Rear Projection Bedroom TV Project

Last Friday, I was talking to a friend at work about how I had a video projector at home, but I didn't have a good place to use it in our house. Our bedroom TV, and old 27" that we've had for about 10 years, bit the dust late last year and we haven't replaced it, but we didn't have a nice blank wall or mounting area for a screen in the room. On the way home, I had an idea to construct a rear projection screen at the foot of our king sized bed. Luckily, my wife was out shopping, so I was free to experiment. Just to see if the projector would work in rear projection mode (where the video is mirrored) and to see how big the image would be, I did a quick proof of concept with the projector in a chair and a white bedsheet rubber banded to the bedposts:



It worked just fine. When I searched for rear projection screens, I found that they started in the hundreds of dollars and went up from there (the ad links to the left show several of them usually). I did a bit of thinking about rear projection screens and seemed to remember that some people had good luck with vinyl shower curtains, so I went to Lowes and bought a cheap white vinyl shower curtain, some metal grommets, and some small bungee cords. After making sure the curtain worked (and it worked well), I cut it to size and attached metal grommets to the corners, folding it over for reinforcement (may not have been a good idea because of wrinkles, but I'm learning for screen v2.0):



I used small bungee cords to attach the screen to the bedposts. Obviously, this project depends on having the right kind of bed:







There is a little bit of wrinkling at the corners, but they're not really noticeable in the dark, but I'll work on them on the next version.

Now, the moment of truth:





Raiders of the Lost Ark at about 65 inches diagonally, bright and in focus, right at the foot of the bed. What more could anyone ask?

Well, you could ask for better sound. I had the DVD player's sound connected to the projector's speakers and I didn't want to run wires across the bedroom. But, I have a stereo FM transmitter that I borrowed from a friend that we are going to use for a MobMov type drive-in movie setup, so I hooked it up to the DVD outputs and put a small FM boombox at the foot of the bed in front of the screen. Here is the setup at the projector - it needs a bit of work, but I'm going to move it all into the entertainment center beside it (except the projector) and attach a VCR to use the cable tuner on it to watch TV:

This picture has notes on Flickr showing all of the components, click it to view:




Next steps? Better sound, moving everything out of the floor, getting a component video adapter for the projector so I can use progressive scan instead of just S-Video, and working a better screen design. Ideally, I would mount a retractable screen inside the well of the foot board so that it would retract out of sight when not in use.

Since I already had the projector and most of the materials, the whole setup cost me about $20 in materials and a few hours of work. All four of us, plus the dog, squeezed onto the bed and watched Raiders of the Lost Ark...

All of the pictures (and a few more notes) can be viewed at my Flickr page...