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I'm standing in my front yard with my buddy Carl on the 4th of July and he mentioned that it would be neat if I could buy a projector and use my neighbor's outside wall as the screen. I told him it WOULD be a good idea AND the neighbor has pre-teen & early-teen girls who might get a kick out of it too. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of having my OWN outdoor theater to myself better (I'm selfish like that). And that's when the brainstorming began...
I found the screen in my church's basement. Turns out it's 40+ years old and it used to hang from the sanctuary ceiling on a rope until one Sunday morning the rope snapped and the screen fell and broke (more on that later*), so they tossed it in the basement and left it there for 10 more years waiting for me to come by and scoop it up FOR FREEEEEEE.
Welcome to the HYLTO-PLEX:
The screen is a 96" square and I can project a 120" (diagonal) picture on it. BOOYAH!
I went to Home Depot and bought a couple screw-in hooks and those loop thingies rock climbers use for... whatever rock climbers use those loop thingies for. Heck if I know. When not in use, I un-hook it from the roof and throw it in the garage until next time. That's what's up.
*Turns out the screen doesnt stay rolled-down by itself anymore, so I bought a rubber door-stop-wedge thingy that does the trick quite nicely.
BAD BEWS: I dont really have a good place to mount the projector yet. The whole box-on-a-stool-on-a-table setup I'm using below probably isnt the best way to go but it'll have to do for now.
I bought my projector from www.vvme.com. It's a no-name-brand Chinese knock-off, but dont hate. It'll take every video input you can throw at it (HDMI, Component, VGA, DVD/Blu-Ray Player, Playstation 1/2/3, X-Box/360, Wii, cable box, laptop, WHATEVER) and it's internal speakers are pretty loud. I can add external speakers/surround sound if I want but I really dont need to. I connect it to my bedroom media PC with a 30' HDMI cable. My media PC plays DVDs, Blu-Rays, bootlegs, YouTube, Netflix streaming, ALL THAT.
HYLTO-PLEX UPDATE!!
(Aug 30, 2011)
Ding-dong, the box-on-a-stool-on-a-table is dead! I replaced it with a super-cheap plastic shelving unit I bought at Home Depot. Now my projector doesn't get nervous & start sweating if the wind kicks up a little. Long live the B.O.A.S.O.A.T.
Oh and while I was at it, I connected my cable box to the Hylto-Plex, too. IN YOUR FACE, DISH NETWORK!!
(Dont tell Dish Network.)
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