Dancing on the ceiling: Part 2
Posted by marshall Tue, 24 Jan 2006 02:25:00 GMT
Around the middle of this past December, our projector bulb hit 1,000 hours. Projectors (and, by association, rear-projection TVs) have a bulb in them that has a life expectancy of a certain number of hours; in the case of the LT150, the magic number is 1,000. At that point, the bulb needs to be replaced. Bulbs that are run past their life expectancy have a tendency to explode, which can cause serious injury and/or death to the projector.
As I began to read about replacing the bulb, I came across some forum posts by Serious Home Theater Buffs (TM) about modifications to the LT150 to improve the picture. One of the biggest ones was disassembling the projector and painting over the clear segment of the color wheel, which required a bit more comfort with the concept of ripping apart a finely-tuned electronic device than I could muster. There was another modification, though, that did not require such drastic measures: placing a Hoya FL-D color filter in front of the projector. I further learned that Whisperflow, a well-known hushbox maker, could build such a filter into a hushbox design. I decided that I would do a projector tune-up: new bulb, hushbox with color filter, and -- finally -- ceiling mount.
Thus began what would become a treacherous journey into ceiling mounting. My Whisperflow hushbox arrived just before Christmas, with its laser-cut acrylic plastic sides, twin fans, foam sound dampener, and a coated front panel that hides the projector while permitting enough light for the remote. A lovely piece of work. But with Some Assembly Required.
"Assembly", when it comes to home theater, apparently means "drilling". The hushbox included three screws with knobs on one end and rubber feet on the other. These could be installed by the owner, and the projector would sit on the rubber feet, its height adjustable by the knobs. Presumably this is so that people who don't want knobs sticking out of the bottom of the box could find some other way of propping up the projector inside. The spots to drill the box for the adjustment screws were marked on some paper fixed to the box, a fact that I didn't discover until after I had already torn said paper off of the box. This pretty much ensured that I would be the type who didn't want knobs sticking out.
I had been wondering just how one mounted a hushbox on the ceiling, and expected the design of the box to provide some clues. It didn't. The top of the box was completely smooth, and it was up to me to determine how I wanted to put it up. Most Serious Home Theater Buffs (TM) would no doubt appreciate the complete flexibility; I would have rather liked some direction. Ah well. I made the first of what would become a series of Home Depot trips, found some hooks and chain that I thought might work for hanging the hushbox, and then set about figuring out how I was going to get the hooks in.
I have little experience and zero confidence with a drill, so I started asking around to see if anyone wanted to assist in the raising of the projector. It turned out that my friend Danny Glover (no, not that one) had both a drill and the requisite experience (i.e. he had used it at least once before). He came over with his toolbox, and we began searching for ceiling joists. This was not as easy as it might have been, since our apartment has the "popcorn" style acoustic textured ceiling, which isn't quite the smooth surface that a stud finder wants. After many tries with the stud finder and a few misplaced holes, we eventually got four hooks up in the ceiling.
But alas, the hooks I had purchased would not work for the hushbox. They were more of a wood-screw type, and we needed a nuts-and-bolts kind that would hold up the plastic top. So we made another trip to Home Depot, purchased some eye bolts, managed to escape just before closing time, and returned to the apartment. Daniel used his Mad Drilling Skillz to put some holes in the hushbox, we installed the bolts, and it was ready to go up!
It took three of us (Daniel, Lara, and myself) to get it hooked onto all four hooks, and we ended up having to use some chain since the ceiling joists weren't conveniently spaced for hushboxes. But by the end of the evening, the hushbox was hanging in a manner we hoped was sturdy. No one really wanted to sit directly under it, though.
Up to this point, the projector itself had not been involved. I still needed to find a way of propping up the projector inside the hushbox. I figured that some foam would do the trick; something that would absorb sound, would be relatively sturdy, but wouldn't scratch the projector case. So the following night I went out in search of foam.
It's a funny thing how you can see something everywhere, and yet when you look for it, it's nowhere to be found. Home Depot told me to go to Michael's. Michael's told me to check Office Depot. Office Depot asked if I had tried Home Depot. Around and around we go. Nobody had any foam. I returned to Home Depot to see if perhaps they had some supplies that could inspire an alternate solution, and happened to ask one of the guys in the window department if he had any ideas. It turned out that he had seen some extra packing foam lying around that had been used for the windows, and he brought out a few pieces for me to take. So I got for free what no one would sell me.
Now, the LT150 has no zoom; it has to be placed at exactly the right distance and pointed exactly the right direction to fit on a wall-mounted screen. Just a slight adjustment results in several inches of picture movement. Few things can match the frustration of trying to cut and re-cut foam into the exact right size and fitting it into a small box while standing on a shaky dining room chair. I ended up using some old CDs placed beneath the foam here and there to make the finer adjustments, but in the end, it worked...so long as nobody ever touched it again and there weren't any earthquakes.
I ran a VGA extension cord from the video inputs to the projector and stapled it to the wall. I ran the power cables for the projector and the fans into a Craftsman auto-switch that would turn on the fans when the projector came on. I placed the front panel on the hushbox, making further adjustments to the foam and CDs to get it shining through the color filter properly. And finally, after many years of dreaming and scheming, I had a ceiling-mounted projector.
When we watched the ball drop on New Year's Eve on the big screen, our friends could sit wherever they wanted in the living room. Some even sat underneath the hushbox.
