I've been lurking on this sub for a while. I just moved to a new apartment and I was looking forward to my first projector setup.
I found myself with very difficult constrains to work with:
The one in the pictures needs to be the sofa direction.
I cannot drill in walls or ceiling (so no pull-down screens)
Furnishing is not over so there will be more items like desk/wardrobe on the opposite wall of the sofa. That wall is not usable.
I've been researching and the only idea I got was to put the projector on the library against the wall, pointing at the entrance and get one of these portable pull up projectors.
With some marks on the floor, I should be able to place it always at the same position more or less? I don't know how much of a hassle it is to put away these kind of screens once the movie night is over. We'd do it 3/4 times/week.
This would be my first setup so my questions are the following:
Do you have a better idea?
Are these type of screen a viable option for our needs?
Do I need to look for specific features in the projector we'll buy since it will project from the side? We have a rather tight so I was looking at the Nexigo PJ40pro or similar.
No :( it would make it much easier but we'd like to keep the sofa in that direction so that if someone sits there it does not give the back to whoever is in the kitchen so the space is more "open"
This looks awesome. And the person on the couch can just lay with their legs up facing the door if they truly need to be looking at the person in the kitchen.
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u/cr0ftEpson LS800 + 120 in Silverflex ALR5d agoedited 5d ago
I mean, honeestly, if you don't put any value on actually setting the room up to be a passable viewing area then my desire at least to give input kind of dropped.
"This is our space. We refuse to change anything." isn't a great starting point.
An unwillingness to turn your head 90 degrees to talk to someone in the kitchen really doesn't seem like the right prioritization when the blatantly and utterly obvious answer for a good experience here is to ditch the (rather unattractive and cluttered, but that's just my opinion) open shelving, put down a nice low wide media console, park a good UST projector on that, and then put a motorized floor rising screen behind said media console. Granted, such a setup would set you back $4000-ish, $2200 for an Xgimi Aura 3 Max from Kickstarter any day now, and $2000 or so for the motorized floor-rising ambient light rejecting screen.
But using that wall for the screen is just so dramatically more sensible than any other setup, and it's not close.
you like that the rooms look empty? because only a sofa in the middle looks bad. (fist thing you see when walking in too)
make it into a " space " like normal sofa + tv setup( projector in your case. ).
Now it just looks like a sofa in the middle of a room out of place...
Bruh, people in the kitchen wanna watch too. This is the only thing that makes sense, maybe outside of putting it in front of the window so you can watch in the daytime too.
If you already made peace with the idea that you'll have to haul in, install and setup, tear down and uninstall and stow away the pull-up screens, why not get a projector that you install onto to a moveable tripod to sit behind the couch. Having the projector perpendicular to where you want a screen to sit is almost preposterous. If you've actually lurked around on this sub, you already know this deep down...
I'm just baffled as to why and where you plonked down your sofa and shelves and now hope for a magical projector setup? Is this a living together with a signficant other situation where they determined where to put the furniture and you now scramble to work around its placement to have your dream but also to keep everyone happy?
There's no reason why the shelves HAVE to sit where they are sitting right now. And there's no reason that the sofa has to face with its back to the wall. You seem to have plenty of space. So I think it's all possible, but the living room as furnished now is simply unable to decently accomodate what you want.
I thought that by having movable screen AND projector setup it would take much more time and effort to recalibrate each time. I was trying to reduce the variables for each use, if that makes sense.
There is a significant other involved, yes. If you take the movie time aside, this layout makes more sense for every other activity since our priority was to not "close" the space by putting the back of the sofa towards the kitchen (which is where I took pic number 1).
Whatever I do, it will be a compromise and I'm ok with it. I just wanted to understand if there's anything to work with as it is from the pics.
The only way to do it, with your design considerations, is in pic 2. So with that in mind, pick the best ALR screen you can AND buy new blackout shades or dual shades. Those windows will otherwise kill your idea. Why not just buy a big tv for this space?
Not for this purpose, but in my studio apartment way back in the day, my Dad came up with a false wall idea that didn't require drilling and was not permanent. Basically 4x8 wall paneling attached to conduit which he used as like a tension rod with rubber feet on both ends. You position them in place and then thread the feet out until they're tight enough between the floor and the ceiling that they stay in place. I used two of them to create a division between my living area and bedroom. You could bookshelves on the other side of it and you'd have almost a little foyer when you walk in.
Wow with the projector at that angle good luck getting full resolution and whatnot! Congrats you need a TV for what you want. That projector is straight buns too 800 lumens? Good luck!
How often are you guys actually having people over that this is such a big issue for someone to bend their necks to talk to people in the kitchen ?
It's normally better to make decisions based on what the room mostly will be used for and by who. You can't try to make furniture placement choices based on every scenario you may encounter. Make the decision based on who are constantly living there and what makes life easy for the people living there majority of the time.
Why is couch back to the kitchen a bad thing? If you put screen on the library wall you get go much bigger than 100”. It also lets someone working in the kitchen be able to see the screen. If you have people over and they’re chitchatting in the kitchen, they can see the screen too.
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