Home Movie Theaters

Let me start at the end...When you're a A/V enthusiast, you're never really done building a dedicated home theater room. The best you can strive for is, "this is where the room is as of today". Adding and replacing equipment goes hand in hand with the passion of the audiophile. Over the past 24 months, I've built a dedicated home theater/multimedia room in my house that includes a host of components from Sony.

Located in the Soho district of lower Manhattan, the Savant Experience Center is an actual living space complete with a media/living room, home office, master bedroom, kitchen, dining room and a dedicated 800 sq. foot theater. Close to the Apple store, the Experience Center showcases the latest technologies in home entertainment and control to dealers, architects, designers, industry associations, and prospective clients.

We recently remodeled our master bedroom to accommodate a fairly high end home theater/audiophile AV system. Since we're as much into great music as great films, we designed the system to provide optimum playback for both. We spend most our time either viewing movies or listening to music, so the bedroom is now our main living area.

You can't have an audio system without speakers, however, it's the speakers that cause the most problems, especially with respect to interior design. Known for their wide selection of residential ceiling fans, Hunter has teamed up with Soundolier Integrated Wireless Technologies to create the Concert Breeze, a combination ceiling fan and powered audio system.

I've been a subscriber to Home Theater since 1996, as well as, Stereophile Guide to HT, long before it became UltimateAV (which is now exclusively on the web). All these years of reading these specialty magazines has finally paid off with the design and construction of my dream home theater and home automation system.

This is one of those times when the pictures just don't do justice to the project. The winner of the 2009 Windows Media Center Ultimate Install is Vision Audio from Lubbock, Texas. The Media Center Integrator Alliance (MCIA), together with Microsoft, announced the winner of the 2009 Windows Media Center Ultimate Install Contest during CEDIA in Atlanta, Georgia on September 13. This impressive system uses Windows Media Center at the core of the home's entertainment experience in an extensive whole-home installation.

For the price of other stand-alone Blu-ray players, it only makes sense to invest in Samsung's BD-P3600, which integrates streaming technology providing you a lot more bang for the buck. Streaming movies, TV, music and other content is without question the wave of the future,,,and the wave is only gathering up more water as a variety of new AV products are partnering with content providers.