Four-Year-Old House Gets A/V Upgrade
A custom home theater and multiroom audio help a homeowner put his own touch on a new house.
Cool Homes | March 26, 2007 | by Lisa Montgomery
EXTRACT
A Blank Canvas for a Home Theater
An extrawide CinemaScope screen, a 7.1 surround-sound system and an architectural design that would match the rest of the house were a few of Taylor 's priorities. “I have a real appreciation for technology and wanted the theater to reflect that,” he explains.
The 110-inch screen from Screen Research chosen by the design and installation team at Image Tech Design of Worcester, MA, is about as cutting-edge as video displays get. Shaped wider than a typical widescreen projection screen, it would allow Taylor to view movies without having to see those distracting black bars that typically appear on the top and bottom of DVDs shot in the popular CinemaScope, or anamorphic, format. Paired with a Runco CineWide projector, the entire screen would be filled with a bright, larger-than-life image.
To stay on par with the stellar video setup, Taylor 's theater would require more than a standard off-the-shelf surround-sound system. Image Tech Design created new walls and decorative columns for the space, both of which house absorptive and diffusive materials to create what Image Tech Design owner John Brusa calls “a natural enveloping acoustic environment.”
While hours of acoustical engineering went into the design of the room, the Image Tech team didn't forget about the architectural integrity of the space. “We enlisted the help of the original builder to ensure that the design would blend in with the rest of the house,” says Brusa. “We weren't trying to make any new statements but instead make the theater look and feel like it had always been there.”
Part of fitting in with the home's clean, uncluttered design would involve concealing the theater's seven speakers and four subwoofers behind acoustically treated walls and the CinemaScope screen. The walls were lined with acoustically transparent fabric to allow the sound from behind to filter cleanly into the room, and the Screen Research screen, composed of acoustically transparent material, was able to do the same.
Taylor expects the enveloping audio, the superwide video and the stunning design
to change his social life. “I'll be having my friends and family over a lot
and probably won't be going out to the movies,” he says. “Why should I, when
the show is better at my house than at the movie theater?”
Heck, he may even stop going to his beloved New England Patriots games. “Watching the games on such a large screen in high def is amazing,” he notes. “And you don't get to see all those high-def replays at the stadium like you do in my theater.”
Equipment List: Theater