OTHER TECH

I'm a big fan of subwoofers, and as you can see in the photos, I have six of them across the bottom of the screen. This is total overkill, but there's nothing like feeling the heaviness of something in my stomach - whether it's the force of the fecal geyser in RV or the profound weight of the mysterious metal box in Big Trouble - to make me laugh.

The screening room is filled with smallish yet manly NHT speakers - the front left/center/right speakers, six surrounds, and the six subs. The sound from the NHT system is bright and clean - surprisingly good, when you consider the speakers' relatively small size. I almost bought chairs with built-in under-the-butt subwoofers, but Sweetie and I both prefer screening rooms with couches and comfortable chairs and ottomans rather than theater seating. And the truth is, six subs up front is more than stupid.

The rest of the screening-room gear consists of an excellent Sony VW100 projector [since replaced with a Sony VPL-VW200 - see Barry's New Projector], which produces almost a three-dimensional quality, together with a Sony Blu-ray Disc player, a 400-disc Sony DVD megachanger, a Harman Kardon DVD player, and beautiful McIntosh A/V preamp and seven-channel power-amp units.

The control system, in both the screening room and the rest of the house, is a relatively simple setup made by Control 4. I've used expensive universal control systems from AMX and Crestron, and I've always been frustrated. If I replaced a piece of equipment, adding new codes and software to the controls was expensive. And in Telluride, at least, I had many problems with batteries and reliability.