How To: Turn your car into a drive-in theater
A lot of younger folks in Autoblog land have never seen a drive-in movie, mostly because the majority of outdoor theaters have gone the way of the Dodo. Never fear, because the folks at Popular Mechanics have come up with a clever yet simple way of bringing the drive-in to your own back yard.
The ingredients of a home theater are, for the most part, easy to assemble. First, and perhaps most importantly, you need a projector. The price of a projector has dropped considerably in the past couple years, with a compact system with 1500-2000 lumens goes for well under $800. Next is the DVD player, which can be a laptop or battery-operated personal unit. Perhaps the coolest idea of this exercise is the purchase and use of an FM Transmitter, which enables cars in the immediate area to tune in the movie's audio on an open channel. If you don't have an available outdoor outlet available, you can use an inverter to supply electricity from your car's battery to the projector. The last thing you need is a white wall, a screen, or a white sheet. Outside of the FM Transmitter, which goes for about $65, just about everything listed can be borrowed or rented. The final product is a high-quality outdoor movie experience that you can enjoy from the confines of your minivan. Hit the Popular Mechanics website to get more info, they've even got a video that describes the project in great detail.
[Source: Popular Mechanics]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Guenther 1:11PM (6/06/2007)
ad to the list a monster battery or a car that idles really smoothly. Those projectors aren't easy on power. Now, if you could disguise the lens of the projector in one of the cars projector beam headlights....
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felipe 2:39PM (6/06/2007)
ok cool and all, but if i dothe FM thing and people come, isn't that breaking the law? inviting the neighborhood over for a showing.
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Jared 3:05PM (6/06/2007)
Felipe,
Breaking the law is what those companies do when they charge what they do for admission to a movie. Plus if you rent the movie you can show it to whoever. Even if it is illegal act like you have a set. Pull up your skirt grab your eggs and do a little act of civil disobedience.
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Justin 4:00PM (6/06/2007)
Many young people still go into drive-ins. Quit trying to act like your long lost youth was so special. I'm 23 and go every week in the summer, along with hundreds of others. There's tons of drive-ins all over this great country still open year round (not that you'd want to go year round)
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