Home Theater Movie Rooms
CAV Integrated Home offers the latest and best in-home theater technology including the latest in Dolby Atmos surround sound and LED projector products. CAV can design and build a custom room within your architectural plan or adapt an existing room in your home into the entertainment hub and family gathering place of your dreams.
The Movie Theater Experience
What makes a home theater different from just a normal TV experience is not just a larger viewing screen, but rather a total package of sight, sound, lighting, and comfort. While budgets and priorities can vary, it is important to address each of these areas appropriately. A CAV designer can help find the right balance of performance and value that fits your room and your expectations.
Video Projection, Screens, and Televisions
In a professionally planned home theater a projector and movie screen combination or television should have very high brightness, superior dynamic range, natural color, and of course 4K (2160p) video resolution. Together these provide a natural and comfortable landscape for your eyes rather than the harsh over-saturated color settings found in out-of-the-box televisions.
In smaller rooms, a very large television in the 65” to 95” range can suffice to achieve a movie theater-like experience however in most rooms it still takes a projector and screen combination to achieve a proper viewing angle, even if you are the kind of person who prefers the back rows at the movie theater. There is both an art and a science to selecting the right screen size for a room and CAV’s design staff can get you there.
Speakers and Electronics
These sound systems can have a varying range of quality but should be, at a minimum, adequately sized to the room. Speakers can be built into walls or free-standing classic towers, depending on taste and what the interior design of the room calls for. Electronics that drive the home theater systems are often housed in equipment racking systems behind closed doors and can often be forgotten about, however these hidden-away receivers and multi-channel amplifiers have a massive impact on the sound quality the speakers and subwoofers can produce. Just as every room has the right speaker configuration for the space, so does every speaker combination have the perfect set of matching electronics and amplifiers. CAV’s designers have years of experience combined with ceaseless product training that provide us with the insight needed to design for you the superb combinations that make a great home theater.
Lighting and Comfort
Lighting and comfort are the often-overlooked aspects of a quality home theater. Lighting should be dimmable without any harsh LED fluttering, and as most rooms have multiple sets of lighting, simplifying the process of setting the lights to movie mode through the use of a control system from Lutron, Crestron, or Control4 will go a long way toward making a home theater easy for daily use. Through the use of one of these control systems, the room temperature can also be managed in an automated way, lowering a few degrees at the start of showtime and going back to a more modest setting after the system is turned off.
Home Theater Seating
The choice of seating is as important as the video and audio systems. Seats should be comfortable but not so much so that you fall asleep during the movie! Seating backs should also be taken into consideration as many seating manufacturers include high-backed designs that can block audio from rear speakers and affect viewers sightlines in multi-row designs. CAV Integrated Home can work with your interior designer to select the right seating choice for your home theater or we can design a custom-built seating layout for you from one of our home theater seating manufacturers such as Premiere Home Theater Seating or Jaymar Seating.
What is a Media Room anyway?
If you are looking for more than just a miniature movie theater in your home, then maybe a design that incorporates more options in entertainment or one that has an overall different design aesthetic from the traditional layout of rows of seats focused one large screen. Media room has long been the catch-all term for a variety of designs that can put a lot of entertainment into a single space. Here are just a few of the possible ideas:
Game Room
For years, families have enjoyed multi-use rooms that incorporate both a large video component and some kind of game space like billiards or table tennis. In some cases, the layout is very overlapped where one might play pool and while also watching a movie, and in other cases the layout is more like two rooms joined together either with no wall between or a sliding door system, allowing for maximum flexibility. These days video games are an added component to a media room-game room. CAV can design systems where video games can be played on the main screen of a media room or on a separate dedicated video game television (or both). Game system console boxes can be permanently installed or we can set up easy to use wall-plates and plugs that can be used by a grandkid who brings his Xbox or Playstation along on visits.
Sports Bar
Media rooms aren’t just about movies and TV. Sporting events factor highly in many people’s entertainment needs. With many games broadcast or streamed simultaneously, many sports-oriented media room designs incorporate multiple televisions, either in addition to or replacing a single large screen. Being able to have multiple games playing simultaneously is amazing for the sports enthusiast but presents some technical challenges that require thoughtful audio system design and a good control system. The trick to enjoying several games playing at once is how to control the audio. Having several video screens running at the same time is one thing, but having the audio playing simultaneously four or more football or basketball games would be an audible mess to listen to. Being able to easily switch the audio between the different games is paramount and can be achieved by use of an advanced control system by manufacturers like Crestron, Control4, or Savant. With all the right pieces in place you will be able to change the sound to follow the most important games or whichever one suddenly gets exciting.
Transformable Space
Sometimes a media room needs to be more than one kind of room. Depending on the layout of your home, a key room may need to double as both a media room and a study, or it may need to be a formal living room by day and family gathering place by night. With the right design from the CAV design staff and some clever products, televisions and projection screens can be hidden away when not in use, either disappearing up into a ceiling or subtly concealed inside cabinetry or behind movable wall panels. It’s just as cool as it sounds. Traditional box speaker systems can be hidden behind cloth panels or in cabinetry, or high-quality flush in-wall speakers can be used. With the right plan and good technology, when the system is off, everything will be hidden away; no one who is visiting would even know a fantastic entertainment system is waiting to be used. See CAV’s page on Hidden Systems for more ideas on this subject.
