Home Theater Diary Date Entry 2001-07-04 I ordered a projector yesterday (NEC LT150) so I figured I'd start documenting the transformation of the room.   Unlike others, I'm starting with a finished basement     Front of the room     Back of the room   2001-07-09 Tiny new NEC LT150 Projector   2001-07-14 After spending a week doing screen tests with the LT150, I decided to mount the projector under the coffee table. This took me all of about 30 minutes to do and cost about $2. This table was given to us about 5 years ago so I have full permission to drill. Below are before and after shots.     I haven't decided if this is the final configuration. I may cut a notch out of the front of the table in order to raise the projector another three inches or so. Like I said, this was a hand-me-down table so I can mutilate it to my heart's content ;-) 2001-07-24 My 4:3 80x60 Da-Lite High Power Model B (manual pulldown) screen arrives. I purchased it from www.cousinsvideo.com. It's mounted on an 8' piece of 1x8 pine from Home Depot. Took about an hour.   2001-09-01 I decided to create a new webshots album for the mask photos. I'm now displaying a 16:9 Windows desktop through my HTPC so I thought it was time to work on a masking system. I primarly watch DVDs and most of those have a 16:9 or 2.35:1 aspect ratio. I looked at the great masking system done by Deane Johnson and while it's awesome, the DrapeBoss motors are no longer available and they were expensive! My design uses one cheaper drapery control motor that I'll have X10 controlled. I purchased my motor from SmartHome.com for $89.95. The design uses 4 pulleys and cord attached to two masks. The cord threads through the drapery motor, runs over the pulleys and is attached to the masks with velcro. I picked up some sliding door screen rollers for pulleys and I choose to use styrofoam insullation as my masks because it's rigid and light. The one inch thick variety was a little flimsy so I went with two inches. It's a little bulky and I may revisit my decision but I'll guess it'll be fine once covered with velvet. I hooked it all up and it kindof just worked! The pictures below show everything in place although not correctly positioned. I'll wait until I get the panels covered in velvet before doing final positioning. Note that my pulley positions don't exactly match my diagram. I may move them around to clean things up but the crossing cords don't hurt anything. I should have been more careful on my first sketches... Obviously in the pictures above, the motor isn't wired to anything. I tested it by manually plugging it in and then removing the plug. One potential problem is the "resolution" of the motor. On an 80" wide screen, the difference between 16:9 and 2.35:1 is 11". That means the motor has to move the cord 5.5" since the top and bottom panels will move the same distance. The start and stop points on the motor are really close right now. I may end up trying to figure out some sort of gear mechanism to get more room to work with once I get everything in place.