Enjoying the Great Outdoors
OK, so here we get down into the details of one way to create your easy-to-set-up, low cost, high impact outdoor home theater in a box . You certainly can do things differently, but Danny can say this one works, and has been optimized over many showings. We'd love to hear from you about your implementation — contact us.
So, where do you start? Here's what you need:
A projector: Unless you’re going to bring a direct-view big screen TV (like your plasma or rear projection TV) outside (we think you won’t — and shouldn’t — do this), you’ll want to use a front projection video system for your outdoor theater. An LCD or DLP projector (see Chapter 13 of Home Theater for Dummies for more details) works best in the outdoors, because these projectors are capable of putting out much brighter pictures than CRT projectors. Danny recommends his Toshiba TLP-S70U ($1399, www.insight.com) in both his indoor and outdoor theaters — it’s really portable (very light) and easy to set up quickly in both environments. The screen quality and features are great. And the price point is about the lowest you can get for such a high quality device. 
An outdoor frame: You’re going to need to mount your screen to something. Danny called a party tent company and asked them to create a special outdoor home theater product based on the same principles of a party tent — lots of strong rods bundled together with special joints. The result: An outdoor home theater framing system that you can put up anywhere. The joints with shipping should run around $200; you can get the rods (1-inch EMT pipe) at any Home Depot or Lowes — these will run about another $100. We'll give you a detailed list of what you need at the end of this article, and instructions how to put Danny puts his together. Tip
Danny made his screen 10 feet by 20 feet for a reason — EMT pipe comes in 10 foot lengths, and that makes it easier to avoid a lot of custom cutting of the pipe to meet a certain size.
An outdoor screen: The screen you use for your projector indoors is too expensive, too fragile and probably too small for an outdoor theater (if you have a house that fits a 10 foot by 20 foot screen inside, we don't even want to talk to you!). The 10 foot x 20 foot white tarp that Danny got (that’s about the size of the movie screen you see in many multiplex theaters! WAAAAAY cool!) is the same heavy duty fabric used for party tents, so it's not likely to tear easily. Also, they have grommets every foot. He used "ball bungee cords" from the party tent company which make attaching the tarp to the tubing so easy my 6-year olds can do it. Tip
A 10 foot by 20 foot tarp is not that in actual size — that's the size before they fold over the edges and attach the grommets. So you will have 3-6 inches between your bar and the edge of the tarp. By using bungee cords, you are putting tension on the tarp so you have a flat surface, but also giving the screen some "give" in a wind.
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If you have problems with wrinkles, consider ironing the plastic tarp by placing a cloth sheet over the plastic and ironing it on low heat. Go slow so you don’t melt the plastic. This will get the wrinkles out.
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They sell silver colored tarps too. Get the white — we've had no problems with that.
Warning
The tarp fabric typically is not wide enough to do the tarp in one piece. As a result, you are very very likely to have a seam across your tarp. This will be apparent to your viewers, especially and most particularly if you are projecting this from the rear (because the light has to pass through the fabric). You can see the seam in our slideshow at the end of this article. Personally, and in the eyes of those who have viewed our movies, it's just not a big deal. However, it might be for you. Recognize this is a $25 solution -- there are certainly much more elegant and expensive solutions too. We're investigating one option now.
The next part of the equation — audio and video signals to power the stuff above — is a little more difficult, because it depends on your specific situation, equipment, and desires. Unless you are big into silent movies, we’re betting that you will want to have a full 5.1 surround sound capability (presuming your source content (DVD, video) enables that) at a minimum. Hooking your audio up to your PC is going to entail some tradeoffs. Your decision actually starts with your source device. There are a number of ways you can get audio and video signals off of a source file and into your outdoor home theater. You can:
Run cables from your PC: Whether it’s a home video movie, DVD, or recorded TV show, you can run a fairly long set of cables out to your outdoor home theater to power your content in the system. (You can also disconnect your system from your TV and locate it right near the outdoor theater too). The Toshiba has a standard connector to your laptop — through VGA monitor cables. These are fantastic, as other projectors have had issues in the past because Danny’s screen resolution driver was of higher quality than the S-video driver on his laptop. Danny got three 10ft. VGA “extension cords” from Radio Shack (www.radioshack.com) to give us 30 feet of distance for the Toshiba S70U — enough to produce a 10 foot by 20 foot image on the screen. (Danny later ordered a 50 foot SVGA cable from SFCable, far more economical!) Danny also got 100 foot long speaker cable (be sure to get 12 or 14 gauge for that long a distance), for the rear speakers for the system. More on speakers in a second. Run cables from a portable (laptop) PC: If you bought a desktop PC, then you might want to create a DVD as we showed you in Chapter 11 of Windows XP Media Center Edition PCs for Dummies, and play it on a laptop that you just carry up to your home theater. This is what Danny ended up doing after he set up his theater for the first time, because it was easier than re-installing all the cables on the desktop XP MCE PC when he was done with it outside (in fact, he’s craving a Toshiba MCE laptop with multiple docking stations for that very reason.) Warning
If you are using an Windows XP MCE PC, remember you can’t play your recorded copyrighted content on anything but your native MCE PC (yet!). There are emerging programs that will convert MCE-based DVR-MS files to MPEG2 and other formats, so you might try one of those to make your saved movies more portable from one machine to another. Check out the Downloads areas of The Green Button or XPMCE.com for some of these third party programs.
Transmit content wirelessly: You can send the signal from your PC to your projector and your speakers with wireless options. Most of these systems are based around two main formats: 1) a wireless ‘bridge’ that has an Ethernet or USB connection in one device and RCA plugs in the other device — you plug your speakers and projector into this device — and 2) wireless devices, such as wireless speakers. You may not want to bring your nice surround sound speaker system outdoors. Consider some inexpensive wireless speakers (we talked about the WSP255 Radio Shack speakers; SmartHome has some Advent 900MHz speakers
that work great too. If you want to get fancy, you can install permanent outdoor speakers, like those from Stereostone (starting at $300 a pair, you can also get these from SmartHome). These speakers look like rocks in your garden — but they do rock in a musical sense too. You can even get planter boxes for plants that have speakers in their base. Video cue: Pink Floyd’s Dark Size of the Moon DVD! As far as the wireless ‘bridges’ are concerned, there are some high quality units flooding on the market as we write. Right now, most of this gear is using proprietary signaling — not Bluetooth or 802.11 — to transmit their signals. As a result, the signals are mostly point-to-point. As we write, 802.11b products are coming on the market that enable any compatible device in range to pick up the signals, making your entertainment center more accessible by lots of devices, from your PC to your audio server in your car. Get an 802.11-based product if you have the choice.
For instance, the RCA Model RD 900W Lyra Wireless (www.rca.com, $99) device sends crystal-clear digital audio from your PC to your stereo, as depicted in Figure 13-3. Just plug it into your PC’s USB jack on the one end and the entertainment center’s RCA jacks on the other, and you’re ready to go. Unfortunately, as of this printing, the Lyra uses 900 MHz technology, not standardized 802.11 chips, to accomplish this. Jensen’s Matrix Internet Audio Transmitter (www.jensen.com) Model JW901 works the same way: a 900 MHz connection between the PC and stereo. X10’s Entertainment Anywhere (www.x10.com) uses a proprietary 2.4 MHz signal.
The Linksys (www.linksys.com; $120) Wireless Digital Media Adapter is an 802.11b-based transmitter. It resides in home entertainment centers next to the television and stereo. The device resembles the Linksys access point, with two 802.11b antennas. Instead of connecting to an Ethernet port like a normal AP, the device is equipped with audio/video connectors. To process JPEG, MP3, and WMA digital content from a networked PC, the adapter uses Intel's XScale architecture PXA250 application processor. By using Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technology, the adapter can be easily set up to work with other UPnP devices on the network such as a Linksys wireless router or its car networking technology (under development in early 2003).
SMC too has launched a wireless option. SMC Networks’s (www.smc.com) EZ-Stream line of home entertainment networking products includes a Universal Wireless Multimedia Receiver, the SMCWMR-AG, which was designed to wirelessly distribute entertainment media-audio, pictures and streaming video-throughout the home. These are priced at $299.
Danny is experimenting with all of the above and has not really nailed down exactly his specific long term platform. So if you have some other ideas, contact us. For now, he is using his Klipsch 5.1 Surround Sound Speakersthat he uses on his desk for his PC. The speakers use a powered sub-woofer and it has an external volume knob for turning up sound! We have a hard time arguing for anything other than these, and they work great with laptops!
Tip
Watch out for evening dew. An early evening dew on a humid night can really coat everything with a serious amount of moisture. Don’t spread out your ground blankets until you are ready to use them. Keep a regular bed sheet over your electronics until you are ready to use them — Danny uses a ladder to put over the projector with the sheet on it to not only serve to keep the dew off but also to make the projector very visible in the dark (you don’t want anyone tripping over it).
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Want more info on all of the above, here's some places where we went into more detail:
For more info on how to wirelessly extend your content from your PC, check out Chapter 13 in Wireless Home Networking for Dummies For more detail on how to hook up your home theater and ensure you have surround sound enabled in your system, check out most of Home Theater for Dummies. It’s the best book on the market for that content.
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