Home Movie Theaters

I’ve been an A/V nerd all my life. As a kid, I would take apart my parents’ stereo equipment and make a huge mess. It’s always been my dream to have the biggest and baddest A/V system on the block. Well, it took me 20 years, but I think my newest home theater takes the cake, at least on my block.

Nowadays an integrated home entertainment system is just as much, if not more, about the interior design as it is the technology. In fact, the most sophisticated custom installations reveal little to no technology to the naked eye, however, behind the walls and artwork, or hidden in the ceiling you just might find some amazing state-of the art sound and video gear.

Homeowners love what technology provides but many prefer to keep its presence at a minimum. Such was the case in this beautiful Southern California home in the upscale Pacific Palisades area. "This project had a good sized budget of $100k to provide whole-house distribution of audio, video, phone and data," said Mark Schafer, President of Custom L.A. "Still we all encountered a few challenges such as the family room, where the client wanted a completely invisible Home Theater in a wide open space".

This theater is located in our beach house in Punta Barco, a popular vacation spot in Panama. Resources in Panama aren’t as abundant as in the U.S., so I consulted with Chris Huston of Rives Audio in Coralville, Iowa. I was very impressed with his simple solution. My first priority was to ensure the room was treated for optimum performance. Following Huston’s design, I gathered materials locally to build the theater.

Penn Jillette's home theater is, like his entire house, not what you'd expect. The Slammer, a 6,000-square-foot monument to eccentricity and a macabre sense of humor, sprouts out of the Nevada desert a few miles from Las Vegas, where Penn & Teller perform their remarkable feats of illusion nightly at the Rio Hotel & Casino. From the outside, behind a chain-link fence, it looks like a Frank Gehry vision of Blade Runner in pastel. "Frank Lloyd Wrong," someone comments as we drive up to the gate. Within the courtyard, which has seemingly endless new additions under construction to accommodate an 8-month-old daughter and another on the way, multicolored astroturf and red and yellow concrete patios add to the sense that this is as much an adult playground as it is a residence-a very adult playground, given Jillette's well-known affinity for the scatological and the salacious.

<I>The breeze off the Pacific brings unparalleled ambiance to this Maui outdoor theater.</I>