As most of us I was very impressed when I first saw a Beloliving installation almost two years ago, an immidiate thought came to my mind "I really must have the same, really really...". Nice looking room, fully automated, great sound and a biiiig picture. Wow!

But back home, I contacted my local dealer and he had no idea what I was talking about.... OK, found another one and I was able talking to a lot of poeple close to the matter what was involved in such a setup. An EIB/KNX network for light and curtain control, a Stewart motorized screen, an (outdated) Samsung or SIM projector and the B&O stuff of your choice. Hmmm.....Stewart Screen, not in my budget, EIB/KNX, by far to complex for just one room to control two lights, old Samsung projector, no way!

So I ended up with the following components:

1. Davision 4D Multiformat Screen with IR-Control

2. JVC HD1 projector with IR and RS232 control

3. Light control....not sure yet, but most likely a IR based system

4. Lintronic Box to control screen and projector

5. B&O BS3, Beloab 5, 7-4 and 3

6. Panasonic commercial plasma screen 50"

7. Panasonic DVD recorder, but will be replaced by a BlueRay Player in the next couple of weeks

So how to wire all that stuff in a way that it works? Just hit the "Cinema" button on the BEO4 and the dream beginns...

I learned a lot during that project I would like to share with you over that next couple of weeks my key findings to help you if you plan to run a simular project.

Karsten

The room.

Fortunately  I was able to splitt of a part of our living room for the beoliving installation. The new room is 4m x 3,60m and seperated form the sitting area by two sliding doors. I took the opportunity to discuss my project with a acustic engineer and he provided a detailed plan how to build the sliding door and the two small walls with acustic treatment.

The acustic expert provided a plan for all walls including the ceiling to gurantee the perfect sound....however, I decided to do this step by step so I painted the front wall in dark grey to rise the contrast and avoid a "light" frame around the screen provided by the JVC HD1. This is a drawback of the D-ILA technology, so you need to paint the wall in a dark color. But at the end of the day it looks pretty nice! Hopefully by the end of this year I will have the full acustic treatment, allmost all parts are alreday purchased....

Great project Karsten, and thanks for the pictures.
I think your cinema is screaming out for a Beo5, do you have one?

Andy T.

Please show us more pictures of your project...

Regards Rasmus

Very interesting project and its good to know your using the JVC projector instaed of the outdated samsung offerings.

Should be  a great setup at a fraction of the cost.

Jandyt:

Great project Karsten, and thanks for the pictures.
I think your cinema is screaming out for a Beo5, do you have one?

Andy T.

Thanks Andy!

No, I don't have a Beo5. After I saw and touched the prototype in Struer I orderd one, however, with all the problems in the beginning with the software I am quite happy that I still have my Beo4 Cinema!

But one reason for the Beo5 could be it's native support for Busch&Jäger IR light control (at least an training doc from B&O stated that)

Karsten 

The Screen

Selecting the right screen was a little bit harder than I had thought in the beginning. As an B&O fan I asked for the best solution first, and the experts tell you Stewart Filmscreens are the best. So first, I checked out the different surfaces they offer, quite a difficult task....so Studiotek, or Firehawk or Greyhawk??? However, this question was answered very quickly when I got the first quote.....for a multi masking motorized system it was north of 10k Euro...so sorry, not in my budget!

I checked out different vendors, but in summary, I really have to say, the Stewart is by far the best. Anyway, I ended up with a Davision 4D Multiformat 2,44m. The cool thing with this one is the possibility to change the format from any 4:3 to 21:9 or whatever and store them 4 different memory places. 

http://www.kinozuhause.de/davision_multiformat.php

Unfortunately build quality and the way it is operated is not to great. After the first installation of the screen I realized that the viewing distance of 3,60m is to short for a 2,44m screen! Hmmm.... @#%&.

A friend of mine now is pleased with the 2,44m screen and I bought a new 2,24m one (lucky me, only 100 Euro extra in total).

And the worst thing of this screen is that the fine tuning of the format can only be done with a RF control and not with IR....and you have to enter a programming mode to do so. Not sure what the developer had smoked during the design process. Because every movie is different and for the prefect viewing expirience the masking bars need some fine tuning. OK, for the fifth of the stwart....

So the challenge is how to control this thing? With the multiformat option there is no trigger for on/off, the screen needs to know the right size to get down. The basic idea of the BS3 with the cinema trigger and a relay for up/down of the screen does not work.

In this case the Lintronic box can do the job, Micheal from Lintronic was so kind to implement the IR codes for 3 formats and the off-signal to the Lintronic box. So I can can control for example the 16:9 format and the off-signal with the Beo4. Cool, that works! Also switching to other formats is possible (e.g. from 16:9 to 21:9).

With the digital input of the Lintronic box it is now possible to lower the screen to 16:9 after hitting the cinema button (FORMAT 0) on the Beo4. I wired the cinema trigger output of the BS3 with the trigger input of the Lintronic box. Within the customer service menu it is quite easy to adjust the timings when the screen comes down, the projector should switched on and the image is switched from the plasma to the projector after FORMAT 0.

For all who try to do the same, the B&O docs are crab, Pin 5 is GND, Pin 6 is Cinema 1 and Pin 7 Cinema 2....it took a a couple of hours to figure this out.

 At the end, the ugly sreen case will be hided and two downlights on the left and right will underline a nice cinema expirience.

Nice job so far Karsten!  Likely to put some installers out of business!  

 As for lighting, have you looked at Lutron?  Their Grafik Eye 3100 series is available with a secret 'GBO' prefix part number that you might find useful. 

Interesting post here! I really look forward to the time that I can plan and afford my own project, this is right up my street.

Karsten, thanks for sharing all this info and I wish you good luck with the rest of your creation. Some photos as you get along would be great.

Fantastic project Karsten, can't wait to see more pictures. Thanks for sharing this with us.

Craig

RussR:

Nice job so far Karsten!  Likely to put some installers out of business!  

 As for lighting, have you looked at Lutron?  Their Grafik Eye 3100 series is available with a secret 'GBO' prefix part number that you might find useful. 

Russ, thanks!

I considered the Lutron Grafik Eye, a really, very powerfull solution and definitely my favourite!  however,  first I was unabel to find a "helpful" dealer in my region, and second I would need to completly rewire my currunt power and light wires. Unfortunately a very dusty job....not sure if I can sell this to my wife again (we did this a couple of years ago when we changed the entire lightning concept of the house, I think I would never do this again! So much dust!)

So not sure yet!

Karsten

Very nice idea, and ofcourse very nice components. You  combined the best from B&O with some very good other components.

 Btw, what kind of main source (cd/sacd/pre-amp) do you use to get the max out of the 5's ?

Hi Karsten,

as you might know, I built  "my beoliving" in nearly the same way you do. For light control I just use my LC2s - they were already installed- and I let the Lintronic box control them by pressing FORMAT 0 (Cinema).

The curtains are also controlled by the cinema control module. I just added a relay 108 board from Lintronic. Michael (Lindgaard) was very helpful. He sent me a special firmware so the board can be controled by its digital inputs, means pressing FORMAT 0 will close all curtains.

Pressing FORMAT 0 again (TV mode) will open all curtains.

Stefan 

Hi,

very interesting thread. Please keep going.

Cheers

JK 

Beobird:

Very nice idea, and ofcourse very nice components. You  combined the best from B&O with some very good other components.

 Btw, what kind of main source (cd/sacd/pre-amp) do you use to get the max out of the 5's ?

Beobird,

the BS3 is connected via Masterlink to my BS9000 in an other room. However, if you compare the quality of the masterlink audio to a CD-Player connected to the BS3 directly it is like an MP3 to uncompressed music. In my old setup I had an Sony ES CD Player hooked to the digital input of the lab 5, quite good quality indeed.  In my new setup I have the Pioneer DV-LX50 on my wishlist to have SACD multichannel audio via HDMI to the BS3. As we learned in an other discussion, the experts have different views on multichannel audio via PCM. So not sure if this will work.

In the near future I would like to run a test of different CD-Players, if (connected to the digital input) it really makes a difference if you go for a more "high-end" one. 

Karsten 

Some ideas for you're future player (they're on my hotlist too)

 Primare cd31 + sp31 surround processor (all their components are made from alumium, and I think they fit very well with B&O gear)

the cheaper cd21 is pretty nice looking too

The Consonance Droplet

And I'm in love with the Classé designs (a shame they're pretty expensive )