“Gosh, you've really got some nice toys here.”
// March 12th, 2011 // No Comments » // design
The long construction phase is over. Now it’s time for The ‘Pimp to polish up things like an El Dog cruisin’ through Freaknik. Time for seats to be installed so that we can get to enjoying instead of building.
// March 9th, 2011 // No Comments » // construction, design
With the riser wrapped and ready to shake rumps, it’s time to get this puppy wrapped up. This is where The Pimp steps back to let the pros get on the mic. I know how to paint, but I ain’t no Picasso, dawg.
So we hired ourselves some Orelly Men to get it done. Ok, they were really Chris’ men, but you get my drift.
The biggest reasons to hire a pro for this part are first the Screen Goo, and secondly the Matte Black ceiling. With my CribMac 1.0 setup, I did the Screen Goo painting myself. It turned out okay, but I wanted a more polished look here: it’s really easy to get a streaky Screen Goo job, so it’s better to get real painters who know what they are doing. Also, painting a ceiling is hard enough, but painting it black is almost impossible to get right without making a huge mess.
// December 21st, 2010 // 1 Comment » // design
Like any good project, you have to start with thinking about how to design the space. This includes many factors, some of which may not be obvious at the start. Trust me, patience is in order to get it done right.
The stock media room measures approximately 14′ wide x 20′ deep. There is a single small window on the upper left side of the room, and a soffit that runs from the left wall up across the room towards the right. As you can see from the pictures, this presents two challenges right away.
One is light control, but given the window is small, it can easily be covered later. The other challenge is the soffit—a good news, bad news story. First the good news. Since the target wall is about 15′ away, the ceiling soffit actually helps with mounting the projector. Without the soffit, the projector would have to be mounted on a pole to drop it down from the ceiling to avoid nasty keystoning of the projector’s image.
Image courtesy of The Projector People
// December 21st, 2010 // 2 Comments » // design
From humble beginnings to a new level of awesome, we’d like to welcome you to the CribMac Chronicles. This blog takes you through the design, development, and deployment of our incredible Mac home theater.
Now, we won’t win any awards for the “top of the line, oh-so-chique, megaplex” that some people celebrate. Don’t have that kinda moolah. Instead, this blog demonstrates that with a little ingenuity and sweat equity, you can have a great home theater without breaking the bank. And, of course, what home theater would be complete without a kick-ass Mac media server powering it all.
We’ll take you through it all, start to finish. So, let’s start at the beginning.
