Home Theater Geeks 468 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 talk about the latest AVS Forum Home Theater of the Month. This one is a replication of a Dolby Cinema. Very cool, so stick around.

00:16 - Leo Laporte (Announcement)
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00:32 - Scott Wilkinson (Host)
Hey there, scott Wilkinson, here, the Home Theater Geek. In this episode I'm going to profile another Home Theater of the Month from AVS Forum. This one is the 13th of 2024, so it's the bonus home theater of the month. We like to say we make it a baker's dozen, and in this case it's really very cool. Of course they're all really cool, but this one seeks to replicate a Dolby Cinema in a home theater.

01:06
Now, dolby Cinema is my favorite commercial cinema format. I like it better than IMAX, certainly better than a conventional commercial cinema, and so does Terrence. He finds it to be the most enjoyable commercial cinema experience as well, and so he wanted to replicate that in his home theater. Now he built a house in I think it's called Brazelton, georgia, I think that's how you pronounce it and he built it from scratch. He built the whole home. You know he had it built and he included in the plans a basement home theater so he could start from scratch. He didn't have to work with any existing room and try to figure out how to make do with this or that, or windows or or obstructions. He just built it from scratch, and that's really the best way to go. Obstructions he just built it from scratch, and that's really the best way to go.

02:07
So I wanted to start by showing you a picture of the final room, and we're going to show a few pictures of the installation and how it went. But check this out. The finished room uses blue LED strip lighting, just like Dolby specifies for its commercial cinemas. Now, interestingly, most Dolby cinemas are in AMC cineplexes and they chose to use red lighting, and I don't know why. That is because I know Dolby specifies blue, and in a couple of the Dolby cinemas I've been in that aren't in AMC cineplexes the lighting is blue. It's this blue LED strip lighting. And so Terrence went ahead and did it the way Dolby specified and it really just looks great.

02:56
Now, as I said before, he framed the room in his basement and we can see a picture of that framing process, or at least as it was in process. Here you see the riser in the back for the second row of seats. First row of seats would be between those two little platforms on either side, and you can also see in particular, I want to point out the wall in the back of the seating area. You can see the framing there. That is a false wall. It's not the end of the room. But it's there for a couple of reasons. One is to provide a base trap, so it's going to get stuffed with insulation and covered with acoustic material duct board actually and that is going to act as a bass trap, which means it's going to absorb some of the bass frequencies and prevent them from reflecting back into the room.

04:01
We can see that in the next picture some progress here. We see that all the framing is filled with insulation, which serves two purposes really. One is sound isolation, keeping the sound inside from leaking out and the sounds from the outside from leaking in, and it also serves as some damping to the internal sounds. In the next one we can see the drywall is up and that's something that I personally wouldn't tackle. I would pay somebody to do that, and I believe he did in this case. You know his whole house is being built, so the builder went ahead and did that, although he himself specified what, how he wanted this room to be. And notice again in the back, the false wall is still. We still see the insulation.

04:58
The next picture it has a closer view of it, um, and you can see there's an opening, a rectangular opening, at the top, which is where the projector will shoot through that opening and onto the screen. And also, I want you to notice, to the right of this picture, that wall does not extend all the way to the side wall. In fact, that is the entrance into the theater from the outside, which is exactly like a Dolby Cinema does it. You walk into the outer door and you have to walk around the wall to get into the actual theater. We're going to see more pictures of that in a minute, but before we do, I wanted to show you the screen wall, which is where the screen goes, and I like showing how home theater owners have set up their front, left and right and center speakers, which you can see here, along with two subwoofers.

06:02
Those left, center and right LCR speakers are triad gold in wall speakers. Triad is a very well respected maker of speakers, in particular in walls, and they basically come in three levels gold, silver and bronze, and the gold series is the top of the line, as you might expect, and he's got three of them there behind the screen wall. They're actually in the wall, thus he's using in-wall speakers. The two subwoofers that you see down there are from a company called GSG and they're called BTS subwoofers behind the screen and those drivers are 21 inches in diameter, which is mighty big, so it makes a beautiful low bass sound, along with those LCR triad speakers. So those speakers and all the ones around the room are driven by amplifiers that sit in a very tall equipment rack outside the theater and, as you can see here, that is one tall equipment rack theater and, as you can see here, that is one tall equipment rack and there's a lot of gear in there, including a Kaleidoscape Strato C player and a Terra Prime server with eight terabytes of storage, and that's where most of his movies are stored. He also has a Panasonic DP-UB9000 UHD Blu-ray player so he can actually play physical discs, although the Kaleidoscape plays digital files with system, but it stores everything on a big server and you can search for things and it starts right up. It's really quite wonderful. But in case you can't get a Kaleidoscape title that you want and you have it on an actual physical disk, terrence can play it on the Panasonic UHD Blu-ray player, can play it on the Panasonic UHD Blu-ray player. His surround processor is a JBL Synthesis SDP55, very high end. He has Summit and Crown power amps and a Lumagen Radiance Pro video processor. The projector is a JVC NZ9, I believe We'll see a picture of of that a little bit later, uh, but it's very high-end equipment all the way around.

08:47
So in the next graphic we can see his lobby and he made it look just like a commercial Dolby cinema lobby, including a including an electronic movie poster on the left which is from a company called Digital Movie Boards and it basically shows whatever is playing in the theater or rotates around different movie posters. Very, very cool. He also custom made he had custom made that Dolby Home Cinema sign with the Dolby logo and he even put a number on the entrance door as if he were in a multiplex, which he's not. It's the only movie theater in that building, his home. But you know, that kind of gives it more of a sense of you're in a commercial cinema. Kind of gives it the more of a sense of you're in a commercial cinema. Now, once you go in that door, you will see that the entrance leads you around the back wall and into the theater, as you can see here, which is again just like a Dolby cinema. That's exactly how they look and how they, how they are designed. That trash can in the corner, I think is really cool too. So the next graphic shows you what it looks like when you enter the room and just, it's fabulous. It's just great. We'll see some other pictures here of the inside of the room as well.

10:15
The next one shows the six SeatCraft Apex theater seats in two rows of three. In this particular image the blue strip lighting is not turned on, which of course you wouldn't want it turned on during a movie but uh, and you can turn it off the front. Three seats in the in these two rows have um Croson tactile transducers, which I've talked about before. Basically they're little speaker transducers that are mounted in the seats and when you get a low frequency rumble from an explosion or a rocket taking off or a dinosaur roaring or whatever, it actually rumbles your seat and jiggles you around. Now I personally find that to be quite unnerving and so I don't like it. But a lot of people do, and if you do, then it's great, you should go for it.

11:28
I tell the story going to a CDA show one time and Runco was showing their latest stuff and they had these tactile transducers in their seat in their demo room and I sat down and it started rumbling and I immediately got up and left and they said what's wrong? And I said I don't like those. So later in the later in the show, I came back and they said we took one out just for you. That was service, I liked, liked that, that was very good.

11:49
Okay, we have a picture of the screen which I wanted to tell you a little bit about. It's from a company called xy screens. The material is called sound max 4k. Uh, with it's 160 inches diagonal, or, in words, about 12 feet wide, in a 2.35 to 1 aspect ratio, and it's a woven, acoustically transparent material. So those speakers we saw earlier are sitting behind that screen and that's really the best way to do front sound is to have the speakers actually behind the screen, because then the sound, as something moves from right to left or left to right it, you, you can hear the sound coming from the object that's making that sound and they're associated visually, uh, very closely and and that really makes a great, a great effect it's very important to to immersiveness. Okay, the next picture we show this blue led lighting again, and you know that just is fabulous. It looks so good.

12:58
Um, and the next graphic is a close-up of that back wall with an opening for the projector. And I wanted to mention that that projector is also really, really nice. It's a JVC DLA-NZ8. And you can also see the exit sign in this picture. And, interestingly, somebody in the comments on the article uh for this home theater of the month, uh said well, I really hate exit signs in theaters because they're so bright they throw light into the room that you don't want. And taryn said up, not to worry, this is not a normal exit sign, it's a glow-in-the-dark exit sign, so it's not nearly as bright, but again, it lends a touch of commercial cinema to to the theater, which I think is great.

13:54
Okay, in the last graphic I just show you one more picture from the this theater. It just looks so good. I would love to. I would love to watch a movie in this room. So the next time I get to Brazelton, georgia, I will give Terrence a call and maybe go check it out.

14:16
The link, the URL for the article, we'll put in the show notes so you can go read that article and get even more detail than I've given you here. But I hope you've enjoyed it, because I certainly did. I enjoyed writing it up, I enjoyed seeing all the pictures and knowing that somebody else, just like me, prefers Dolby Cinema over any other commercial source and went so far as to create it in his theater. Oh, and how much did it cost? Well, it wasn't cheap. He had a bunch he had. You know, contractors do a lot of that basic work. He claims that he spent around $60,000 on this home theater, which you know.

15:03
A number of people who have commented on the article say wow, that really isn't too bad for what it is, and I have to agree. So you know, more power to them and that's a lot of money. I won't pretend to think it's not, but if you've got it and you've got the opportunity to build something exactly as you want it, it's money well spent in my opinion. So congratulations to Terrence, and I know you will enjoy that room for years to come. So in many episodes of Home Theater Geeks I answer listener questions, so I hope you will send them along to htg at twittv Now, if you want to watch the video, that's now very easy because all of our shows are on YouTube and free to watch, with advertising. Uh, and free to watch with advertising. Now, if you want to get uh ad free, uh shows, then just join the club. All you have to do is head to twittv club twit to sign up. So until next time, geek out.

16:23 - Leo Laporte (Announcement)
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