Some people spend years planning their dream home theater, measuring their room, contemplating gear specs and plotting the best time to take the plunge. Others dive right in. The owners of this northern New Jersey home barely had the front door key in their possession when they took the first step.

Ryan Herd, owner of One Sound Choice in New Jersey, said he first met the homeowners the day they settled on the house. However, it wasn’t actually a rush decision. Herd said the clients had been dreaming of a home theater for years and were waiting until they had the right house to put it in. They’d seen plenty of great examples as avid readers of Electronic House, so they knew exactly what they wanted.

There was one stipulation—it needed to be done in four weeks in time for a party. The clients were in a hurry, so if Herd was going to get the job, he had to make sure he could deliver in record time. “I have the best crew in the world,” says Herd, “we excel in project management,” so the deal was struck, and work began.

Aside from the time constraint, the clients had a few other requests. First, they’d just plunked down a lot of money into the house, so they couldn’t go overboard on esoteric gear for the theater—quality and value were the themes. Second, they wanted a stage. With a little girl in the family who likes to sing karaoke, a small stage would add to the family enjoyment. Finally, they wanted to make sure sound from the theater didn’t leak into the rest of the house. The theater room was directly below the kitchen, so the clients didn’t want a movie or sports game in the theater to drown out conversations upstairs.

To help corral the sound, while working within the owners’ budget, Herd tore down the original ceiling of the 288 square-foot room. He doubled the insulation, and used QuietRock sheetrock, plus acoustic treatments on the walls to both keep the sound inside and make it sound great when you’re there.

The sound the owners heard was going to come from a Denon AVR3312CI, a seven channel receiver with 125 Watts per channel, plus bonus features like 4K upscaling and Apple AirPlay. The receiver feeds a set of Episode ES-HT900s and ES-HT700s in-wall and in-ceiling speakers plus two ES subwoofers for a full 7.2 system. The speakers include high-performance ribbon tweeters and MDF backboxes, making them stand out from a lot of other in-wall speakers. “Huge kudos for quality,” is how Herd describes them.

To give the room a true cinema feel, and to maximize the space in the room, the front speakers were all installed behind a Stewart Directors Series acoustically perforated screen with four-way masking.

Lighting up the screen is a JVC DLA-RS40 LCoS 3D projector. With 1,300 ANSI lumens (before calibration), it’s best with a light-controlled room like this theater, but can also be viewed with some ambient light in the room. The RS40 was last year’s model, so the nearest equivalent now would be the DLA-X30 that includes almost the same specs and runs about $4,000. The projector is hidden in a soffit in the back of the room, which helps make the room look elegant and keep the projector’s fan noise from intruding on the movie.

The whole system is run by a Control4 HS300, which can be accessed either with a Control4 remote or an iPad.

The theater was completed last summer, and Herd still sees the owners from time to time as he returns to add audio or TVs to other rooms in the house. “They love it,”he says. “He (the homeowner) will tell me about the latest movie the family watched.” The official unveiling was for the daughter’s birthday party, and the client noted that guests were impressed. “I was doing demos all day. I had to wipe everyone’s chins off the floor,” Herd was told.

Check out some before and after pictures of the home theater here. 

On President’s Day it’s common to honor this nation’s leaders by staying home from school or maybe partaking in some Lincoln-inspired one-day sales.

I’m sure being president is a hard job, so he needs to unwind in the evening too. Lucky for him, the job comes with a home theater, and has for many decades. Several sources note that while the first movie was shown in the White House in 1915, the theater wasn’t actually built until 1942. President Dwight Eisenhower is said to have watched over 200 movies in the room. President Ronald Reagan’s favorite movie for the room was The Sound of Music. According to Tevi Troy, former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,  President Bill Clinton was a fan of Fight Club and American Beauty.

Here’s a pictorial tour of the official White House Family Theater. You’ll notice that the décor has changed significantly over the years as technology improved and presidential tastes changed. We’re sure the theater has been guests to dignitaries of all kinds. Even Hollywood celebrities such as SteWhite House theaterven Spielberg and Tom Hanks have enjoyed the room.  The theater is used for much more than just watching Walking Dead on Sunday evenings. Some official functions take place there; guests are entertained and major speeches are rehearsed.  Maybe the family also get together to play Call of Duty.

Unfortunately we don’t know what equipment is actually installed in the theater—that’s confidential information. What’s on the president’s DVR? Does the White House have a Kaleidescape? Are they an Xbox360 or PS3 family? Extra butter on their popcorn? We do know that the While House Family Theater includes a 3D projector and that it includes seats for 42 people. Everything else is a state secret.   

Check out the slideshow for pictures inside the Barack Obama’s screen room.

Parks Associates says that such offerings will be a big boost to the market, which will see more than $180 million in revenue by 2015. As the revenue grows, so will the number of companies willing to offer these types of services. Parks says that the end result will see 60 percent of homes with some type of networked energy management offering by 2022.

“Energy management is being bundled with home monitoring and control, security, broadband, and video services,” said Tom Kerber, director of Research, Home Controls and Energy for Parks Associates. “Next week, we will hear insights into partnership opportunities that can generate recurring revenues, reduce customer attrition, develop value-added services, and engage consumers in new ways with energy management solutions.”

Kerber is referring to the Smart Energy Summit, which is currently going on in Austin, Texas. The annual event, which focuses on new technologies, partnership opportunities, and consumer-oriented energy management solutions, runs from February 28 through March 1, 2012.

The clients were building an addition on the rear of the home. This addition we to be a large Family room someplace the family can gather and enjoy time together. Their request was to build a media room that would not distract from the beauty of the room they were building yet had to sound great and of course easy to use.

The solution was to first address the concerns of great sound verses placement. We installed 2 Boston Acoustics subs between the front floor joists, and then located the 5 in wall speakers above where the TV was going to be placed. We chose Pioneer 60” plasma for the video presentation. Since they are very bright it would work well even with the lights on or during a bright summer day. The Pioneer plasma also accepts HDTV from the Verizon FIOS cable receiver. To address the sound we installed a Dennon receiver with a second zone on the deck and kitchen. The whole system is – controlled by a Control 4 home theater controller as well as controlling the lighting, thus providing ease of use to the customer.

Our objective was to satisfy the customers’ concerns while providing a well designed and integrated audio/video system that is easy to use and basically bulletproof. Based on our customer’s feedback, we have definitely achieved that.

We originally met with this customer in early 2007 while they were in the planning and renovating process of their home. We designed and installed a Multi-room, Multi-source system for them. At that time we allotted a room in the basement for a future home theater.

The client originally wanted to tackle his Home Theater construction as he is a relatively handy person. The problem, he found out, wasn’t there is not enough information on the internet on how to construct a home theater but there Was too much conflicting information. As he says every time I found a good idea, I would fine someone saying not to do that.

Unfortunately, the walls were constructed too flimsy, the speakers were in the wrong area, and the risers were not the right size. As a professional integrator we realize there is no replacement for experience.

The clients were building an addition on the rear of the home. This addition we to be a large Family room someplace the family can gather and enjoy time together. Their request was to build a media room that would not distract from the beauty of the room they were building yet had to sound great and of course easy to use.

The solution was to first address the concerns of great sound verses placement. We installed 2 Boston Acoustics subs between the front floor joists, and then located the 5 in wall speakers above where the TV was going to be placed. We chose Pioneer 60” plasma for the video presentation. Since they are very bright it would work well even with the lights on or during a bright summer day. The Pioneer plasma also accepts HDTV from the Verizon FIOS cable receiver. To address the sound we installed a Dennon receiver with a second zone on the deck and kitchen. The whole system is -controlled by a Control 4 home theater controller as well as controlling the lighting, thus providing ease of use to the customer.

Our objective was to satisfy the customers’ concerns while providing a well designed and integrated audio/video system that is easy to use and basically bulletproof. Based on our customer’s feedback, we have definitely achieved that.