Home Theater Geeks 440 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
00:00 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I profile another Home Theater of the Month from AVS Forum. So stick around Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is TWIT. Hey there, scott Wilkinson. Here, the home theater geek. In this episode, I profile another home theater of the month from AVSforumcom. We will put the link to this article in the show notes, but I really wanted to show it to you here because it's pretty cool.
00:55
The owner is named AJ and he is a professional in the movie industry. He's currently working as a sequence supervisor on the Avatar sequels, so that's going to give him solid work for the next few years, I would say. I believe they filmed all the way to Avatar 5, something like that. Anyway, so he lives in LA and he and his partner built a house in LA in 2020, right during the pandemic. So that was a challenge in and of itself the pandemic. So that was a challenge in and of itself. But they went ahead and did it and the floor plan called for a big bonus room on the third floor. It's out into an outdoor patio and that big bonus room AJ decided to turn into a home theater. Decided to turn into a home theater. So here's a picture of the build in progress, the framing, and you can see the sliding glass door going out to the patio and there are a bunch of windows in here too. I'm going to show you how he took care of all of that for the home theater.
02:11
Home theater Now. Interestingly, he decided to use freestanding left and right speakers and subwoofers. Most home theaters that are dedicated serious home theaters. They'll either use in-wall speakers or they'll put the speakers behind the projection screen and the sound passes through the projection screen, which is acoustically transparent, either with tiny little holes poked into it or if it's made out of a woven material, and the sound actually passes through the gaps in the threads that are woven together to make the screen and, amazingly, the sound comes through almost unscathed. But AJ decided to do it differently. He made his left and right speakers and subwoofers completely visible and in the room here we can see the KEF LS50 right and left speakers that are on stands and the subwoofers, which are SVS SB2000s in white, interestingly enough.
03:18
And the only in-wall speaker in the front is the center channel, which is a KEF CI3160RL-THX Long model number. Interestingly, he mounted it vertically rather than horizontally, which would be more normal for a center channel, but he says that the dispersion is fine and it works very well. You can also see in that image there are circular holes cut in the ceiling. Those are for the Atmos speakers and you can see rectangular holes cut there, very near the right end of that image for the surround speakers. In fact we have another graphic of the surround speaker placement. In this picture we can see the surround speakers, or at least the holes cut for them in the side and rear walls. So he did go in wall for the surrounds. He just wanted to see those speakers in the front for aesthetic reasons.
04:24
I suppose the next image we'll see the final room, the finished room, and you can see the Polk I'm sorry the KEF speakers there on stands along with the subwoofers and the equipment rack which is there in the front. Again, that's not very common in home theaters, but this is not a common home theater, so it's one reason I wanted to show it to you. So the most interesting feature of this home theater and again it's very unusual is what's called a pit couch, so AJ and his partner like to cuddle while they're watching movies, and traditional theater seats don't work very well for that. So instead what they did was they bought this pit couch, which is sort of a giant doggy bed for humans and they do have a dog as well and the dog loves to hang out with them and there you can see him on the pit couch, but it's basically a big, giant doggy bed for people and you can also see on the screen there, the Kaleidoscape system. Here's another image of the pit couch, and they've got really big pillows in the front too for people who want to sit in front of the couch and be right up close to the screen. In this image you can also see the window treatments that he has implemented here to really block sunlight out of the room. He also painted the room a dark gray or black, I can't remember exactly, but it's very dark and exactly what you want in a home theater. So I like that. That's very cool.
06:17
You can just really lounge while watching the movies and, as I said, the equipment is in the front of the room under the screen, in a credenza which is pretty unusual for dedicated home theaters. I think that's graphic seven. There it is. These slotted doors open up and you can see all this equipment. Normally that would be in a rack, a tall rack, uh, somewhere outside of the theater, but, but again, aj wanted to have easy access to it and liked the aesthetic of actually having this equipment in the room. I really hope that there isn't much fan noise. That would be the only real problem with doing it this way. That, and seeing any lights you know, power lights or displays, indicators of one thing or another that could be distracting, but I'm sure that he probably has that well taken care of.
07:33
So another thing I wanted to point out is that aj uses a harmony elite universal remote, which is sadly no longer available as a new product. Logitech stopped selling them, making them and selling them. But here you can see it and it is my favorite universal remote by far, no question about it, and most other people's as well, and the good news is you can find it on eBay. It ain't cheap, but it's the one to get if you can. Now, like most home theater geeks, aj also has an extensive disc collection, and this tells you that physical media really is the best source. So if you're a home theater geek and you want the best quality picture quality and audio quality, you want discs. Streaming is very convenient and that's why people really like it and why many people say physical media is dead. I say I hope not, because I really like physical media, because you get the highest quality, you get the extras and bonus material that often doesn't come with streaming, and you don't have to worry about the streaming content being removed from the platform at some point. So there are reasons to prefer physical media, and I certainly do.
09:14
Now, as I said earlier, the room has big glass sliding doors and those can be really bad for acoustics. So what AJ and his partner did was install heavy, heavy duty floor to ceiling curtains in front of those doors, which really helps with the acoustics quite a bit. And you can also see here the blackout uh coverings over the two front windows and you saw some in the previous photo uh around the side and back that completely block out the light uh into this theater, or they can be removed and you can have lots of sunlight in there If you want to use the room as a you know, a gathering place for a party or something, but when it's time to watch a movie, you want it blacked out, and they have really done a great job with that. Now AJ has some pretty high-end gear in there.
10:04
I mentioned Kaleidoscape before. That is the premier movie server system. You download the movies digitally into a server and so it resides locally. You don't have to worry about it disappearing from a streaming platform. And then you play it and it plays at a very, very high quality, equivalent to physical media. So that is a way to not have physical media and still have the best quality. But it's expensive. Kaleidoscape systems are very expensive. He also has an Epson Pro Cinema LS 12,000 laser projector. It's an LCD projector, but the highest quality, the best Epson does, and it's really good quality. The best Epson does, and it's really good.
11:04
Lumagen Radiance video processor for handling upscaling and aspect ratio control and so on. Anthem AVM70 preamp processor, or surround controller as some people call it, an Oppo UDP205 Ultra HD Blu-ray player. This is another device that is not made anymore and this was the top end of the Oppo line and it's the one that everyone wants. This is the audiophile version. It has balanced audio outputs. It's really the cream of the crop and again, it's not made anymore.
11:39
But if you can find one, that or the UDP-203, which is what I have, and you want the best disc player you can get, that's the one to get, but they're also very expensive on eBay. People who are selling them know that they're valuable and they price them accordingly. That they're valuable and they price them accordingly. So AJ reports that the total cost of this theater was about $50,000 all in, not including some of the equipment that he already had. So $50,000 ain't cheap. But you know, there are people who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars on their home theaters, and so this one is quite impressive, especially for the money, and I hope you enjoyed seeing it because it's pretty darn cool.
12:35
Now, in some episodes of Home Theater Geeks, I answer listener questions, so I hope you will send them in to htg at twittv and I will answer as many as I can on the show. And, as always, we thank you for your support of the TWIT Network with your membership in Club TWIT membership in Club Twit. Of course, you can listen to the audio of this show anytime for free, but if you want to see the video, which is really nice on a show like this where there's a lot of photos, then you can join Club Twit and enjoy that as well, and you can also come into the Discord channel and watch us make the show live and you have access to all the other twit shows in video form as well. So we thank you very much. Until next time, geek out.
