Completely stuck on where to place home cinema kit in awkward-shaped room

[topper]

Hi all,See below photo of the room that I'm going to turn into our new home cinema. I'd really appreciate some thoughts on how to lay it out, as I'm really lost. Help me please! The shape of the room is awkward - it is a large room, but with a couple of nooks and crannies.Criteria / desires / things to be accomodated:

• Sanyo Z2 projector. Would like the biggest possible picture that is comfortable to view. Can mount on ceiling. I would prefer to paint a screen with screen goo paint, rather than purchase a physical screen.
• The wall at the top of the photo contains a couple of windows, and the wall to its left contains piping for a future air-conditioning unit. So if you strongly feel either of these is the right place for the screen, I'll have to splash out on a physical one.
• Massive IKEA couch (300 x 160 cm)
• Monitor Audio Monitor 3 floorstanders (22 x 17 cm) - my old faithful speakers are somewhat problematic in this setting. I have a lot of wall, hence a lot of potential screen, but putting the speakers in any sort of reasonable position means they get in the way of the screen slightly. Currently the projector is on the floor - in the end it will be on the ceiling which will mitigate this, but it's still something to consider.
• Future surround / centre speakers - not essential at the moment, but perhaps something for the future. I'm traditionally much more
• REL Q100E subwoofer (41 x 41 cm) - I guess this will go in a corner near the screen.
• 5 x Ikea Benno CD / DVD towers (20 x 18 cm) - of course, these can go almost anywhere in the room.
• Stand with CD player, HTPC, surround amp etc (40 x 55 cm) - this contains the usual stuff. Placement not that much of an issue as I can run cables.

The dimensions in the photo are in cm, and I'm grateful for any / all suggestions. Currently, as a temporary measure, I have the couch at the wall at the top of the photo, projecting onto the wall at the bottom.Oh, and the room height is 220cm.

[topper]

I have no idea why my formatting goes funny since the site changed domain, but I hope the above is readable.

[charlesr]

Formatting looks fine to me. What do you mean by "funny"? Are you on the fluid style or normal? And in the editor, have you seen the button top left that looks like A/A? Try clicking that.

Where are the radiators?

Does the couch fit top right?

[topper]

Hi, lots of weird behaviour e.g. if I click on "Edit Post", I just get the spinning dots, and the edit post dialog never opens. Also, some of my newlines in the editor disappear when I submit my posts. I'm using Chrome with AdBlock Plus FWIW. Oh, and I don't have any buttons at the top of my editor at all. Plain text.Anyway in answer to your question, there are no radiators, it's underfloor heating. The couch does indeed fit top right (facing left I guess you mean). Issues with that are the facing wall has air-conditioning pipes sticking out of it. This is a problem for screen goo, less so for a real drop-down screen, although if I ever fit air-conditioning, it probably won't do well behind a screen. Also, the 5m distance from couch to screen is less than the 6.5 that I get top to bottom. Currently with the couch at the top, and the screen projecting onto the bottom, I can get a 3m horizontal projection, which is great. Main issue is that the speakers block the picture, and I guess they would if the projector was on the ceiling as well. Although the speakers might be an issue anywhere. Ideally I'd like them in an equilateral triangle with the couch, for best imaging.It is tempting in that it frees up the bottom part of the room for other use though. See what I'm going through? Paralysis by analysis... By the way, I don't mean to sound negative, I really want to discuss the options with you experts.

[topper]

At the risk of scuppering my own thread, I'm not getting paragraphs...

[topper]

Bumpage - still looking for advice / insight on how to lay things out in this room.

[charlaph]

I'd say you'll be hard pressed to get any better than you're currently doing (sitting at the top, viewing at the bottom) unless you get a dedicated screen, at which point you can literally site it anywhere. With a sofa that big you can only really put it along the left wall (will the air con make any noise once it's in place? if so this wouldn't be great) the right wall, in front of the windows or at an angle, but that'll cut off an entire corner of the room.

My personal thoughts, having gone through a similar process many years ago with a projector and very much 'off centre' room, is to try a cheapo Ikea roller blind as a screen just to see how much of a hassle (or boon) it is not projecting onto a wall. You can get a cheapo TUPPLUR 2m wide white blind for ?25 and throw it up on your ceiling to get a feel for how a proper screen would be. Note that this is only a temporary thing as it's brute ugly and the cord will get in the way when not in use, but IMO well worth the money to see about speaker and sofa positioning. If you prefer it to projecting onto a wall then invest in a proper screen, if you don't then you're only out ?25 and a bit of filler for the screw holes in the ceiling.

My own thoughts - your layout doesn't really lend itself to putting the sofa at an angle in a corner, so it'd be best to have it along one wall. Do you prefer to sit square on to the screen, or would you be happy to sprawl out on the sofa and angle yourself to view an off-centre screen? put your viewing comfort first, and then place speakers around that. With modern amps and surround processing it's not hard to get decent surround balance even with off-centre speakers (it will mess up 2ch stereo imaging though). From looking at it again, I'd say the sofa along the right hand wall, projecting towards the left wall would be 'best' but you're not going to be utilising the whole room, and it leaves little room for expansion/extra seating etc...

Is this going to be a dedicated entertainment room, or doubling up as a sitting room or other function?