Home theater: The ultimate man cave for film buffs, gamers

We didn't really know why this was so until one of his customers let us into his Morningside home for a photo peek and, as serious film geeks, the writer and photographer discovered just what we were missing with our suddenly small TVs. Our flat screens now seem as antiquated as a fuzzy 10-inch black-and-white Philco TV set from the 1950s. And now we know what envy really is.

Eight big seats, way more comfortable than any you will find in a movie theater. An incredible sound system. A 105-inch screen with a fabulous picture. When he dimmed the lights and popped on a "Star Wars" movie, we were blown into another world.

Much bigger screens are available today. But Mr. Homeowner is happy with what he has.

Of course, he is.

FEELING THE SOUND

"We have the look of the home theater and it has the sound system, surround sound, and a lot of sub-woofers. So it has a lot of bass. You can feel the sound," Mr. Homeowner said. "And it's capable of watching anything --  satellite TV, Blu-ray movies or regular DVDs. We probably watch more movies than anything. At this stage of my life we watch kid movies more than anything else."

One of his sons kept trying to get in on the action and was repeatedly chased out of the room by Dad.

The basement home theater room, located behind the large family room, is locked when Dad's not home. A common practice, we're told.

The system is 7-8 years old. So bigger screens are now available. More bells and whistles, too. Last year, Mr. Homeowner added a Blu-ray player to his system that will hold 400 Blu-ray discs in addition to the other box with 300 regular DVD discs.

He also has a touch-screen control pad located in the center of the back row of theater seats. Today, people are using iPads or iPhones to run their home theater systems, but it's the same basic idea.

"When you put a movie into the system, it's all hooked to the Internet so it goes in and downloads the artwork and the name and all the information," Mr. Homeowner said. "These are actually discs that are built into the system (sort of like a video jukebox). They have two players. It would hold 700 movies. I probably have 250. But I'm sure if you talk to Pflanz, the upcoming thing now is a box that uploads them from the Internet and stores them online. So that wil be a future upgrade."

He decided to ring the room with movie posters. So once he figured out how much space was available, he found 10 posters of favorite movies, many of them autographed, hits like "The Wizard of Oz," "The Outlaw Josey Wales," (his favorite), "Jaws," "Top Gun" and "Tommy Boy." All are lit by low-voltage lighting that doesn't distract from the darkened home theater experience. There is no ambient light.

One tap of the touch-screen control pad activates everything, even a dropped screen over the room's sole window. And because of the wiring work needed on the ceiling to connect the overhead projector and along the walls for the sound system, extra insulation was installed, making the theater room virtually soundproof. And the cabinet that holds the projector screen and most of the other electronic components was hand-crafted by a local cabinet maker, a job that took about three months. Well worth the waiit, Mr. Homeowner said.

SELLING AUTOMATION

Pflanz provided the design and everything but the posters. That includes the seating, motorized shades, sound and lighting equipment.

"What we sell also is automation," Pflanz said. "The problem is the more thngs you put into a theater room, whether it's lighting, control lighting, projector, surround sound, Play Station 3, you're adding boxes; and the more boxes, the harder it is to control all those boxes. So what we do here is we put everything into automation."

The No. 1 item on the list of every home theater buyer is a big screen. And typically it is not going to be a flat panel TV hanging on the wall. It is going to be a projector screen with a projector on the ceiling, he noted. "Most people that I design theaters for, they want the whole front wall to be the screen," he noted.

He pointed to the 4K projector on display in the store's home theater room as an example of the next big thing.

"The 4K is four times the resolution of high definition TV. This is cutting edge. You're going to hear a lot about 4K in the next two to four years when 4K information becomes readily available."

This leaves us with four different levels of high definition: high def over cable TV (the lowest definition), one step up with Direct TV or Dish Network high def, Blu-ray, then 4K, Pflanz said.

Projector costs range from $699 to $20,000, for the display model in the Pflanz home theater room, and even beyond to high-end projectors costing $80,000, not carried by Pflanz but made available if that is what a customer wants.

So a good home theater system can range from about $2,000 all the way up to $150,000, depending on the customer's needs ... and bank account.

One customer was a huge gamer who didn't watch movies. He just wanted a cheap projector, which he got for $1,100, plus a surround sound system.

So you don't have to be a One Percenter to buy a home theater system. The problem many have is just finding he space for it, Pflanz said, which is why many home theater systems are set up in multi-purpose or living rooms. "We're turning a lot of living rooms into theaters now," he said. "It's really not a theater, but they still want a flat screen. the biggest one I've done is 192-inch."

A perforated screen with millions of holes allows for placement of three speakers behind the screen. And with the 7.1 surround system now in play, that means wo more speakers along each side wall, two in the back and typically 1-4 sub-woofers in the roof.

"That's sound," he said. "Realistically, this is all an escape. After a long day and the kids go to bed, it's an escape room. You turn on a movie and you escape to a different dimension."