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[Pyronious]

I've been doing BYT for a couple years now, hauling my home theater gear out to friend's yards.   This year I upgraded my screen and sound to be more portable-friendly.

First off, I want to thank everyone here at BYT.com for providing so much good information and generally just being the best online community I've found on the web.  I only discovered the site a few weeks ago, but I already feel a great sense of camaraderie with everyone here. You're the best!

For starters I got a 19" gear rack and put all the audio equipment in there.  Now I can just haul the box out, put the projector on it, plug in one power cord and the speaker wires.  Audio is up in about 30 minutes.

The audio rack:
PS3 for Blu-Ray playback
Denon AVR-2805 to decode surround to analog pre-outs
Ultralink MX882 as a 6-in, 6-out level conditioner
DBX 215 Equalizer for front channel EQ
Crown XLS 402 - front amplification
Crown XLS 202 - rear amplification
Furman PL-8 power conditioner & lights

Front speakers: Peavey PR 15
Surround speakers: Peavey PR 10

Projector: Sanyo PLV-80

Screen Frame: Constructed using parts from On-Stage LS7730 "Light Stand with Truss" kits.

Screen: Borrowed from the Gemmy for these pics; I have 16'x9' BOC on the way to me from Carl.

The screen takes about 45 minutes to assemble.  I can get the whole thing up in about 1.5 hours, which I'm pretty happy with.  Amazingly, it all fits in the back of my Jeep.

Here's some pics of the inaugural event!

[bmac]

Very nice!

Do you regret not getting a rack case large enough to hold the receiver?  Looks like there is still a lot of cables to hook up with the receiver not in the case and pre wired.  Not a bad thing.  I would just think that it adds to your set up time.  But, I can also see that it makes the case much more managable in terms of size and weight.

Any plans to complete the 5.1 package with sub and center channel?

Thanks for sharing the photos.  Dano will be very proud of you.

[Pyronious]

Doh!  The rack did hold the receiver until I decided I wanted EQ for the front channels, so tonight I was 1U short.  I am hoping the guy at the music store will let me upgrade since I just bought the thing on Friday.

As for 5.1, I wanted to see how happy I was with quadraphonic sound first.  My first impression is that it sounds awesome.  The MX882 has 2 unused channels on it right now so I could theoretically add another amp and the necessary speakers. 

My main problem is that if I did move to 5.1 the system wouldn't be portable anymore, because there's no room in my Jeep for a sub and a center channel speaker.

The good news is that nobody noticed it was missing those speakers and everyone agreed it sounded awesome. 

When I was planning the system I briefly toyed with skipping the surrounds and just doing 3.1 up front, but in retrospect I'm glad I chose the surrounds over the center and sub.  More bang for the buck.

In the meantime I will dream about the Denon DN-A7100 surround preamplifer slotted perfectly into the neat 4U gap.  That's what REALLY belongs there.  Time to sell some of my old gear perhaps.

[tscoff]

You're doing something very similar to my goal that I'm working towards.  Nice system!

[cecilb]

Nice setup.

I also have a lighting truss. What are your dimensions? Looks wider than mine but the smaller screen might give that illusion. I don't have the bottom width bar, did you adapt that?

[bmac]

My main problem is that if I did move to 5.1 the system wouldn't be portable anymore, because there's no room in my Jeep for a sub and a center channel speaker.

Time to sell some of my old gear perhaps.

Or, perhaps upgrade your Jeep??  I didn't say that.  Really.  Don't know where that crazy idea came from.

I'm a Jeep owner, as well.  Love it.

[movielover]

My main problem is that if I did move to 5.1 the system wouldn't be portable anymore, because there's no room in my Jeep for a sub and a center channel speaker.

Time to sell some of my old gear perhaps.

Or, perhaps upgrade your Jeep??  I didn't say that.  Really.  Don't know where that crazy idea came from.

I'm a Jeep owner, as well.  Love it.

there's alot of good deals out there on trucks and SUV's right now 

i'm a FORD owner, have been since i started driving in 1973, man that's a long time ago and it's soon time to upgrade or downgrade however you look at it... from my old F-250 extended to something smaller.

[Pyronious]

Nice setup.

I also have a lighting truss. What are your dimensions? Looks wider than mine but the smaller screen might give that illusion. I don't have the bottom width bar, did you adapt that?

The truss is 15 feet wide, made up of three 5-foot sections.  The screen in the pictures is 10.5 feet wide.  Carl shipped me a huge 16' x 9' piece of material yesterday so I should be able to get it a few feet bigger if I attach to the top bar of the truss.

The bottom bar is made up of the same aluminum 5-foot sectional tubing the trusses are made of.  I disassembled a couple of truss sections and pulled 3 pieces of tubing from it as well as the the various fittings that make it all lock together.

What's really amazing is that when disassembled the whole frame is really easy to transport.  It's lightweight and compact.  I can carry all the truss and bottom support pieces easily in one trip to/from the car.  I bungee them together so they don't get wonky.

[Gil V]

That last picture with the kids sitting in front of the screen is a great photo. One of the best shots I've seen showing the quality of the projected image, and it sums up in one shot what this hobby is all about.

[Pyronious]

Since my last post I've done a couple more shows.  I didn't get pictures of the one last weekend, we showed "Point Break" and it was delightfully awful.  A good time was had by all -- a bit cold, but we rented an outdoor propane stand heater and it kept everyone toasty.

This weekend it was "Transformers" on the roof of a friend's apartment building in Seattle.  This one really made the extra effort of surround sound pay off -- there's so much cool stuff in the rear channels!  Leave it to Michael Bay to OD everyone on eye candy and ear candy.

I bit the bullet and added the rack-mountable Denon DN-A7100 surround preamp to my setup so I'm not carrying around the extra weight of those heavy unused amps in the old Denon.   It was nice to be able to drag my cart into position and just turn it on.

I just stuck the Gemmy screen to the wall with gaffer's tape tonight.  No reason to setup up the truss when there's a perfectly good surface to attach the screen to.

Next week my new 16' screen from Carl will be finished at the stitching shop so I'll be sure to post pictures next weekend.

The 2nd picture didn't come out but I just thought it was cool that the Space Needle was visible from the roof.  Behind us was the water.  Awesome location.

[KMac]

Nice setup, Pyronious.  Cool showing a movie on a rooftop.  That's what I really love about this hobby. We can show a movie anywhere people can gather, and create a fun destination. I just did a show a couple of weeks ago at a neighborhood Boys & Girls Club. A good time was had by all.  Enjoy!

[Pyronious]

Here are the invite tickets we're using for next week's movie.

Assembled the project in Adobe Illustrator.  Printed on an HP Deskjet 6520 that came for free with a computer. 

I ordered perforated ticket paper so the tickets can be easily separated.  They also have a perforated stub that the kids will tear off when guests arrive.  They are incredibly excited about getting to be ticket takers.

Ticket paper purchased from:

http://www.ticketprinting.com/Letter-Ticket-Stock.aspx?source=google&gclid=CKm3gd62wZQCFSEbagodJimqGA

[Dalefan3n88]

That's a great idea and it gets the kids involved too!! Very nicely done.

[Hawkes]

Py,

Do you have a template you can share?  What were your settings for the ticket size?

[Pyronious]

Of course. Attached is the ticket template in Adobe PDF format.  If you open it in Adobe Illustrator all the guides, layers, etc. will magically appear so you can edit it easily.

The ticket paper I bought is standard 8.5 x 11 with 3 evenly spaced horizontal perfs for the individual tickets and a 2.25" stub perf.  There are guides in the PDF for lining up your art with the perfs.

There is one "workaround".  Illustrator only strokes text with the stroke on top of the fill unless you convert the text to outlines.  So to keep things editable I just made a 2nd copy of the text with a black 3 point stroke and placed it as a separate object behind the white text.  You'll see how it's set up in the layers palette.