My wife and I had been shopping for a 75 inch TV for our basement Man Cave for a long time but every time I established a price point that one would have to be at for me to be comfortable with I found some lame excuse not to do it when I found one at that price. Too indulgent, too much money, we should downsize, blah, blah, blah.
Part of the problem was the original TV that we bought for the Man Cave found its way up to our den because of "input lag"; it's a video game thing where a TV, usually older, doesn't have enough of whatever to process the latest video game systems. There's no input lag on the 50 inch Roku we had in our den so I swapped them. So, with a 60 inch TV in the den and a 50 in the Man Cave, my wife and I haven't watched anything down there in quite a while because if we did, we'd be getting less of a visual experience. Hey, we have our standards.
Part of the problem was the original TV that we bought for the Man Cave found its way up to our den because of "input lag"; it's a video game thing where a TV, usually older, doesn't have enough of whatever to process the latest video game systems. There's no input lag on the 50 inch Roku we had in our den so I swapped them. So, with a 60 inch TV in the den and a 50 in the Man Cave, my wife and I haven't watched anything down there in quite a while because if we did, we'd be getting less of a visual experience. Hey, we have our standards.
Dumpster diving anyone? My office has been undergoing a massive downsizing of late in square footage and a lot of "stuff" had been made available that we were allowed to rummage through and take home if we wanted. Chairs, desks, cabinets, monitors, shelving, carpeting, wall art and what not. And while I procured a chair or two, my biggest coup was scoring the 4 x 8, "Screen Innovations" video screen that was in this conference room we're losing. Ask and ye shall receive. Seriously, I think they were just going to throw it out.
Which is amazing considering how freakin' expensive these things are. Several years ago when we were setting up our Man Cave we toyed with the idea of a projector and screen and found the cost of a screen to be almost twice the price of a projector. I priced the "Screen Innovations" screens in my office and was stunned to find they run about $2,500. Holy smokes. Anyway, I figured I'd figure out the projector thing once I got the beast home; that being easier said than done.
For starters, it wouldn't fit in the elevators in my office so I had to walk it down eight flights of stairs. While not heavy per se, it certainly was not feather light and its size made going downstairs, by myself of course, quite challenging.
More than once I sort of tripped and almost either dropped it down the stairs or kicked a hole in it. Once outside, it wanted to take off like a kite as I was putting it in the back of one our office vans. To make matters even worse, once home, it barely fit the turn to go down into our basement. Luckily, it slid right down after I removed the stair banisters. Now, onto the projector.
More than once I sort of tripped and almost either dropped it down the stairs or kicked a hole in it. Once outside, it wanted to take off like a kite as I was putting it in the back of one our office vans. To make matters even worse, once home, it barely fit the turn to go down into our basement. Luckily, it slid right down after I removed the stair banisters. Now, onto the projector.
Best Buy didn't have a large assortment of projectors, they did have a dizzying array of 50-82 inch televisions, but I bought an Epson 2150 for just to see what the experience would be like. As I swiped my credit card for an $800 purchase, in the back of my mind, I believed I could find something online that would be a fraction of the cost. Yeah, right. Anyway, while the projector was awesome, the cost was steep and I still needed a ceiling mount which would run another $150. Still cheaper and better all in than buying a 75 inch TV but still, $950 to upgrade a room we barely use anymore seemed lavish. Furthermore, seeing how fantastic the 2150 was, I didn't want to waste time buying less expensive projectors on line; not that I found any good deals on projectors that had good reviews anyway. I fought off pangs of guilt and tried to save money still by asking my I.T. guy if I could have the ceiling mount that the projector from the conference room we were losing had.
Well, he not only gave me the ceiling mount but he also gave me two Epson 8300 series projectors that were collecting dust in a back storeroom. Turns out our market president bristled at the cost of replacing the bulbs for the 8300's and insisted "I.T." buy LED projectors that would last longer. To top off the deal, he gave me an extra bulb which would fit either. Hard to imagine that, just like the screen, that all this stuff was going to land in a dumpster but apparently it was. Incredible.
After I gleefully returned the projector I bought I got to work reconfiguring the Man Cave for our 101-inch screen. The room had to be turned around since because of that bulkhead on the right, the screen would sit too low on the wall where the TV used to be. The projector can be at somewhat of an angle but in our case the angle would be too severe. I had some rewiring to do which took most of a Sunday afternoon and I have a lot of patching and painting to do but the end result was nothing short of mind blowing.
'
Take that 75 or even 82 inch big screen TV. Now, I could be wrong but I think they're making a 90 inch TV these days but that's like more than $5,000. Wow. Not that the cost of our Man Cave, had we actually paid for it, would have been cheap. $2,500 for the screen, $1,500 for the projector plus paying for installation would have pushed this project north of $5,000? Crazy. It's nice to be back down in the Man Cave, I think my wife likes it more than I do, and I have to tell you, with home theaters like ours it's no wonder people don't go out to the movies any more. 
No comments:
Post a Comment