The lights are hung, the paint is dry, and the screen is mounted. Time for a break, right?
Wrong! We're just getting started.
Up next for our intrepid media room team (i.e., me, with the occasional assist from my parents) is setting up the speakers and the receiver. Now, here's where the cost calculations get tricky. I already had a 5.1 surround sound system that was several years old, but it still worked fine, and would have worked great for this setup. That means technically it didn't need to count against my budget.
However, not everyone has a 5.1 surround sound system, and to be honest, I ended up buying a new receiver anyway, so I'm going to add the cost of the system to our tally simply because it's an expected cost for something like this.
Now I got lucky, I bought the base model Onkyo receiver at Fry's for around $220. It supports 7.1 surround sound, and has HDMI pass through, which means you can plug in two HDMI cables from input sources, i.e. my XBox, and potentially a PS3 for the Blu-Ray drive, and output it from one port to the display, in this case a projector. So it's basically an HDMI switch.
I also already had the speakers, so my only expense was $220. In reality, a bare bones surround sound system would start at around $300, and the top of the line systems easily go over $1000. So for me, this added $220. For someone with no speakers or surround sound system, I'd budget at least $400 for a worthwhile system.
So let's get to this. In the pic below is a TV stand I bought at Target for $40. It's simple, effective, and black, so it doesn't stand out much in a dark room. Well, except for the shiny metal poles, obviously... oh well. Like I said, it was $40.
Here's a pic of the XBox from above. I ended up buying the wireless router since I didn't want to run a 50ft long ethernet cable from my router upstairs to the XBox downstairs. That cost me another $100, but that's not necessarily a cost for most people.
Here's the XBox from the front.
Here's the 'new' receiver, with 7.1 surround and HDMI pass through. It's an Onkyo TX-SR575, but I think that model is now being phased out for a newer one that's about $100 more. The one you see here was actually the display model.
Here's the old receiver. Still works fine, just needs speakers.
Ok, now let's talk about the speakers. In the pic below is the center speaker, mounted (well, in this case just sitting) on the top of the TV stand.
Here's one of the rear speakers, the rear right to be specific. It's mounted to the ceiling, and yeah the speaker wire is just hanging down for now. Eventually I'll need to figure out a solution for the wires, but that's for another day and another post.
Here's the front right speaker, in a lopsided pic. You can also see the subwoofer there on the floor.
The front left speaker.
Here's the back of the front left speaker. Now I ended up buying the speaker stands, including the mounts for the back speakers, for about $30 at Circuit City. They had one box left on clearance and I grabbed it. Go me!
You can see in the pic that it just screws directly into the back of the speaker, and the wire actually runs into a hole at the top of the mount, down through the metal rod, and comes out below, under the actual stand.
Here's another pic of the rear left speaker. It's hanging a little lower than it needs to, but I adjusted it later.
And the rear left speaker from the front. I used the staple gun from the screen to hang up the wire.
So there we go. Speakers are hung and receiver is set up. Now, here's the cost breakdown:
$40 TV stand
$220 Receiver
$100 XBox wireless router
$30 Speaker stands and mounts
so $390 for all that, which ends up being what I estimated the cost being for a new surround sound system for someone that doesn't have one. To make this easier, I'm rounding everything up to partly account for taxes. So $400 for this, and let's say $200 already spent.
So running tally is approx $600.
Up next, the fun stuff!
http://kriskramer-mediaroom.blogspot.com/2008/06/media-room-walkthrough-part-5.html
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