Next generation Gaming Rig

This spring in anticipation of aquiring an XBox 360 I began researching and assembling the pieces of my next generation gaming rig. I previously played on a nice Sony Triniton 27" SDTV. The first addition to the rig was the aquisition of a 5.1 Surround sound system in January. Not having a home theater reciever I was looking for a stand alone unit and came across some excellent reviews for the XBox branded Spherex 5.1 System. Once finalizing my decision on this system I began researching vendors for it and the lowest price I found was Amazon @$380 + $50 shipping. Being a bit more than what I was willing to pay I turned to eBay and was able to purchase an "open return" item from a retailer's clearing house for a little more than $100. I basically stole this item since the "open return" was in fact never opened and still factory sealed! The second one I picked up for about the same price wasn't either! Now having a killer sound system I began focusing my attention to a display. I did a lot of homework on this and had settled on a 30" widescreen Sony HDTV which was retailing for $875 in March. I was waiting for after CES for the new models to come out and pick one of these up on the cheap. Unfortunatly, Sony decided to cancel this line of TV's and my local Best Buy's did not have many in stock and were not planning on parting with them for less than $800. About this time I contacted the resident Old Man Mafia Home Theater Guru Extroidenair...WallyBR for some additional advice. He directed me towards a LCD HD projector system for a bit more than the TV's I was considering, but the $$/ inch of screen was much cheaper. After handholding me through the tough decision and answering every question I had (their were A LOT trust me), I made my purchase of the projector from an online vendor Wally reccomended, sight unseen. That's the one thing about projectors, most physical vendors do no have a lot of display models due to the high inventory cost/ low turnover rate. I got the full system set up by mid March with some addtional cables from MonoPrice . For the technical specs: the viewing distance is 12.5 ft with a projection distance of 13 ft, maximum screen is 105" along the diagonal. I project onto a fairly smooth wall that is painted a light beige.  Since I still live in an apartment hanging a screen wasn't currently an option.

I typically play GRAW, PGR3 and COD on the full screen, but have to play Halo on the smallest possible screen (60") or else I get really bad motion sickness. I can definately achieve full imersion into a game due to the perspective being very close to life size, sitting in a darkened room and with the 5.1 surround sound kicking. This is extremly cool for COD, PRG3, and GRAW. COD2 on Veteran was phenominal with my setup! Conversely, Condemed scared the living Be-Jesus out of me! For those of you that have played Condemned you know what I'm talking about. That 5.1 soundtrack is uber accurate and scary, and much of the game you are wondering around with a flashlight and people tend to attack you from nowhere. Anyway, below are some links and pictures of my stuff. I now hope everybody gets an idea of what a 100" screen looks like. Also, for the record I would like to state that I am not compensating for anything with my big screen!

Panasonic AE900U
Spherex 5.1


100" of gaming goodness (NOTE: the TV in the left corner of the picture is a 27" and the wall the screen is projecting on is 8ft wide)

my "little" 60 inch screen for Halo2

100" screen and me for reference (I'm 5'9")

my "typical" gaming perspective (dependent on your monitor size get your face about 8-10 inches away from the screen to achieve my normal view)



Posted by bunsen27 on Sun Aug 13, 2006 @ 11:21 pm EDT | 14 Comments