Home theater

Hello All,
 
New to the forum and home automation and really looking to gain some needed information and knowledge for an upcoming project.  My wife and I are looking to finish off our basement which will have a home theater as on of the rooms.  My goal is to start my home automation with the new home theater.  I am looking to control all the lights in the basement (more so the home theater), my AV equipment which will include receiver, blu ray player, DTV, projector, ect. All of the AV equipment will be in a closet in another room.   I want to do this all with a tablet (android).  The home theater would have 3-4 zone which will have dim able lights.  I would like to be able to set up certain scenes where if for example i press play the play button and all lights dim and the movie starts.  
 
Since i am new to home automation I am not sure where to start.  What hardware is required for such a set up? Is it possible to control this all with one tablet app.  Thank you in advance for the help.

How tech-savvy is your wife?  There's a term for just how much tech nonsense you can get away with, it's the W.A.F or wife acceptance factor.  Do not assume your spouse is going to tolerate the same level of nonsense you might when it comes to using the TV.
 
When we build out our theater this summer I'll be putting in a Control 4 and Kaleidescape setup.  The WAF here is very low.  Low enough that the estimated costs for such a configuration were accepted.  Now, if I can find alternatives that's great, but if not we'll be shelling out some coin.
 
Trouble is a lot of the theater stuff is really not very user-proof.  All sorts of nonsense involving ripping, converting, transcoding, etc, just to get content stored.  Having all that coordinated is definitely worth considering.  Otherwise you start risking the WAF...
 
As for lighting, I'm a big fan of Lutron's RadioRA line.  Very reliable and meets the WAF.  Not the least expensive out there, but you want your lighting stuff to 'just work' and stay that way and Lutron's well known for this.  Note, you can even get stuff like table dimmers that allow using regular plug-in lamps.  So you're not limited to just in-wall or in-ceiling lighting.  
 
Best advice is don't let automation drive your implementation.  And don't assume anything is possible unless it's already doing it.  There have been a lot of gizmos made over the years that "almost" get things right.  Or "will get updates" and never did.  Decide how you need it to work and then find tech that DOES THAT.  Yes, that tech might seem expensive, but if it ACTUALLY DOES IT then budget for it and make it happen.  Otherwise you spend waaaaaaaaaaaay too much time fiddling around with crap and this pisses off the missus...

benzjas said:

Hello All,
 
New to the forum and home automation and really looking to gain some needed information and knowledge for an upcoming project.  My wife and I are looking to finish off our basement which will have a home theater as on of the rooms.  My goal is to start my home automation with the new home theater.  I am looking to control all the lights in the basement (more so the home theater), my AV equipment which will include receiver, blu ray player, DTV, projector, ect. All of the AV equipment will be in a closet in another room.   I want to do this all with a tablet (android).  The home theater would have 3-4 zone which will have dim able lights.  I would like to be able to set up certain scenes where if for example i press play the play button and all lights dim and the movie starts.  
 
Since i am new to home automation I am not sure where to start.  What hardware is required for such a set up? Is it possible to control this all with one tablet app.  Thank you in advance for the help.

Click to expand...

 
It would be interesting to know what you settled for ?
 
A nice feature would be to have the lights switch-on mildly when you hit the pause button, allowing a member of the family or a guest to go to the washroom or grab a drink. On pressing play, the lights would dim out and switch-off and the movie would resume.

AVSam said:

A nice feature would be to have the lights switch-on mildly when you hit the pause button, allowing a member of the family or a guest to go to the washroom or grab a drink. On pressing play, the lights would dim out and switch-off and the movie would resume.

Click to expand...

 
Hmmm, that's a very clever idea.  I may make use of that in the theater, later this fall.  I'd be inclined to perhaps do it with low on-wall or even on-furniture floor lighting.  Like you'd see in a theater. 

You can certainly do all that stuff. The primary thing is only buy stuff that is well known to be controllable, and is already widely used in automated systems. There are plenty of things that have some dodgey methods to control them, but that don't take control seriously.
 
Luckily, in the home theater, all of the gear is available in controllable versions. So you just have to look at the ones that are controllable and decide which ones you like the most feature-wise. Denon, Yamaha, Integra, Marantz, and others all make controllable A/V receivers and processors. If you are doing front projection then lots of them are supported. The options are much less on the flat screen TV side of things though they are available.
 
On the playback front, you can either go with ripped media and a streaming player, or with a controllable disc player. The former is much easier to fully automate, but of course it does introduce the requirement of ripping media and managing media metadata. The benefits though are substantial, to be able to browse your media anywhere in the home, make selections, see preview info, and start/control playback easily. And the same for music as well.
 
CQC can certainly handle all of that, and then expand outwards to the whole home.