ancient NEC five channel amp, which had  blown it's fuses. That was replaced a while ago with a Nakamichi A/V receiver. The Nak was too small for the room, it never had enough power to drive the speakers as they should. So out it went, as well.

I had, in my attic collection of unused components, an old Sony TA-N77ES. This is a wonderful two channel amp, very clean and powerful. It was originally purchased to drive the Kef's. The Kef's are a very difficult 4ohm load, the other two amps had no shot at driving them with any authority. With the side channels now taken care of, and the sub-woofer self powered, that only left the front, rear, and center speakers needing amplification. I needed an A/V amp. After looking at lots of specs, doing a due diligence search, I ended up buying a factory sealed Carver 705. The last few of these is being discounted aggressively by anyone who still has stock. As was mentioned before, Bob Carver has pretty much discontinued the Carver nameplate in favor of Sunfire. If he plans to resurrect it again, I don't know, and I don't care. The fact that Carver is disappearing gave me an opportunity to buy this terrific amplifier for a fraction of what it would have cost a year ago. Why would I buy anything else?

Next came the pre amp. I had on hand an old Sony 1000ESD A/V pre amp, 1990 vintage. This was a very advanced unit for it's day, supporting Toslink, S-Video, a whole range of hall effects, and Dolby Pro Logic. Unfortunately, it didn't support the latest digital surround formats, i.e. Dolby Digital and MTS. The solution was to use an external digital processor, in this case a Technics AC500D, to work in tandem with the Sony, and process digital sources. The problem was that the Technics unit is either out of production, or in very scarce supply. I never did find out which. I had to contact dozens of sources, and do an all out Internet search, before I located one. At least it was cheap. I'm surprised there aren't more vendors in this space, it's a technology that can extend the life of an old pre amp like mine, I'm sure there are many others who can benefit from it.

The DVD I chose is a Denon 3300, which is their latest, using 24bit, 192khz audio DACs, and 10bit, 28mhz video DACs. I leave it to my readers to research the importance of a fast DAC. It has the ability to basically play anything that's round and digital, CD or DVD, audio or video, and deliver it at the highest possible level of fidelity.

Rounding out the audio is a Sony 730ES tuner, Sony WR11ES transcribing cassette drive, and my old Thorens 125 turntable. Most of these components had been part of my stereo system since 1990.

While setting all this up, I accidently short circuited two of my speakers, a Kef 104 and an A/D/S 790. I have no idea how I did this, but I blew out the tweeters in both speakers. After doing some research, I discovered that both brands were serviced by Regnar/Dahlquist. This was a surprise, as I would have thought that they would shy away from competitive equipment, but I guess repairs help business. They are authorized US rebuilders for both brands. I removed the tweeters, and sent them off. They came back promptly, as good as new.

On the video side, I spent some time researching VCR's, and at first chose a JVC 3800. This unit was DOA. When I returned it to Circuit City, there was a guy in line in front of me returning the exact same unit. I decided to get something different, rather than just ask for an exchange, and CC had plenty to choose from. I ended up with a Sony SLVN80. Not even an S-VHS unit, but good enough for now.

In 1980, I bought my first VCR, it was an RCA, and cost about $600. It was a heavy, substantial machine, and it has given years of reliable service. Today, the vendors seem to be trying to phase out VCR, it's really an impediment to the acceptance of HDTV. After all, what's the point in owning a high definition television, if your VCR can't even produce good video quality at NTSC scan rates? The hot technology, at least for pre recorded stuff, is DVD. As for recording, the jury is still out. There are several competing formats: Tivo and Replay TV for time-shifting, and D-VHS and recordable DVD for archival recording. There are even more far-fetched alternatives if you include web and computer based technologies. My feeling is, let them fight it out. I'll use DVD as my primary source for now, and worry about recording when the future is a bit more clear. Meanwhile, an ordinary VHS VCR will have to do. There's very  little money involved, my $600 RCA, adjusted for 20 year's inflation, sold for about $1500. By contrast, you would have to work hard to spend more than $200 on a VCR today, and it's possible to buy a perfectly acceptable unit for $100. They're made poorly though, no substance to them. In time, we'll all be going digital.

Satellite

We had never had a video source other than VCR or off-the-air antenna. There's a story to this, which I don't care to relate, but the bottom line is, we didn't sign up for cable when we bought the house. Starting with a fresh look, I decided to install satellite, and went with Dish Network.

Dish offers any number of promotional deals. They all basically allow you somewhere around $200 towards the installation. Note that this isn't the same as "free installation" or "free equipment", it's a $200 credit which may or may not cover all your costs. It's possible to install this amount of equipment and end up with a working system, perhaps even with change in your pocket, but it didn't work for me. Here's an idea of what's involved in "going satellite", from the dish on down.

There are several satellites in the Dish network. These orbit above the equator. Their orbits are designed to be in lock step with the revolution of the earth. If the earth revolves once a day, as it does most days, the satellite will complete an orbit in exactly one day. If you think about it, that means that from the surface of the earth, the satellite appears to be standing still, because it is spinning around the earth exactly as fast as the earth is spinning on its own axis. Let this sink in a minute, perhaps draw it out, until it makes sense.

The point is, from the roof of your house, the various satellites in the Dish network will always appear to occupy the same relative position in the sky, all the time. The dish can be mounted, pointed to one spot, and need never move another millimeter.

There are really three satellites of interest, these are known by their longitude. They are at 67W, 110W, and 119W degrees. The two satellites at 110 and 119, separated only by a few degrees, can be received with a single dish. This is what Dish 500 is all about. The other satellite, which hovers somewhere south of  Bermuda, would require an additional dish, since it's off in another direction. (I'm writing from New York, the satellites don't move, but the need for multiple dishes may vary in different parts of the world.)

The various satellites carry different programming. The 110 and 119 birds are really the core Dish offerings, carrying "free" programming, movie channels, and selected local channels. The 67 bird carries non-English language stuff, and happens to carry all the HDTV traffic as well. This means that if you want to receive HDTV, you need a second dish. I've opted not to do that for the moment, my bet is that this will eventually change.

For key markets, Dish carries local programming. For an extra five bucks a month, you can get all the local programming that you would be able to get via cable. There is an odd qualification process involved to make sure you only get programming earmarked for your area: you aren't supposed to receive LA channels if you're in Chicago, and so on. They have a way of enforcing that.

There are two key parts to the satellite antenna...the dish itself and the LNB. I don't remember what LNB stands for, doesn't matter for this discussion. The LNB is the thing that sticks out in front of the dish. It's really a part of the receiver. If you opened this component up, you would find an antenna and an amplifier. For the Dish 500 system, since you are receiving from two satellites, you need a twin LNB, essentially two antennas in one. If you have a second receiver (more about this later), you will need a second LNB, so you install a unit called a dual twin LNB. Don't be confused. Essentially what this boils down to is that your receiver needs an antenna that's mounted on the dish. If you have two receivers, you will need two antennas, which can be packaged into one neat unit. If you have more than two receivers, well, we'll get to that in a bit.

Installing the dish is simple, but painstaking. You need to first locate the satellite. Don't worry about this step. If you know your zip code, Dish will tell you the location of the satellite, no math involved. Thus, we can all be rocket scientists for a day. The location of the satellite is specified as a declination and an azimuth. The declination is the position of the satellite relative to magnetic north, as read from the handy dandy compass supplied with the install kit. The azimuth is the upward angle of the dish relative to horizontal, as read from the scale stamped onto the back of the mount. Find a mounting point on your roof where you have a clear view of the appropriate point in the sky. Avoid anything that might block the view: houses, trees, etc. Mount the mast exactly vertical, measuring carefully with a spirit level, shim it out if you need to, it has to be as precise as you can make it. Then attach the dish, setting it at the correct declination and azimuth.

If you've taken it slow, measured everything carefully, the dish will be dead on target. When you connect it up to your receiver, you will be able to display the signal strength on your TV, just jog the dish a bit to get the strongest signal, and tighten everything down. If you don't have a signal, you've done something wrong, go back and measure carefully.

Let's talk a bit about receivers. There are several receivers which will work with Dish Network. All of them are sold by Dish, I wouldn't go with anything that didn't have their blessing.  The receiver plays a role similar to a cable box. It takes the digital signals from the satellite, decodes them, and coverts them to a format that your TV can handle...typically, an NTSC picture on channel 3 or 4. You must use a satellite receiver to perform this function, unlike cable, there are no TV's that I know of that can do this internally. This means that if you want to have more than one TV, each showing more than one channel, you will need individual receivers for each TV. You want to minimize the number of receivers you use because they cost money up front (they eat into that $200 rebate), and they cost about $5.00 per month to operate.

If you can live with more than one TV, all playing the same program, they can all be driven by one receiver. To make this situation more acceptable, the Dish 4700 line of receivers is UHF radio controlled, rather than infrared. This means that you need not be in the same room as the receiver to work the clicker. You can buy an extra clicker for each TV driven by the box, and that will be able to find the receiver, even if there are walls separating you.

But if you need to provide different progamming for different sets, you will need multiple receivers. If you have two receivers, they should each be connected to an independent LNB on the dish, as has been mentioned. If you have more than two receivers, then you will need to add a special switch to split the signal from an LNB into as many parts as you need. You cannot use the simple splitters used in cable installations, since you are splitting a digital signal. The other point is that the LNB up on the dish is normally powered through the antenna cable by the receiver. The switch will take care of powering the LNB, in addition to splitting the signal.

You are going to have to decide just how "free" you want your installation to be. The cheaper receivers (typically Dish 2700's) that come with the basic package are infra red controlled. That means that you must be in the same room as the receiver to click it. The next step up, the 3000 series, is similar to the 2700, but comes with a universal remote. This is nice, it allows you to control your TV as well as the cable box with a single clicker.

If you're using one receiver to drive TV's in different rooms, you will need to upgrade to a Dish 4700, which supports both infra red and UHF radio clickers. The dish 5000 and 6100 series are the only units with support HDTV, and need an expensive add on unit to accomplish that trick.

Beyond this, there are specialized receivers (Dish 7100 et al), which support Web TV and Web Player, a recording system comparable to TIVO.

Getting back on track, My dish installation went flawlessly, I hit the satellite dead on in my first attempt. I installed two Dish 4700's, which, tapped into my existing coax cable plant, allows distribution of two independent channels anywhere in the house, including the home theater. One Dish 4700 is co located with the HT equipment, allowing it to drive the audio system via a Toslink connection, and video via S-VHS. Locally, I use a universal infrared remote to control both the Dish system and all the other A/V equipment. In other rooms, a UHF remote can control the 4700.

Dish offers a buffet of services, you choose the ones you want, but each has a monthly fee associated with it. Your subscription privileges are managed by the receiver. Basically Dish Network sends a signal up to the satellite with your subscription info and id information, this is beamed back to all dishes, including yours. Your receiver will read these messages, understand that they belong to you, and decode them. Based on the information received, your subscriptions will be enabled. To prevent this information from having to be continuously read and interpreted, the receiver stores it locally on something that looks like a credit card. From that point on, the receiver will know what you are entitled to view, and will decode only that programming from the satellite broadcast.

And that's about it. Installation, if you are careful, can be done in a day or less. Hitting that satellite is a very exciting moment, I would encourage anyone to try this.

Wiring

My wife is amazed at the quantity of cabling involved in setting up this room. I think the total count is 72 interconnects, not counting speaker cables. Supplying copper for this room has kept the mining industry in Chile and Colorado busy for most of the year.

If you follow the audiophile scene, you will know that cables are a big deal in that community. It's not unusual for a dedicated hobbyist to spend $150 for a set of interconnects, and it's possible to spend much more. While I don't discount the need for good wiring, I find it impossible to hear enough difference to justify spending more than $5 a cable, especially when so much wire is involved.

Most of my interconnects are simple Radio Shack Gold wires. There is an audible difference (to me) between these and the unshielded zip cord connectors that sometimes come free with new equipment. So a little bit of investment pays off. But going to the next level, or even spending immense amounts of money on cables, does nothing that I can hear. I've read many write ups, pro and con of high-end connectors, I understand what people are saying, and what I say is, if I can't hear it, why spend?

For digital links, all Toslink in my setup, I'm even less discriminating. Anything that fits in the socket and conducts light is ok with me. The prices people will pay for this stuff is incredible, yet optical connections do away with virtually all transmission problems. The only criteria I apply is that they work, the only alternative is that they don't. There are no shades of gray, no good sound vs poor sounding optical cables. Digital cables either work or they don't. If they don't work, you will hear dropouts...silent spots in the audio program. Spending a lot of money on Toslink cables makes no sense to me.

The Dwin projector needed a special cable, BNC-RGBHV on one side, 15 pin D-Connector on the other. I had it made up from Belden components. It's my only expensive cable, and it wasn't all that expensive.

The four existing speakers had a hodgepodge of wiring. The front speakers had been connected with a very expensive set of silver conductor shielded cables, as was one of the rear speakers. The surprise was that one of the rears had a very unusual connection method. There happened to be a telephone box near the amplifier cabinet, and the wiring for it passed near one of the rear speakers. The unused black/yellow pair in this set up was used to carry the signal to the rear speaker, which was tapped into the telephone line with a hunk of the silver shielded wire. Want to know the funny part? There was no difference audible to me between the two speakers, none. OK, the old Rectilinears aren't the best speakers, but still, they sounded exactly the same. Just to be safe, I replaced this connection with a length of 16 guage zip cord. Audiophiles would be cringing at this point, but they probably stopped reading a while ago.

I next wired up the two side channels and the center, the Kef's. These need low resistance conductors, since their impedance is just 4 ohms. Given the long runs, big guage wire was required. I used 12 gauge AR cable.

The Sunfire powered sub woofer, being self amplified, connected directly to the sub woofer output on the pre amp. At first I simply used an extended length of 16 gauge zip cord for the purpose. But I ran into an immediate problem with 60 cycle hum. The 2700 Watt amplifier was using the zip cord like an antenna, and picking up RF interference from the house wiring. It took me quite a while, and many experiments, to realize that this was what was happening. In the end, I replaced the zip cord with a run of my favorite Radio Shack shielded cable, and the hum was brought under control.

A great deal of time was spent making installing all the cabling behind the walls, or otherwise out of sight. You just can't walk into a room like this and see a mass of dripping cables, it has to look neat. There's no point in going into the details about this, they are unique to my room.

Power

I admit to having a unique advantage with regard to my power supply. The former owners of our home were power junkies....everything electric, from hot water to heat. They had an electric deer fence, and more lamps than you can imagine. Their power bill was over $1000 monthly during peak season. We simply shut most of their stuff off, and replaced electric heat and hot water with oil baseboard, and our power bill became unexceptional. The legacy of this excess is an overdesigned power system. I have 480 volts coming off the pole, the transformer is right in my back yard. This is dedicated to just our house. There are two 200 amp panels. The living room has dozens of handy outlets, and they are all fed from the same phase. This  arrangement eliminates most common power problems.

The things people do with power amazes me. Just amazes me. Let's step back a moment and talk about some of the problems you can encounter. First of all, having been struck by lightning, I can tell you that it's possible to have a power surge coming down the line which destroys your equipment. The solution for that is to use a good surge arrestor, although I'm not convinced there's any defense for a direct lightning hit. The semiconductor devices used by most surge arrestors are consumed over time, so you may want to replace them every five or ten years. That argues against spending a huge lot of money on surge protection.

Beyond surges, there are many nasty things that can happen with power. You can get under or over voltages, transients, improper phasing, and RF interference. While all of these are potential problems, the solutions which are being sold for these problems is amazing. There are replacement power cords which promise to reduce RF interference by some means, magic or electronic I know not. There are also power filters which can block RF interference. The ultimate are power regenerators, which essentially use line current to power a sort of electronic generator. It can get nuts.

Some of this is very real. If you live in an area with a poorly regulated power supply, or if your lines are prone to various types of noise and interference, filtering is probably called for. Without a careful analysis of the problem, which requires an ocilloscope, selecting the proper solution is little more than guesswork. Sometimes the problem can be solved by putting an RF filter in the power circuit, sometimes by cleaning up the ground connection. But the high end  power regenerators are over the top. In my view, they turn your power into something it shouldn't be...they can alter the frequency from 60HZ, varying it by as much as 30HZ. They can change the shape of the wave form from a pure sine wave to, well, something else. I like to feed my equipment with 125V, 60HZ power as it was designed for, anything else is scary. I don't care how much the sound and picture improves, this equipment is too expensive to risk.

If you are considering any of the higher end power equipment, ask the manufacturer whether the device is UL listed. The odds are, it isn't. UL is very conservative, being sponsored by the insurance industry. Some of the really over the top stuff probably can't pass muster. Imagine explaining to your agent that you had a fire, and finding out that you aren't covered because your stereo equipment wasn't UL approved. Ouch.

Having some test equipment may help you decide what you need. I have at my disposal a scope, a frequency meter, an amp clamp, and a voltmeter. With these, I determined that I happen to have a clean power feed (thank you, Con Edison). My biggest problem, drawing power from the pole, is that storms and wind sometimes interrupt my service. There's nothing other than a generator that will fix that. Your results may vary.

I am using a Monster Power 2500 for surge protection. It appears to be an adequate surge protector, and it gives me one power switch for the entire setup. It also stages the various devices as they power up or down, so that I'm not blowing fuses. Whatever it does as far as filtering goes I believe is unnecessary, but doesn't hurt. The problem I see with this device, and with almost all audiophile power equipment, is that it isn't UL listed. For that reason, it will be replaced as soon as I can get around to it.

This is a good place to talk about grounding. Do enough of this stuff, and you will run into a ground loop sooner or later. A ground loop occurs when the grounding connection on one piece of a/v equipment is better than the ground on another interconnected device.If this happens, AC power can leak through from one device to the other via the grounding shields of the audio connectors. The result is an audible 60 cycle hum.

These loops can be devilishly hard to locate, and tricky to fix. As a rough rule of thumb, plugging everything into the same circuit will cure the problem. Of course, when you are dealing with thousands of watts of audio and video equipment, this is impossible. Furthermore, the loop can be caused not only by a faulty ground in the power circuit, but by the grounding connection on your satellite antenna or cable feed! Sometimes, you can use an isolation transformer to kill ground loops. This is a device which plugs into the interconnect cable and prevents the grounding shields from directly connecting. Most of these transformers are inexpensive devices, which unfortunately means that you can lose fidelity if you use them. Another trick is to use an attenuating resistor between the shield and the plug on one side of the interconnect. In effect, this presents a higher resistance path to the power that's trying to leak through, it will find ground through some other path. This may affect the amplitude of the sound, especially if a lot of resistance is required, so you can't always use this technique.

I encountered a ground loop when I connected up the Sunfire Sub Woofer, which was the source of many noise and interference problems due to being remote from the rest of the audio equipment. The problem this time was that the Sunfire was on a different branch circuit from the rest of the audio equipment. I temporarily moved it to the same circuit with a suitable extension cord. This removed the loop, but left me with the question of whether the branch circuit would be overloaded. In fact, I've proven by direct measurement that the manufacturer's claimed wattages are hugely overstated in relation to the actual power draw of the equipment. I attribute this to the fact that I don't listen to music with the amps anywhere near full volume. Thus, there is relatively low current draw, despite having nearly 4000 watts of amplification on tap. I would also guess that the various manufacturers rate their products, shall we say, generously.

A word about antenna grounding. If you can't do it right, don't do it at all. Here's why. The antenna ground is intended to discharge any static that builds up from the reaction of the antenna to the wind, and to protect your equipment from lightning. (You should use a surge protector on the antenna connections, as well as the power connections.) The antenna ground wire should connect to a proper grounding stake. This is a steel or copper shaft driven deep into the ground: anywhere from 6 to 20 feet, depending on the soil. Yes, that's very deep. Yes, it has to be. The grounding stake should also be wired directly to the house ground. Why? Because the quality of this ground may be better or worse than that applied to the power circuit, but the odds are, it won't be identical. As a result, you can get ground loops. Worst case, you can end up grounding your whole power system through your antenna, creating a very serious safety hazard.

Mounting the Projector

The Dwin 700 projector is a fairly heavy piece of equipment, weighing in at 60 lbs. There is a double twelve inch joist in my room at the 172" mount point. The problem is, the center of the projector had to be approximately 11 inches forward of this point, thus had to be cantelevered from the joist. To accomplish this trick, I used an 18"x18" aluminum plate. The plate is 3/8" thick, and is made of 6061-T5 aluminum, which is very strong. This was bolted to the joists using 2"x1/4 lag bolts and high strength washers. Four 1"x3/16" aluminum straps were run from the front edge of the aluminum plate to the face of the joist, held in place by 2"x1/4" lag bolts on the joist side and 3/4"x1/4" bolts on the plate side. Grade 8 hardware was used throughout. All hardware, including the aluminum stock, was purchased from McMaster-Carr.

The ceiling  mount was supplied with the projector. This bears mentioning, because with most CRT projectors, you need to buy a mount separately. With the Dwin, it's included. It's a pretty good mount, too. It allows the unit to be moved forward or back, up and down, and angled in various ways. Simple words, but so important when you are trying to do precision work.  This mount was bolted directly to the cantelevered aluminum plate.

I can't simply lift a clumsy 60 pound projector into position, seven feet in the air. The way I did it was with a painter's scaffold. I placed the projector on the platform, which was set at about 4 feet high. I then lifted the platform one side at a time, one rung at a time. This gave me leverage needed to make the lifting easy. When I was within a foot of the mount, I slid a 1" thick plywood board under the projector. I then used a hydraulic jack to lift it the final few inches into place. There are two big bolts that secure the projector to the mount, and four smaller allen screws that lock it in position. The four positioning screws are removed while you mount it. To lock the projector to the mount, you hook the two big bolts into J shaped slots in the mount, then tighten them down. The shape of the slots makes it very easy to get the projector up and into position. The bolts found their way into the J slots and the projector just dropped into place. Not bad for a weenie...

Projector Set up

I had been anticipating the set up task for quite some time. There is an excellent online  article by Stacey Spears which describes the installation of a Dwin 700, I read it several times. The installation procedure in the article goes beyond what's ordinarily done, and describes some fairly advanced tweaking tricks. I have initially done a simpler installation, right from the Dwin user guide. Eventually, I will come back and do some serious tweaking, but I will wait a while to give the projector a chance to break in.

The process is fairly simple, if time consuming. The projector has built in diagnostics that help you. First, you display a test pattern and make sure that the lenses are each aimed and focussed. This is accomplished one color at a time, starting with green. Aiming is done by loosening the lens mounting screws and adjusting the center of the projected field to the center of the screen. Then focussing is accomplished by rotating the lens until the pattern is sharp. There are separate focus adjustments for the center of the picture and the edges of the picture. Both are accomplished by loosening wing nuts on the lens collars, and rotating the lens until you are happy with the result. It was also necessary for me to adjust the electronic focus of the CRT's. This process involves opening the case and adjusting three potentiometers until the image is sharp. The blue adjustment should be left slightly out of focus to improve light output.

The lenses should be mechanically converged during this process, that is to say, all three patterns should exactly overlap at the center of the screen. It's unlikely that you can obtain convergence over the whole screen by mechanical means, but the closer you get, the better the result will be.

Next  step is geometry. If you think about how the projector is constructed, the green lens is firing almost straight at the center of the screen.  Being mounted at the ceiling, it's possible that some distortion can sneak in, since you are aiming at a downward angle. This is called "keystone", because the image will be larger at the bottom than at the top. The red and blue lenses are firing at even more difficult angles, since they must be angled down, just as the green lens, but also left or right, in order to hit center. The Dwin has an electronic  mechanism for correcting these geometry errors. It's possible to correct keystone effects by stretching or shrinking each color field to fit the screen. It's possible to adjust horizontal and vertical linearity, size, and position of the test pattern. It's even possible to adjust the tilt of the image to compensate for minor errors in projector mounting. When you are done with the geometry correction process, your pattern will be white and sharp at the center, but will probably break up into primary colors as you move towards the edge of the screen.

The picture is then converged electronically. A test pattern consisting of a fine grid is projected on the screen. When red, blue and green are perfectly converged, there is a sharp, clear, and most importantly, white pattern. Out of the box, there will be points on the screen where one color or another is off-grid. You use a sort of mouse control to point to a section of the screen that's breaking up, and electronically stretch or shrink the grids just in that location. You move around the screen in a spiral from the center, by the time you reach the edges, the grid is perfect.

There are additional setting for gray level, brightness, contrast, etc., these are fairly straightforward. A colorimeter is needed to get all this just so, but my eyeball settings make me happy for now.

It took me about five hours to get the projector set up, and I had never done it before. The picture quality is excellent, but I know how I could do better. After the Dwin has had about 50 hours of operation to burn in, it's my intent to redo the entire set up process.

A Word About Air Conditioning

If you look carefully at the photo a the top of this page, notice that thereis a row of small holes above my screen. These are the exit ports for the air conditioning system. We had the luxury of remodeling a portion of this room, and in the process, replaced the conventional A/C with a Unico mini-duct system. This system uses small ducts which can be snaked through the wall similar to the way you'd run an electrical wire. The ducts terminate in specially shaped vents, which are designed to produce laminar flow, or in theater speak, they make no noise. The system which drives this is a standard compressor, feeding a high pressure air handler. It's no more complicated that a ducted A/C setup, and it's dead silent and ice cold.

Impressions

I'm currently running the Dwin and the Quadscan in Triple TV mode (720x720). The projector seems quite happy at this resolution. I find that this setting gives the best compromise between picture quality, brightness, and minimization of scan artifacts. Scan lines are barely visible when standing up close to the screen, and are invisible from any reasonable viewing position. The overall impression is very film-like.

At higher resolutions (720x960, 1024x768), the picture is a bit soft, perhaps an inevitable artifact of scaling up from NTSC, perhaps due to limitations of the 7" tubes, or perhaps an artifact unique to the Quadscan. Brightness seems to suffer, at higer res.

The Quadscan is capable of delivering many other display formats. It's just time consuming to adjust both the Quadscan and the Dwin for each combination. In time, I will add additional options. Another thing I should point out is that the Quadscan runs quite hot, mostly due to it's tiny enclosure. If I were doing it again, I would get the rack mount version, which has a larger case.

There is a very minor issue with focus at the extreme upper edges that I have to fiddle with, the lens aim may be slightly off. I will leave this until the 50 hour tune up. The Vutec, with a 1.3 gain screen, has a just noticeable hot spot at the center, this may have something to do with my edge focus problem.

The brightness and contrast controls are set at what I would have thought very low levels...17 for brightness, 28 for contrast. This on a scale of 100. I'm very pleased with the Dwin's ability to light the big screen well at these levels. Part of the credit goes to the Quadscan, which can electronically adjust brightness and contrase, relieving the projector of this burden. Despite this success, I think the 144" screen is a stretch for the Dwin, certainly anything larger would be out of the question, there just isn't enough light output.

Future Enhancements

Audio will need further work. The speakers need to be balanced, center is definitely too hot. The Rectilinear rear speakers have had their day, I will need to replace them at some point. I'm also not crazy about having two pre amps (the Sony main pre amp and the Technics surround decoder). This is a confusing and needlessly complex arrangement. I hope to eventually replace both units with one pre amp, but for now I had to stay on somewhat of a budget.

I don't like any of the remotes I have at the moment, and I have a lot of them. There's a universal remote supplied with almost every piece of equipment on the rack, and a few specialized controls for the Quadscanner and the Technics decoder. It's too much...a clicker for every member of the family, including the cats! And none of them are exactly what I want.  I'll probably look into a Phillips Pronto when I get the time. For now, I'm using the Echostar remote which came with the Dish equipment. In addition to controlling the cable box, it has the ability to adjust the volume on the pre amp. The Dwin remote is also very powerful, but it simply has too many buttons to be practical for everyday use.

Copyright © 2000 Michael Frank, all rights reserved.