As I said before - wish I lived nearby.
Keep talking. There are $200 plane flights from Reagan.
Your main breakdown is pretty much there.
If you need to go to a motorized screen, then it will need to be tab-tensioned, and I would lean towards a DaLite Tensioned Cosmopolitan Electrol...
http://www.da-lite.com/products/product.php?cID=29&pID=39
I think you guys have me convinced to go fixed...still need to figure out how to keep 3 year olds at bay.
About $2,000 or so for 110" in high contrast cinema vision material or so. Add a bit more if you want an acoustically transparent screen.
Yes, you need a special screen if your intent is to locate speakers behind it.
I'll punt that idea.
I would strongly work to avoid putting your gear at the front of the room in line of site with the screen. Realistically, if you have an area under stairs, or a back storage area, I would recommend (strongly) putting your gear there. That way it isn't crammed into some fixed location and you have good airflow and access to the gear as you need it. Would need a good idea if this is possible or not in your setup, but the front of the room is one of the worst places with a front projection setup.
OK. I'll go elsewhere.
The rest of the money gets spent how you see fit to get what you want done.
If you want DirecTV boxes in all rooms, then that cabling is relatively inexpensive. If you want distributed video from a shared box it is far more expensive, but can be done. If you want distributed video from several centrally located boxes, then several pieces of CAT-5 are key.
I think I said before, but you really want to pick ONE spot in your home to cable everything to. Incoming DirecTV feeds to one spot, then out to all the locations in your home. It is far more common for them to run from the antenna straight to a bunch of boxes, but then you lose flexibility as things change and you have a mess of wires running outside your home.
Isn't there a likely future problem running these signals through anything but HDMI to the other tv's? Is that just way off base?
Same with your networking.
I would generally pull 2-4 pieces of CAT-5 to every TV location and 2 pieces of coaxial cabling. This would cover a great deal of what may come your way down the road.
All that said, the sound and audio is important. It sounds like you may own some speakers already, so we are talking about a few more speakers and a receiver/amplifier of some sort and control?
Yes. But I am debating external speakers for my casual watching in my den, and I will not need them for bedrooms, kitchen, exercise room, etc. I do want to add some builtins for my new sunroom and possibly for my patio.
The receiver/amp is important, but at the end of the day, if you want it simple, then you have to get good control in there. This is where things get tricky. You either have to get a decent user programmable remote, and put in the time figuring it out yourself and making sure it all works right, or you have to pay someone to do it all for you. In a single room system, this could take just a few hours with a URC remote, or with a whole house system it will typically take 20-40 hours of work depending on the complexity of your home system.
Yep. This is where I get lost. The most I have ever done is programmed my Home Theater Master remote to handle multiple devices. I have never used separates or a "switcher," whatever that is. Let me ask this. If I end up needing an additional amp, is there anything wrong with using my Denon 3805 for that, or should I just plan on using new components? Based on what you guys have told me so far, I think I need separates...both for power and if I want outputs to several areas.
Of course, I think I spoke of Crestron before... it would take about 4 hours to setup a ML700 and a Crestron controller. So, about $900 for the theater with phenomenal reliability. But, for a single room, you may be better off with a stand alone Harmony remote... maybe. You can get directly controllable lights with some remotes as well, but Lutron Spacer System lights are IR controllable. About $100 a dimmer for IR controlled dimmable lighting.
I pretty much disregarded the Crestron idea, because it has been my understanding that it is priced at 1.5 to 2 times the Control 4 system. The estimate I had for the Control 4 system was already seriously eating into my budget. It's frustrating, because I don't want anything too fancy....just to be able to use the equipment in each room to it's desired effect without running back and forth between rooms or to have to pick up 4 remotes.
This is all option stuff, because $11K is no small number - but it isn't huge. It's ENORMOUS to some, but realistically, it just isn't huge for a whole house system if you need the works.
Let me see what more estimates will bring, but the entire $19k budget is looking pretty minuscule right now.
So a tight breakdown of what you are looking to spend on things would make a lot of sense and a tight breakdown of some nicer things you may want to add would make sense as well.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING!!!
WIRE! WIRE! WIRE!
While the walls are open, forgo nicer gear or some things in some rooms right now to get the wiring in place which allows you the upgrade path you will want for the future.
If I knew you wanted whole house A/V then I would wire for it, then put in a controller which can handle it, but maybe just start you with one room. Maybe get a smaller TV in one room, which you can move to a secondary room in a few years when you buy a bigger TV later on. It doesn't force you to do it all at once right now, and allows you to get more down the line as you want to expand your system.
I spent about $6,000 on wiring for my home - that was the BEST money spent in my setup by far.
