Today’s post isn’t FIFA orientated I’m afraid, but wanted to keep regular content flowing on the blog, and as most of the readers will know, for the last month or so I have been converting a room at home from an old disused office, into a dedicated movie/games room, and as such, equipment has been disconnected whilst being moved around, what with spending most of my free time in the evenings and at weekends working on the conversion project, I haven’t had as much free time for gaming, and progressing my FIFA 19 career.
So with no Further FIFA gaming since last week I thought I’d provide a quick update on the games room, for those that are interested, if not, you can stop reading from this point on 🙂
The room in question is a back bedroom, a small room, measuring only 8.6 foot by 7 foot with a small alcove cut into it which houses and in-wall cupboard, it was up until recently being used as a psuedo-office, with a large L-shaped corner desk housing my iMac computer and USB DJ Controllers.
I sold the iMac a while ago after receiving a 2018 Macbook pro laptop with touch bar, from then on the office room became redundant and was used unintentionally as a bit of a ‘dumping ground’, somewhere we’d just put bits we couldn’t find room for, presents over xmas, old packaging etc, it started to resemble something off that hoarders Tv show, which irritated my OCD minimal clean decor brain somewhat, so it was on the back of this that i decided to make use of the room and convert it into a dedicated games and movie room.
The room started off with magnolia painted walls, and a very thin worn old beige carpet, remnants from the days when we first bought the house and rented it out, the first job was obviously to spruce it up, baring in mind that a projector would be used in this room, it needed to be as dark as possible to minimise ambient light, with the window being directly opposite the screen wall.
All skirting and coving was freshened up and sanded down and re-painted, then a nice new deep pile silver/grey carpet with cloud 9 underlay went down, and wallpaper on to the bare walls, a light grey tinged with silver specks round most of the room with the feature wall (screen wall) housing a black/silver geometric style pattern wallpaper.
The ceiling was painted with a matt Black CinemaMatte paint which soaks up ambient light and reduces light bounce on to the screen, and added a glitter additive which when dried, you rub over and it breaks the head off the paint and lets the glitter pieces sparkle through, kind of simulating a starry night type sky effect, a much cheaper and easier alternative to the very fancy method of fitting optical fibre cables into ceiling panels and wiring into the mains.
A 2-spot spotlight was also fitted with wiFi enabled bulbs, allowing me to control the colour, tone, temperature and brightness of each bulb or as a group direct from my phone
A crushed velvet 2 seater sofa was fitted into the recess at the back wall (not shown in the picture) which facilitates a seating position approx 7 feet from the screen.
All cabling has been trunked around the bottom of the room snug to the top of the skirting boards so is very discreet, using silver sprayed trunking for the grey walls, and black D-Line decorative trunking on the black wall.
There is a low profile Black ash cabinet against the screen wall housing the PS4, Apple Tv, Sky box and AV receiver, with space for more equipment to be added.
The sound system I have used is a Yamaha YHT1840 5.1 Dolby Digital/DTX surround sound system, shown below:
I have the PS4, Apple TV and SKY Q boxes connected into the AV receiver via HDMi 2.2, the AV unit has 4 HDMi inputs, then one high-grade 12 foot long, HDMi over optical cable trunked around the room going to the projector, and using HDMi ARC (Audio Return Channel) which means I only have one output going into the projector, and the AV Unit handles the source switching, The picture is sent from each device into the AV Unit, then out to the projector to display the image, the projector then sends the sound back down the HDMi ARC into the AV Unit which then encodes/decodes the soundtrack and routes it around the 6 surround speakers.
The end result is a 85″ Full HD screen, with a 7 foot viewing distance at a 28 degree angle from eye line (Cinemas are designed with an optimal viewing angle of 30 degrees from all positions), with full Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound.
I have also added mobile controlled LED lighting to the back of the equipment unit, which syncs with the LED controlled wifi spotlight, to give an ambient low lighting effect.
My next update will be to add an Nvidia shield unit which runs on Android Oreo 8.1 and features a fully functional Google play store for installing apps, games emulators etc, and provides wireless gaming functionality, I will also setup the IPTV service I have on that which gives me an additional 2,800 channels from around the world, including all UK movies, sports, US channels and all PPV/subscription channels.
Also a mini drinks chiller and popcorn maker are till to go in to the room for a truly authentic mini-cinema feel.
All cabling, HDMi over optical, and networking is running over the new Vodafone Gigabit broadband, at 950mb+ per sec speeds.
I will update this post with some video footage in due course.
FIFAFX.com 
Paul – all the way to the bottom of the post and no footage of the thing in action! That’s all that’s needed to complete a wonderful post that IS perfectly in keeping with your blog, as this environment is the medium you’ll be playing your footy gaming in, mostly, going forward. Uncle Turf & co. are going to love all the incidental details of your Lordly life.
You’ve put far more work into it all than I would have. My method would have been just to plug the stuff in and make the best of the space, but you’ve gone full-on professional there. Looks like you can get a better ‘blackout curtain’ fit on the window though? With high summer coming up you’ll be in that room on a lot of bright evenings. It already looks great of course.
LikeLike
NG – I could have just got a chair in and pointed it at the magnolia wall but my OCD wouldn’t let me, had to be done properly.
Since the post I’ve ordered some acoustically treated foam wall tiles and bass traps which will make the room sound ‘warmer’ and more full too.
I will get some footage captured tonight, promise, I was working on the room from 2pm until way gone midnight last night, when I finished I didn’t have time to clear up or record proper video.
Will get some of some game footage running and some movies.
Yeah plan to get some blackout curtains across that window the blackout blind that’s up though does a decent job, at 8am this morning, blind open, in morning light, the screen was still perfectly watchable, the colours just don’t pop as much when there’s ambient daylight.
LikeLike
A pic in open light, you can see the seating position in relation to the screen
LikeLike
Paul – lovely, and I think you’re going to get comments about the wallpaper behind the screen (very ‘steel chrome’ kind of thing!). I’ve got a room I could do something like that to, but I don’t fancy even a fraction of the work involved.
LikeLike
Fully expecting some smart ass comments from Turf, I’d be disappointed if he didn’t but the black/silver geometric wallpaper goes with the black/silver/grey theme of the room, and its thickened and designed to absorb sound so isn’t just same fancy pattern wallpaper.
In the dark with the icy blue led lights on, you don’t really see much of the pattern, just streaks of silver, looks kind cool.
I enjoyed the project, am by no means a DIY expert, I didn’t even have a drill, had never used one, so had to buy a few bits, the whole getting all the tech to work with each other thing was the appeal for me.
LikeLike
…and by popular request….
All that effort just to watch Jason statham in a muscle vest?
The line that creased me was the crushed velvet 2 seater. What readers don’t know is that the original next line was ‘and with the spare material from the cushions I made myself a pair of luxurious y fronts, less chaffing on the old liver n bacon’.
Sadly those mini decorator steps are pure hi-tec silver shadow and shiny tracksuit. I imagine a plasterers radio nearby.
Apart from that it does look fantastic and clearly you did lots of homework. We can’t even be arsed to put up wallpaper.
LikeLike
Paul – That is some set up. Light years away from where I can be found, huddled over my trust old PS2 Slim in the shed playing PES 5 on a budget HDTV.
Glad to see FIFA 19 is still holding up, despite suffering from some familiar nu-era issues.
LikeLike
wow, Paul, in awe of your craftsmanship and DIY skills, looks amazing! Do you think this ‘new stadium’ will inspire even better performances from your Forest team? Must be almost visually overwhelming to be a couple of metres away from such a massive vivid screen.
currently undertaking a similar albeit less ambitious project, converting the kids’ playroom into a movie/gaming room for all of us. Will probably go for an OLED on the wall rather than projector, I suspect the wife would be unimpressed if I painted the whole lot black
LikeLike
Thats it Turf, deliver as expected!!
You get out what you put in and all that, Statham’s sweat soaked muscle vest has never looked so good!
LikeLike
Haha shed, polar opposites, your PS2 slim running PES 5 would probably look better on your old HDTV than on an 90″ cinema screen anyway!
Looking forward to getting back on FIFA, now the room is finished I will have more time dedicated to progressing the season.
LikeLike
Thanks Abbeyhill, I enjoyed the project, I’ve never tried my hand at DIY before, didnt have any tools so even had to buy a drill, but I’m pretty creative and know what looks good, and am decent at putting stuff together, so was nice to see the room come together over the last month or so.
If you have the room, ie a decent sized wall in your games room then you could easily have a projector setup, £120 for a Vankyo leisure 5 HD projector, £20 for an 80″ velcro to wall screen, sorted!
I have since updated the setup, I was using a Duronic AWS 80″ screen, which was a velcro to the wall job, but was surprisngly fantastic quality, but the pure nature of it meant some straight edges and lines were slightly rippled, not enough to affect viewing quality but my OCD didn’t like it, so ripped that down yesterday and purchased and fitted a new Saphire PureCinema 80″ fixed frame tensioned screen, and also added a beer fridge, popcorn maker is coming friday! 🙂
LikeLike
Nice one Paul, although in the photo above the wallpaper does boggle the eyes. I guess it’s different in the darkness with the screen lit up. Is there enough space for a Nubian teenager to crouch down so you can rest your feet on his back?
Turf – I never knew Jason Statham had no muscles of his own, and relied on a vest.
LikeLike
Chris99 – theres an in-wall cupboard, keep a couple of filipino boys with flat heads in there for foot rests.
LikeLike
The flat heads must come in handy for when you need to put your creme de menthe and babycham somewhere.
LikeLike
Got a drinks fridge in the movie room for that Chris. Only peasants drink warm babycham
LikeLike
Well jealous of that setup Paul. Looks like a proper man cave that.
LikeLike
Thanks #1 – Still updating pieces, acoustically treated next 🙂
LikeLike
Acoustically treated? Sounds good…
LikeLike