For the dedicated fan, a home theater can be more than a place to watch movies and play games, it can be a shrine to your favorite movie. We've seen this before in the case of theaters dedicated to Batman and the Titanic, now check out the Pirates of the Caribbean theater created for Paul and Emily Konold. Rachel Cericola over at the Electronic House found this gem which is decorated with scenes from the ride as well as the movie and pieces that were bought from Disney directly or built by hand. The murals were done by a 13-year-old artist Caden Jones who painted the arches in the theater.
The room has a 16:9 screen wit ha custom masking system to make the setup 2.35:1 so it is able to accommodate both movies and sporting events. The lobby is known as Laffite's Landing, which is part of the original theme park attraction and has wood plank floors, whiskey barrels, and gold and there is a bar at the back of the theater with treasure maps and gold under the glass tabletop. The total cost of the project was $30,000, Electronics House has a complete slideshow with additional details.
From the same folks who brought us the Cuddle Couch home theater seat comes the Batman "Bat Cave" themed theater. I've highlighted a Batman-themed theater before which was custom done for a client. This one comes from Elite Home Theater Seating and is designed to be the ultimate place for both viewing movies and gaming. Elite Home Theater Seating specializes in custom seats which can be customized with a variety of different layouts. This theater reportedly cost $500,000 for the layout and seating alone, the equipment will cost you even more.
Now that the HD DVD/Blu-ray battle seems to be over with Blu-ray declared the winner, investing in a high-end Blu-ray player isn't a foolish endeavor. Goldmund, the high-end AV manufacturer that created the amazing home theater I toured last October, has come out with the Eidos 20 BD, a Blu-ray player that offers an "AC-Curator" power supply circuit which dramatically improves picture and sound stability and dynamics, "Mechanical Grounding" construction which removes from the player mechanism spurious vibrations blurring the video signal and increasing jitter and "Magnetic Damper" a device lowering reading errors. The Eidos 20 BD is priced at $16,900.
One of the benefits of having your own home theater is that you don't have to follow the rules of being out at the cinema. You can talk, use your cellphone, bring in all sorts of snacks and rest your feet on the chair in front if you prefer. But for the most part you can't quite sprawl out or cozy up like you can in the living room because of the restrictions of home theater chairs. Elite Theater has solved that problem with a home theater seat called the cuddle couch. The two-seater couch has a cupholder on either side and comfortable pillows. It is available in fabric or leather and starts at $2495.
Most home theaters have a set number of seats and if you have extra people over you have to drag in chairs from elsewhere or hit the floor with pillows. Salamander Designs has created a new solution, a new Jump Seat Ottoman that will be debuted at the 2008 CES in Las Vegas. The Jump Seat Ottoman opens to reveal a hide-away theater seat that can be used as an extra seat for watching movies or playing video games. The seat is padded for comfort and even has a cup holder and room for a game control. It comes in a variety of different colors and fabrics.
Audio systems maker Paradigm has created a new line of speakers designed to work with your flatscreen TV. There are four separate systems designed for different applications.
The first is the Paradigm Vista system, a strictly a speaker set-up including Paradigm's new Millenia S1, C1 and ADP1 loudspeakers. It has front and rear speakers which are designed for bookshelf mounting but can be also be used with floorstands. It sells for $5,100
The Paradigm Impact system is a slim floorstanding system designed for places where space is at a premium. It sells for $11,400.
The Paradigm Prestige system uses Paradigm's Studio Series speakers with Anthem Statement amplification and AV processing. The system is designed for high-end sound but is also compact enough to sit on a bookshelf. It sells for $19,800.
The top-of-the-line system is the Paradigm Elitist, the ultimate Paradigm entertainment system that uses a preamplifier/processor combination from the Anthem Statement Seriesd with Paradigm's Seismic 12 subwoofer and floorstanding Studio Series loudspeakers for deep bass, low distortion and exceptional definition. It sells for $23,600.
I recently posted about the Goldmund Media Room, a high-end custom design for a home theater system. The folks at Goldmund were kind enough to invite me out to check out the system in action. They have tricked out a luxury home inside a gated community in Tarazana, CA with several different sound systems including the lavish home theater room. It doesn't look as large as it does in the pictures but it really is a very impressive system.
If you could have your ideal home theater what would it be like? The Goldmund Media Room would be pretty much the ideal for most people. We've seen some lavish set-ups before but this one is truly amazing. The Goldmund installers use an acoustic modeling program named Proteus to create the perfect design for your room. They custom build all the media room audio and video components including up to 128 speakers with an amplifier for each speaker and a central processing controller. The installations start at $300,000 which doesn't include the decor and furnishings (those amazing coffered ceilings with inset lights do not come cheap). Live the fantasy in the gallery pics below.
These days the rules of speakers are simple, they have to sound great and have really cool looks. The Duevel Planets are omni-directional speakers topped by a pair of chrome "planets," one over the woofer, the other over the tweeter. The company that sells them, Urban Fidelity, is on a mission to get people not to buy plastic speakers. The speakers can also be used as part of a home theater system. They have received a variety of good reviews including a rave from Sonic Flare. They come in silver, red or black for $1295 or blue, green, or gunmetal for $1395.
I'm really into having great surround sound for my home movies, but I just don't have the time to get all technical and read up on what's the best, what's a rip-off, etc. But in reading this post over at Spungle I'm thinking I want me a Niro 620 Home Theater System -- if it's only half as good as they say I'd be more than happy. If you're like me (the type that really gets into movies with awesome sound effects and music tracks) then you know that the entire viewing experience can be made or broken by the quality of your sound system. The Niro 620 sounds like it's one of the best, of not the best, and it's priced reasonably at $995.
About a year ago, Hammacher Schlemmer debuted an R2-D2 robot. But while cute and responsive to all sorts of commands, he wasn't much more than a novelty. Their latest R2-D2 is a lot more functional. His head holds a DLP projection system that can project movies, TV shows, images, and video games from his radar eye at 1024 x 768 resolution. One of his mechanical arm housings in the front of his body has a DVD/CD player and his anterior vents rotate to reveal a docking station that fits most iPods so you can play music or videos through his two 20-watt built-in speakers. He has a variety of other audio and video related functions and comes with a mounted model of the Millennium Falcon that conceals a remote. He sells for $2,799.95.
This latest home theater highlighted by Electronic House isn't remarkable so much for the theater part of things but for the unique decorations. The owner, a Batman fan who collects the action figures, actually has built-in toplight boxes to display the figurines. The room also has Xbox and PlayStation gaming consoles and in-wall speakers and Novawall acoustic paneling to create one fancy basement. The complete slideshow is over at Electronic House.
Electronic House has shown off some pretty spectacular theaters before but this one is appealing not just because of the design but because of the inspiration. The theater, created by Johann Peters of Charisma Productions, is a demo theater that is based on "The Stag" the theater at George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch. The 16-seat demo theater features THX home components and speakers, a pro-grade JVC digital projector, JBL subs and Crown amps and a Mackie mixing console. It's not exactly like the original, which seats 300 and it is also a different color, but it has the same clean Art Deco lines. Peters got the idea after he attended a THX-certification session at Skywalker Ranch in 2000. The theater cost $100,000 to put together.
The commitment to movie watching that some people are willing to make never fails to enthrall me. An article in Electronic House brought my attention to a Titanic-inspired theater in Tennessee. The ceiling dome was inspired by the the elaborate dome that crowned the first class staircase of the ship and was so memorably used in the movie to highlight the romance between Jack and Rose. The theater is a 20-by-14-foot room and the dome in the theater has 1,230 fiber-optic light strands for a night sky effect. The theater has a Vikidron movie projector and a 120-inch custom screen. A bookcase swings open to allow entry into the adjoining pub room and the equipment remains hidden behind a framed picture in the back.
The evolution of plasma televisions which provide theater-like experiences continues onward with the introduction of the huge 65-inch Vidikron VP-6500VHD television. It has 1920 x 1080 (1080p) resolution and is the first plasma display to achieve THX certification for video quality and performance. This is important for those looking to approximate the cinema experience at home. It also has Vidikron's IntelliWide™ mode which allows for viewing of all 4:3 content in a 16:9 widescreen format, filling the entire 65-inch screen without appreciable picture degradation. It has a brushed anodized aluminum frame but is also available with a black frame. The VP-6500VHD sells for $19,995.
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