Paradise Cinema - PICS - Backyard Theater Forums

After many months of research between this site, AVS forum, and Audioholics, I have almost completed our new "Paradise Cinema"! I really want to thank everyone for their posts and discussions! This site is really what made this project a reality. It definitely kept me from going down some wrong roads, but also was a great place to bounce ideas off.

To give some background, my wife and I are all about outdoor entertainment. We have a lot of events that take place outside, so we really wanted to make an “outdoor living” area. We really wanted to avoid having a lot of equipment setup and teardown. So with that in mind, the key was to design a movie screen with surround sound on the deck, that could also double for daytime events without losing any space. So here’s what we did!

Projector: Mistubishi HC1500
Receiver: Yamaha RX-V661
DVD: Pioneer R-V400
Speakers: Proficient AW525s (LF, RF, LS, RS), Proficient AW600TT (Center), and GS-50 Subwoofer
Screen: DIY (Wood and BOC)

The subwoofer is mounted underneath my deck area by the main viewing area with the surround speakers mounted under the back railing. The front speakers are mounted on top of my pergola and angled to the viewing area. All of the wiring was done using 12/2 landscape wire.

The wire is all hidden through PVC conduit and run underneath the deck area where I drilled into the crawlspace to bring the cable to my main family room where the entertainment stand is at. While doing this I added a HDMI jack on the outside of my house, as well as on the inside behind my entertainment center. I ran a HDMI cord between the two. This allows me to use my projector only on the deck by plugging into the wall.

Beside the HDMI jack, I wired an IR emitter, which carries the IR signal back into the house to the IR flashers which have been placed in front of my receiver and DVD player. My Harmony remote is IR learning, so I am in the midst of programming it to run the projector, DVD, and receiver. Then I can just carry my remote inside the house or outside depending on where I want to use it.

For the speaker connections, I mentioned using landscape wiring where I have banana plugs wired on the outside for connection to the speakers, and on the inside I wired a double junction box with a 5.1 speaker wall plate. From my receiver I just ran a short connection from the receiver to the wall plate and voila, surround sound with a clean look.

The nice thing about the setup is that when not in use, the speakers double outside for background music for daytime entertainment, and at night, the screen takes all of 2 minutes to hang, and now there is 5.1 surround.

I will be posting some before and after photos over the next few days. At this point, I have the speakers placed outside and got the sub installed underneath the deck. The wiring boxes will be in by Friday, and Saturday afternoon should have everything wrapped up for the debut of Jurassic Park on Saturday night!

**** UPDATE *****
Finally added some pics. The first one is my deck setup. The second and third is mounting the speakers over the pergola. The screen will actually hang over the front of the pergola, but I have not taken that picture yet.

The fourth picture is the subwoofer which was placed underneath the deck area. The fifth and sixth pics show the rear mounted speakers and the wiring PVC down underneath the deck.