Outdoor Theatre Aussie Style!!

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[myminirocks]

I have been reading all your great posts for a little while now, love some of the set ups!!

I can't beleive there is no one from Australia, I mean we are supposed to be the great outdoors nation!!

Anyway I am doing my bit for Oz outdoor theatres (and that is the only reason for it, doing it for the country I tell my wife  )

Below are a few pics of my outdoor area and then my first time with the screen, about 7.5 seconds after the postman left it at the door!!!!

You might see the 2 speakers in the top corners, they are a pair of 150W, 100% outdoor Bowers and Wilkins 3 ways, V V nice!! I can't recomend them enough!


I will soon add some photos of my set up as I go through it bit by bit. Right now it is a work in progress. So far the basic set up is a Mac Mini in the lounge room as my media centre (runs my normal TV and everything in side) with the 2 B&W speakers hooked up to the amp inside via a speaker switcher (select inside/outside or both) with the video hookled up to a 2.4ghz wireless Av sender out to the Sony PJ plugged in outside. The AV sender has an IR sender as well so I can sit out side and use the Mac Mini remote to selct TV or DVD, HDD movie, music, photos etc etc blah blah whatever I want.

What I am working toward is running Cat5e cable through the walls and roof to the PJ and have it mounted from one of the roof beams outside so I can get perfect picture quality (the AV sender is ok but gets pretty bad everytime some one walks through the line of transmission) And before you ask, I know I won't be able to use my remote if I get rid of the AV sender but thats ok because the mini can be controled fully from my bluetooth mobile phone.

Anyway if you want to see it come together piece by piece pop back here every now and then and check it out, let me know what you all think.

Cheers,
Matt

[tlogan6797]

Matt -

Welcome to the forum!

Setup looks really nice! Appears to be a fine setting to sit back, crack a tube and push play!

It's great to have someone on board from down under, as, if I remember my 5th grade geography, you should be at the about  height of summer. The talk tends to get a little quiet as we are in winter for most the country up here. Nice to have someone getting excited this time of year and get the rest of thinking about the upcomming season. Although, it WAS mid-70s over the weekend in the Washington DC area and I went golfing!

Keep us up to date!

Good luck,
Tom

[myminirocks]

Hey Tom,
thx for the reply and yes, middle of summer here at the moment, your 5th grade teacher must have been good! In my second photo above I was in such a rush to get the screen up that I just tied it up with the closest piece of rope I could find. As you can see I lost a lot of screen area from the bottom of the beam to the top of the screen. I have now done my daily trip to Bunnings (massive massive hardware store, my wife had me on a 2 mth ban from Bunnings B4 Xmas!!!) and got some heavy duty hook to put in the back of the beam. I have done it so that when the screen is retacted you can't even see the casing at all and also so when the screen rolls down I get maximum screen size (approx 100") Also I took a photo of my mini and wall plate to show where the leads go intot he wall that end up out side. (VGA/Cat 5 cable to come on my next weekend off)

Anyway better get to work, got to pay for the hobby some how!

[rfisk]

Greetings Matt -- welcome to the forums!!

Great looking setup!  Summer... I wish it was summer here.

Running your rig via wireless phone sounds pretty interesting in a geeky way.   I love it! 

Keep us posted.

Randy

[hiredpower]

Welcome Aboard Matt!

I'm not a Mac guy, but I know some fellow DJs that use the mini. Nice setup there.

Thanks for all the pictures and enjoy your summer.  (warm weather envy)

[tlogan6797]

I have now done my daily trip to Bunnings (massive massive hardware store, my wife had me on a 2 mth ban from Bunnings B4 Xmas!!!) and got some heavy duty hook to put in the back of the beam. I have done it so that when the screen is retacted you can't even see the casing at all

You will find a MILLION little fixes like this the more you enjoy your setup. Bunnings sounds like Home Depot/Lowes/Menards here in th US. Luckily for you, it sounds like you are already familiar with the store, which I think is a big help.

I'm finishing my basement and it wouldn't be a weekend without a trip to HD. But everytime I go in there, I see something that I didn't know exisited. So when I 'm working on some little project, I know just where to go to get whatever I need to make it work. Then my wife is amazed.

Tell your wife " it's, uh....uh....RESEARCH. Yeah, that's  it. Research. It's not fun. It's RESEARCH!"

Good luck,
Tom

[myminirocks]

Ah Ha! Research, that 'ol trick! Actually I think my wife stopped falling for that one ages ago. In fact I think her words were:
 "when you research a topic you generally come away more, ie knowledge, everytime you conduct research at Bunnings you come away with  less ie $300 less in your pocket!!"

These days I just need to do the 'ol "make her think it was her idea trick!" 

Hoping the get a projector ceiling mount this wekeend for my birthday being santa didn't bring one, maybe i was on the naughty list, whoops!

Anyway will put it up and post an other phot if I do

[tlogan6797]

These days I just need to do the 'ol "make her think it was her idea trick!" 

Lately mine just says, "as long as I don't have to go with you...."

You know, if you don't get a ceiling mount, you can always make one!

Tom

[myminirocks]

Ok, I have good news and bad news.

Good News: Looks like I'm getting my PJ mount for my birthday (this sunday)

Bad new: The reason I know this is because it came today, my day off, while my wife is at work, so, what did I do??

I opened it up and installed it didn't I!! Oh oh! 

Anyway the whole idea of this mount was so that I could easily "unclip" the PJ from the mount when not in use (so it doesn't need to stay outside in the elements), and so when not in use only a very small part of the mount was left, hopefully so it is barely noticeable.

Now comes the real test..... I have cleaned up completely, removing any eveidence from the scene of the crime and my wife will be home in 20mins, time to see if it is noticeable or not. I am not going to show it off yet and wait to see how long it take for her to see it 

Man I am in troooooouble!!!!

Wish me luck!!

[tlogan6797]

You are a braver man than I am!

Tom

[myminirocks]

Ahhhhh, us mere males, how are we to compete with the greater species, the female?

I swear, she came home, got out of the car and her feet had hardly hit the ground before she said "What's changed?"

The place may as well have been robbed and cleared out it was that obvious to her!

It did take her about 10mins to "see" the mount but she knew something was up 

Anyway, after some negotiations the UN would be proud of I managed to convince her it is better this way because now we can watch a flick on my birthday and realy enjoy the present rather then having to wait a week for my next day off to install it. I also had to promise her I would sit through a chick flick with her tonight!

So here a few more photos.....

[tlogan6797]

Looks great! Glad you were able to work it out. Have fun wathcing the chick flick!

tom

[myminirocks]

OK So I had the weekend off so wanted to fix the problem of not having power where I needed it. Below are some photos of what I had to do (and what it looked like!) to get it all set up, not real pretty.

I installed a single flush mount power point on the closest beam (high and on the off side so you can't see it) which will allow me to power the PJ directly from there. I am still needing the wireless A/V sender for the moment because i am yet to make my extra long VGA cord so still a bit ugly but you get the point. Once the VGA cord is done there will be no more messy wires as part of the setup.

Hoping to get the VGA cabling done before summer ends!!